Eric Kinder on the Carlisle City game
United coach Eric Kinder gave us his thoughts on the narrow Cumberland Cup victory over Carlisle City on Tuesday night.
“When you come up against a spirited side who are organised and who want to give it a go it's always going to be a battle,” he said.
“It doesn't matter who you are if you don't play well. You've got to pass to the same coloured shirt and you need to want to press the ball. Carlisle City played well but we weren't anywhere near where we should have been.”
“You've got to go into every game wanting to play but we didn't do the basics right,” he added. “The longer the game went on the more frustrating it got for us, and for the players, because we didn't get going at all.
“The young pro’s who have been playing in the first team had a chance to go out and show everyone how good they are, and they were playing against a team full of lads who would love to be in their position. Unfortunately we didn't show the right attitude towards the game and we very nearly got caught out.”
“If we'd scored the penalty just before half time that might have changed things but penalties are missed at every level of football,” he told us. “Kav [Graham Kavanagh] takes a lead on the team talks and he told everybody what he thought of the performance in the first half.
“We just didn't get going. We have to give credit to Carlisle City though, because that's probably one of the best performances I've seen in this competition from a club at their level. They were organised, committed and determined and they wanted to come off the pitch with their heads held high. In my opinion they certainly did that.”
“Overall the important thing is that we won,” he admitted. “The side we finished with was full of youth team players apart from Mike [Edwards] Murph [Peter Murphy] and Adam [Collin].
“The fitness levels probably kicked in over the last 20 minutes or so and we didn't look in any trouble. We probably should have scored more goals but I don't think Carlisle City deserved to lose by any more than 1 - 0. We'll take the win but Carlisle City have to take all of the credit.”
“It was a frustrating game but there were some good passages of play from us,” he continued, “It's a frustrating competition, we should really be miles better than everyone else, but if you don't get the attitude right and they get their set-up right then it will cause us problems.
“I don't like winning 16 - 0 like we did in the last round because there isn't much point, but I don't like games like this one either. It was too close for comfort. Hopefully it’s been part of a learning curve for a few people.
“It wasn’t our best performance by a long chalk but on we go. Hopefully we’ll dust ourselves and do things better when it comes to the semi-final.”
