Carlisle United boss Keith Millen insists he’s under no pressure to sell players in the January transfer window.
Millen made that point as fresh rumours circulated that National League ‘moneybags’ Wrexham were preparing a bid for United skipper Callum Guy.
Any would-be asking price was probably ramped-up by Mansfield boss Nigel Clough declaring Guy was one of the best midfielders in League Two.
But Millen told the club’s official website: “I’m not aware of, or had any phone calls or any interest. I’m sure, from my conversations with the board, we’re looking to enhance and make the squad stronger.
“I’m under no pressure to sell anybody for money. It would have to be a really good deal. I would never stand in a player’s way of progressing their careers, but it would have to be a very good financial deal for the club.
“The position we’re in, we’re not looking to weaken ourselves, we’re looking to strengthen. I don’t see us losing any of our, if you like, top or better players unless the deal is right. But I don’t envisage that.”
But what about potential new recruits to boost the Blues’ survival hopes?
“I’ve had a lot of communication about players for January. When you talk about spinning plates, there’s a lot of that going on across football clubs at the moment.
“In an ideal world, I would love to get some business done in that first week. Our game against Hartlepool will be cancelled now because they’re in the third round of the FA Cup, so that gives us a free weekend to maybe try and do some business.
“It would be great to get some players in during that period, but I won’t rush into anything that I don’t think will improve us. We’ve got our targets and we’ve been working really hard.
“The board have been good in terms of backing me, they understand what we need to do. We’ll obviously try and get deals done as early as possible if they’re the right ones.”
Millen also revealed that his training routine has been affected by the wet weather.
He said: “If you’ve seen our training pitch it’s difficult because it’s not in very good condition at the moment due to all the rain we’ve had. That doesn’t help.”
Regardless, Millen says he has been working hard to resolve the issue on goalscoring as Carlisle have scored fewer goals than anybody else in the league.
He said: “Everybody knows we haven’t scored enough goals and I’ve spoken to the players about that. It’s what we can do to try and help, and that comes down to the details.
“Following Tuesday we’ve tried to look at those details that we can work on that will improve our chances of scoring. And that isn’t just about scoring, it’s about the creativity that comes in the build-up play, the quality of the crosses, the number of players who are in the box – are we filling the area enough – and are we picking up enough of the second balls.
“It’s these sorts of things that we’ve talked about and looked at because we’re trying to improve on the attention to detail so that we do increase the chances of us scoring the goals we all want to see.
“Obviously it’s difficult with the fixture schedule, because it becomes more about recovery than training, but it’s such small margins that we’re talking about. We have to turn those small margins into goals, so that’s what we’ve worked on.”
