Carlisle United Football Club

Manager Keith Curle spoke to us about tonight’s EFL Cup first round game against Port Vale as the season starts to gear up into full swing.

“It’s a game we can look forward to,” he said. “We saw last season that Port Vale are a decent side and they’ve made some good additions over the summer. They won’t be coming here to roll over and they will want to progress as much as we do.

“They got a decent result at Bradford on Saturday and they will want to carry that on. We’ll have to be on our game but we’ve already shown that we will go into every fixture looking to be competitive.

“We’ll face different obstacles and challenges all season but the pleasing thing is the players in the changing room have bought in to what we are trying to create, and that’s massively important. The emphasis is on building unity and we want the fans to be part of that.

“We went straight over to our travelling supporters on Saturday because we do appreciate them. There’s nothing better at the end of a game than when all you can hear is our fans. Hopefully they’ll be there in numbers at Brunton Park as well because we will need them every step of the way.”

On player availability, he said: “Joe McKee will be available again so we’ll have 19 players to choose from. Shaun [Brisley] and Jabo [Ibehre] aren’t going to be ready but I’ll put out the team I think will get us the result and compete. 

“Both of those players are field based training but I don’t want to lose them for six or seven weeks just because I’ve been impatient. I’m being led entirely by Neil Dalton and Lee Fearn as to when they will be ready.” 

“We had a good start at the weekend but we want to carry that on now,” he concluded. “If we can make our home stadium a really difficult place to come we’ll be heading on the right track.

 

“We know our fans will get behind us if we give them something to cheer about and we think we have assembled a group which will excite them and get them off their seats.”