Ebbsfleet boss Dennis Kutrieb believes Jordon Ibe should be playing in the Football League.

The 27-year-old, who once moved from Liverpool to Bournemouth for £15million, has joined the Fleet in a bid to resurrect his career.

He’s hardly played a competitive game in the past couple of seasons, suffering from injuries and openly talking about his battles with depression.

But Kutrieb is excited to have Ibe at Stonebridge Road, although he was an unused substitute in Saturday’s FA Cup Fourth Qualifying Round draw at home to Slough.

“In an ideal world I’d try and give him some minutes but the game was too tight and too aggressive to just ‘gift’ him some minutes,” explained Kutrieb. “We will see what we do on Tuesday (in the replay) but we will see him soon.

“If he can be with us this season and make a massive impact then he won’t be here longer (than that).

“He should be somewhere else, he shouldn’t be in non-league. He should be in the League and up the pyramid as that’s where he has been almost his whole career.

“From that point of view, I’m not stupid and think he will stay here forever because he’s not at the end of his career. I think he’s at the middle of his career and we can help him get back on track and he can help us. He doesn’t need to be worried, his way is still open but that’s on him, not me.”

Kutrieb’s management style should work perfectly for Ibe, who joined Liverpool from Wycombe in 2012.

The German boss takes a keen approach in his players’ development on and off the pitch and is protective of his squad. He’s been impressed with Ibe so far.

“One part is the mental side obviously,” explained Kutrieb. “He played over 100 games in the Premier League so it’s a tough challenge to be in non-league as a young player, for me he’s still young at 27.

“I think that’s tough to take, that’s my honest opinion. He turned up with this attitude and tried to make an impact for us – and that’s amazing. This is the first step in the right direction.

“If he’s not getting setbacks and pulled down from his own demons, if that’s how you say it, then he will still make a massive impact for us. I would love to see that he is just focusing on and enjoying his football.

“If you’ve been in this situation, you don’t really think how beautiful football is. There’s times where you really hate football and we need to try and give him the love and joy back to football.”

It means that Kutrieb has plenty of options with the likes of Omari Sterling-James, Darren McQueen, David Amoo and Matthias Fanimo all potential starters down the right wing.

But Ibe’s versatility appeals to the Fleet boss and he disagrees with the suggestion that he’s now got too many right-wingers in his squad.

“Not at all,” responded Kutireb. “You could see we struggled in the last weeks, we only had two players available and this was Ben Chapman and Darren McQueen.

“Everyone else was not really available so from that point of view I don’t think we have too many, I think we have too less.

“He can cover different positions, he can be a second striker or play the 10 role. There’s a few positions he can cover and that’s why he’s interesting for us.

“We still need to wait for Rakish Bingham to come back and we need to find solutions and he gives us different options for that.”