CARLTON MORRIS is delighted to have extended his loan stay at York City despite still waiting to make his first start for the club.

The teenage Norwich striker has started seven successive games as a substitute since his November arrival from Carrow Road but has been called into action during five of those fixtures.

Even though his game time still only amounts to 76 minutes, however, Morris did not want to return to his parent club or seek new pastures when his initial one-month spell at Bootham Crescent lapsed.

Instead, the England Under-19 international - who won the FA Youth Cup with Norwich - is determined to force his way into manager Russ Wilcox's first XI plans during January, saying: "I feel really settled here.

"The gaffer and the team have made that easy for me. I think this club has a plan and I would like to be a part of that for as long as possible and as long as things are going well.

"It's time for me to start kicking on now and I'm hoping I can push my way into the starting team during this next month and get some goals and wins for the team.

"I'm definitely ready to go when needed and I know anything can happen, so I need to be ready to hit the ground running."

Cambridge-born Morris, who scored once in ten outings for City's Sky Bet League Two rivals Oxford at the start of the campaign, was given his latest second-half cameo during Saturday's 1-0 defeat at Wycombe.

Despite the game ending an unbeaten run of four matches, the 6ft 2in forward felt there were positives to take from an off-colour City's narrow margin of defeat at their table-topping hosts.

"The lads worked hard and did their best but Wycombe are top of the league for a reason," he pointed out. "They are effective in what they do and, while we went there to combat that, we couldn't quite manage it unfortunately.

"We weren't at our very best, which is almost good news, because we only lost 1-0 to the league leaders. That shows where we are at the moment and that the gaffer is taking us in the right direction."

The display of debutant keeper Bobby Olejnik, who made five excellent saves during the game, was also a great cause of encouragement for Morris and his fellow attackers.

"If Bobby carries on making those types of saves, he can get us clean sheets and we know that all we'll need to do then is take one chance to win a game," the 19-year-old striker reasoned.

Back at Norwich, Morris' former youth-team mentor Neil Adams has been replaced by Alex Neil with the on-loan City forward expected to speak to the ex-Hamilton Academicals' chief about his situation at Bootham Crescent in the near future.

"I will have to talk to people at Norwich at some point and see what's going on because there's changes going on there," Morris explained.

"I was very sorry to hear Neil Adams had left because he had a big impact on my career - maybe the biggest - growing up at Norwich."