Boss Steven Pressley has not ruled out the possibility of re-signing released Carlisle United winger Arthur Gnahoua.

Gnahoua, 26, joined the Cumbrians in January. But after he suffered a hamstring injury just 28 minutes into his debut in a 1-0 victory at Port Vale, he didn’t feature again in United’s 2018/19 season and was let go this month.

The former Shrewsbury man has trained with United this week, though, as they try to filter through trialists.

Pressley said: "We wanted to see Arthur and we wanted to assess him again.

"He had to leave early because of an issue outside of football.

"But he trained for several days and he looked very comfortable in amongst it which is good. He is somebody that we will consider and we will speak to over the coming weeks."

Pressley says none of this week’s trialists will be offered a contract yet, though, and the sessions had simply been destined to see who would be worth inviting back at the start of pre-season for a further trial.

“From my time in football, and my time not only managing but also playing, at pre-season you always get trialists coming in,” he said. “Sometimes, you have a trialist that comes in and, after one day, people are saying ‘Oh no’.

“He actually affects the standard of the session and you end up having agreed to have brought them in for a period of time. You end up wasting the players’ time and wasting your own time.

"We wanted to filter that. We had a lot of names put to us, we decided it would make good sense to be able to see them first-hand and then decide whether, on that basis, if we invite them in for a trial come the start of the season. So, that’s the real thinking behind it.

"No player from this week will be offered a contract, it was really a filtering process to allow us piece of mind that, when we bring them in at the start of the season, they are of sufficient quality to have a chance of gaining a contract."

Asked if some of those who had been involved would be returning to the club, the Blues boss replied: “We have seen a couple of players who we think are of good interest.

“We will discuss it over the next few days and then we will get messages back to them in the coming weeks, whether we plan on bringing them back in or not.”

Pressley also says he has been in contact with Aston Villa boss Dean Smith about a meeting regarding potential loan signings, though, further talks will have to wait until after their Championship play-off final with Derby next Monday.