Charlie Wyke on scoring goals and transfer window rumours
Striker Charlie Wyke told the official website today that his heart is well and truly in Cumbria as rumours about a transfer window move to a higher level gather pace with every goal he scores.Speaking first about his latest strike against Grimsby, he said: “I’m obviously happy to have scored my sixteenth goal. It’s the most I’ve ever scored in a season so I’m really pleased about that. I’ve beaten last year’s tally already but I am very disappointed that we didn’t go on to win the game.
“I know I said at the start of the season that I wasn’t setting any targets but you always want to try and beat what you’ve done previously. Having got there with that, I’ll hopefully push on now and score a lot more.”
His first half goal came courtesy of an excellent piece of build of play which ripped straight through the heart of the Grimsby defence.
“The through ball from Shaun Miller was superb,” he said. “It was a great pass from him. I knew that if I could take it past the defender he wasn’t going to be able to touch me because he’d get himself sent off.
“I got away from him and thankfully I managed to put it through the keeper’s legs. The celebration was a bit weird but that’s because Danny [Grainger] said he was bored with me doing the same thing after every goal. He told me I had to show him my glasses if I got one in the game, so that’s what I did – and, I know, you don’t have to tell me, it was poor!”
On the chance which came just after he’d scored his goal, he said: “It was another good cross but I think I maybe got underneath it a little bit. I should have headed it down more but it was still a very good save from the keeper. I am disappointed that it didn’t go in though.
“Losing the game wasn’t the nicest of feelings at all. We hadn’t been beaten at home in the league and I thought we were in control in the first half. As soon as we got in the dressing room we talked about how important it was not to concede an early goal at the start of the second half.
“Unfortunately that’s what we did and I thought we crumbled a bit after that. What we have to do now is focus on the Colchester game and make sure we take our frustration out on them.
“Sometimes you learn more from losing a game so we’ll take it on the chin and make sure we come back stronger. We reacted well after the Newport defeat, when we won a run of games and picked up a lot of points, so that’s what we need to do again.
“When you look at the league table you see we’re still in third place so we’re still doing well. If you’d told us at the start of the season that we’d be here at the halfway point then we’d all have taken it. The disappointing thing from Monday was that we could have gone top of the league.”
Wyke’s strike rate with the club of 37 goals in 85 games has inevitably sparked those rumours of a potential transfer window move, but the popular forward was quick to confirm that Carlisle is where he wants to be at this moment in time.
“I’m enjoying my football, I’m getting chances and I’m scoring goals, so what’s not to love about it,” he said. “I’ve heard the rumours but I don’t let anything like that get into my head. I love playing and training at Carlisle and the lads and staff here are fantastic. I’m just really happy to be here.
“People have been asking me and the club about all kinds of rumours on social media but I’ve spoken to my agent and he’s confirmed that there’s nothing happening. I’ve actually told him that if something does come along I don’t want to know about it anyway because I’m enjoying my football so much.
“I know the manager has said to the press that he thinks I can score at any level and that’s nice to hear. He’s shown a lot of faith in me and I think my job at the moment is to repay that. Rumours are what they are, you can’t do anything about it, so I’ll just ignore them and keep doing my best for Carlisle United.
“None of this bothers me because we’re third in the league and I’m scoring goals. I just want that to continue. We want to do even better as a team by making the gap to fourth place wider, so we know we need to keep this going all season.”
Having already achieved his best ever season scoring return, we wondered if now was the time to set a target for the remainder of the campaign – 30 perhaps?
“No way, I’m still not going to talk about setting targets,” he insisted. “I’m not going to jinx myself, so we’ll just have to wait and see.”
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