Carlisle United Football Club

“Now isn’t the time to talk about a retained list, or anything like that,” he said. “All of our players know when the end of their contracts are coming and the place to do their talking right now is out on the field of play.

“They can also do that on a daily basis with how they are around the group. What you find with footballers is that it isn’t about how they are when things are going well. It’s about how they handle disappointment. 

“You don’t want to see players who sulk about not being in the team. It’s how they respond to missing out. I know we only have two games left but players will get opportunities to perform. I’m more than aware we have lads here who are desperate to earn contracts so they can continue their playing careers.”

“My thoughts recently have been focused on keeping this club in this division,” he continued. “Now that’s done it can possibly be about looking at other things, like whether or not I want to use players as part of the fabric of this football club moving forward.

“What we have to make sure is that we finish the season in the right way. The players won’t be allowed to take the foot off the gas. We owe it to our profession to perform. There will be no hint at all that these results don’t matter. We will prepare professionally and we won’t go into either of these two games trying to showboat. 

“We want to finish the season with two wins and the performance levels from the last two games tell me we would fancy ourselves against everybody and anybody in this division.”