Manchester United’s Under-21s drew over 3,300 to Brunton Park in the much-maligned Papa John’s Trophy.
The glamour of the opposition, even without household names, helped swell the crowd and even included 450 from Manchester.
They saw the visitors leave with a 2-1 victory, courtesy of a 71st minute winner from Omari Forason.
Carlisle had been level for just five minutes after Jamie Devitt had scored from close range.
Man Utd had taken the lead on 40 minutes when Charlie McNeill finished well after a period of strong pressure.
Carlisle manager Paul Simpson took the opportunity to use players who hadn’t been given many minutes so far in the season.
He said: “The likes of Sonny, Jack, Duncan and Jayden haven’t played a lot of minutes, but they all did well, and that’s what you want to see.
“There are opportunities in this competition and there’s another opportunity next Tuesday to get them up to speed, because we want everybody to be as ready as possible.
“Having said that, when we put them into the team they’ve got to go and work and go and do it. Hopefully it they do that they’ll get up to the speed we need for League Two football. That’s the only thing that matters. They’ve got to be right.
“We’re guilty of it as coaches where we come away from games and say a player was nowhere near it, but we’ve got to take some of the blame because we haven’t given them minutes beforehand.”
Simpson revealed that he has a couple of injury concerns ahead of the weekend match against Rochdale at home.
He said: “I had players out there who I didn’t want to play the full 90, but I’ve had to because we’ve had little situations that change your thinking.
“Jack Ellis felt ill, and Duncan Idehen cramped up, so everybody’s in the frame come the weekend, and they have to make sure they come back in fresh on Thursday.
“I mentioned the bug at the weekend, and we’ve had a couple, maybe three or four who were struggling a bit at half time. I don’t know what the answer is, I don’t know what’s causing it, but we’ve got to hope it gets out of the system.
“I just thought, it sounds like I’m making excuses. It’s not an excuse. I don’t want anybody to think that. We’ve been undone by some really good technical footballers, and we’ve also undone ourselves because we haven’t been clinical in the final third and got that side of it right.
“As I’ve said, the pleasing things to come out of it are that we got Taylor Charters back on the pitch, and he was only ever going to play 45 minutes, that was always the plan.
“We had to make a substitution with Duncan having to go off with cramp, which is really disappointing after 60-odd minutes. We’re going to have to work him and get him up to speed so that doesn’t happen to him.
“I’m pleased that Owen Moxon has got more time and I was delighted to get Ryan Edmondson back out there. He was always going to come on for 25 minutes.”
And he confirmed that Callum Guy and Paul Huntington also picked up knocks in the weekend win against Gillingham and weren’t included for that reason.
