Carlisle United Football Club

Danny Grainger looks ahead to the AFC Wimbledon game

Team captain Danny Grainger spoke to us ahead of the Friday morning training session as the squad gets ready for the weekend visit of AFC Wimbledon.

"Tuesday night was frustrating," he admitted. "We dominated the game in the first half and we probably should have been out of sight.

"Tom [Miller] was unlucky with the slip and their lad stuck it in the top corner from 35 yards. It's one of those goals that we seem to concede a lot of at the moment. Teams seem to score very good goals against us. If you look at the Mansfield goal their lad probably won't strike a ball that sweetly all season.

"Plymouth was disappointing but it was our first defeat in four games so we have to make sure we take the positives out of it. I don't think you can say any of the goals were fantastic goals, they've all been down to mistakes from us."

"This season is totally different from last season," he told us. "We're playing a completely different style of football, we're cutting teams open and playing good football. It's just a case of getting things finely tuned and cutting out the silly mistakes from all of us.

"There's confidence in the squad this season. We're taking everything positively this year and we want the fans to do the same, and try and keep on the positive side.

"We know things will turn for us because the confidence is high and we've played some really good football. Once we cut out those silly mistakes we'll pick up a lot more points."

"We sat on the bus on Tuesday night as a group of players and went through a lot of things on that long journey home," he admitted. "We had a heated discussion in the dressing room after the match, and that's what we need because there's a group of players in there that want to win for each other. After last year's disappointment we aren't accepting anything this year. We've discussed it and we'll make sure it doesn't happen again.

"I spoke to someone after the Chesterfield game who had been coming to Brunton Park for 20 years and they told me they couldn't remember many games as good as that one. It's disappointing that we've conceded four goals in the last two games, but we've scored five in the last two so we have to keep taking the positives and build on it."

"The new shape we're playing isn't a problem," he said. "It's something you adapt to and it's something the manager is very keen on. It seems to suit us down to a tee with the players we've got in the squad.

"Again, we've got to take the positives out of the fact that the shape we're playing is cutting teams open. Once we get everything else nailed down we'll make sure the clean sheets start coming in as well."

Ahead of the AFC Wimbledon game at Brunton Park on Saturday, he said: "Tomorrow will be a tough game. They've obviously got Adebayo Akinfenwa and Tom Elliott who are both very physical.