Bentley: Couple of other areas to strengthen after Whitmore arrival

The 20-year-old’s arrival was announced prior to Tuesday night’s 4-1 friendly defeat to Preston North End.

The Newcastle-born central defender played the final 20 minutes having previously featured in the opening friendly at Bamber Bridge.

Whitmore’s previous loan experience includes at Chester and Gateshead, the stopper playing 25 goals and scoring two goals for the latter in the National League last season.

Bentley now says he has a couple of other areas he wants to strengthen with a back-up goalkeeper amongst the positions to be filled.

He said: “We got to have a look at him because we’ve got a good relationship with Burnley.

“I’d like to thank them for letting us take Alex on loan.

“We’ve seen strengths in him. He’s a decent player who played 25 games at Conference level last year so he knows what man’s football is all about.

“He’s a good competitor. What we’ve seen has been pleasing. We’ve spoken to people in the game as well who know him and all the reports are good.

“We needed strengthening in that department and there’s a couple of others we’d like to strengthen to thicken the squad out a little bit.

“We’ll just have to see what we can do elsewhere leading up to the start of the season.”

Whitmore had played alongside fellow Burnley prospect Daniel Agyei at Bamber Bridge with the former AFC Wimbledon man starting for the Clarets’ first team in their 2-1 win at Bolton on Tuesday night.