Carlisle United Football Club

“The lads are gutted,” he said. “We didn’t turn up at all. I think, apart from Steven Rigg, none of us can hold our hands up and say we did ourselves justice. The one-to-eleven was poor and I just don’t know why that was. 

“We really should have been pushing to carry on our good form but this brings us back down to earth with a bang. The result shows us we are in a fight and we need to crack on and make sure we aren’t still down there come the end of the season.”

“It’s massive that we react to this now,” he agreed. “We can’t dwell on it because it’ll be a tough game down at Newport. We have to put things right because, for me, that performance came from nowhere. 

“I didn’t expect it at all. It’s really disappointing that we’ve done it in front of a crowd which was our best this season. It reminds us there’s a lot of work to be done. It’s a big January coming up, with a lot of hard games home and away. We need to make sure we take plenty of points so we don’t get stranded down the bottom.”

“Everyone was really up for it ahead of kick off,” he said. “We did what we had to do on Saturday to make sure we were ready and we were all feeling fine. It really is a performance which has come from nowhere. 

“York played some good stuff, to be fair to them. They thoroughly deserved their win. We knew they’d be full of confidence, after beating Accrington when they were down to ten men for over half an hour, but we felt we had enough to deal with that. On the day that wasn’t the case.”

As to how the squad will put it right, he said: “We’re in it together as a team, and we win and lose together. It’s a great team spirit in the dressing room and we will all work hard to make sure we’re going in the right direction. 

“The two performances prior to York suggested we were doing that, but this has come as a reality check. We can be horrible when we want to be, and we can get the ball down and play a bit as well. 

“It’s good to have that mixture but we didn’t show any of it in this game. We let ourselves, the team and everyone else down in front of such a good crowd.

“We won’t need any lifting to bounce back from this. We’ve been very good, as a group, with how we react recently and we need some of that again. 

“We’re very confident in what we can do and I’ve said from day one I know what this group is capable of. It’s a very talented squad and we’re hard to beat when we click. The only way is up at the moment so it’s time to start working our way up the league.”