Carlisle United Football Club

“We’re still finalising the details at this moment in time,” he said. “Discussions are based around the aftermath of the Rod Stewart concert and the affect that will have on the pitch. 

“It’ll be down to how quickly they can pack up afterwards and what the weather is like at that time as to what we can do here. We’ll need to look at all of that but we have had some good clubs on the phone asking if anything can be done.

“We’re looking at a game with Barrow, which will be a good test, and we also have some local games to fix up to make sure we continue to forge and build on those relationships. Games like that give us a chance to showcase our new signings close to home as well as provide us with competitive fixtures to play.”

“Pre-season last season went very well and it set us up nicely for the start of the season,” he continued. “We won’t be going abroad, or doing a pre-season tour, but the club has put together an amount of money which will allow us to do some team building type exercises. 

“We want to do that type of thing because we need to continue to build our unity and togetherness as a whole club because the more we can get people facing in the same direction the better chance we’ve got.”

On when the pre-season fixture schedule will be released, he said: “We want to do that as soon as we possibly can but we also want to make sure we have everything in place first.

“In these situations you can often find that you have to move things around slightly to try to meet everyone’s requirements, so we’ll let people know who we are playing, and when, once we have all of the agreements in place.”