Carlisle United boss Paul Simpson is not one for hype or outlandish, bullish statements. He’s not one to get carried away.
Which is why Simmo has repeated his first target for the coming season is to “still be in this league at the end of the season.”
Having said that he has admitted that he’s pleased with what he’s seen so far.
Talking to the club website he says: I’ll keep my feet on the ground and I will repeat that our first target is to still be in this league at the end of the season.
“That’s always the first target. The sooner we do that the better, and at that point we’ll readdress it and see where we go from there.
“Selection problems are what you want as a manager and I want even more of that. I want more bodies in to help us, to make the squad even stronger.
.“Looking at having things set in mind for Crawley, I’m very close, but obviously things can change. There are players fighting to start and it’s a nice position to be in.
“Even though I’ve probably only got 16 or 17 senior outfield players, it’s nice that they’re all pushing to want to be involved.
“We’re starting to see more of how we’re going to go about it as well. The defensive shape is what we’ve tried to do from coming in at the end of last season.
“We were talking amongst staff in a meeting and I said to them that this is where I want to go with it, but please tell me if you think we should change it. I need to know that.
“We all basically agreed that for now it’s the right shape for us. It may be somewhere further down the line that we have to look at it and think we might be better with a back four.
“We might be losing out in other areas of the pitch, because we’ve got a five, and it’s something we’ll just address and might have to just adapt a little bit as we go along.
“I have it set in my mind at the moment that it’s a back three with two wing-backs, and a front five in front of that which can be fairly fluid and can be adapted depending on what the opposition are going to do.”
He was also pleased to hear that the club’s Under-18’s put up a very good performance in a friendly at Liverpool before going down 2-1.
Liverpool were gifted a goal on 18 minutes when hesitiation in defence left men free and highly-rated Honduran under-20 international forward Keyrol Figueroa made no mistake from close range.
Into the second-half and the Blues deservedly levelled on 52 minutes when a rushed clearance was controlled by Ryan Carr and he confidently picked his spot for 1-1.
Late in the day, Lewis Koumas – son of former Tranmere favourite Jason – beat the offside trap and calmly rattled home the winner.
