With six days, including today, of the transfer window left to go it’s bound to take up a chunk of the manager’s weekly press conference, and that was the case this morning as the press gathered in our virtual zoom room for their pre-Hartlepool catch-up with Chris Beech.
Speaking first about the work going on behind the scenes, he said: “The lads have been doing great but it would be nice to have one or two more bodies in the building to help them with that.
“We’ve put together a very competitive, young and ambitious squad and because of the way we do things, the way we play, we get the accolades, but it puts us on the radar of a lot of other clubs.
“From my perspective I want to protect Carlisle so, yes, I’d like one or two, or maybe two or three more, of course I do.
“I’m always looking, and every day I expect some sort of positive news. When it doesn’t quite come you have to keep working hard. It’s not as simple as just ringing somebody up and things fall into place.
“There are so many different factors, the way agents work and the level of interest they might try to create where you may get played off against others, and there are things you don’t even think about.
“The biggest one, and it’ll always be the most important one in current times, is finance. It’s great if you’re sat at the top of the tree with that, but we aren’t, so we have to be very good and as clever as we possibly can be to make sure that we’re as competitive as we possibly can be in the games we have coming up.”
The obvious follow-up is to ask if anything is imminent?
“I often get asked that question and I find it very hard because I’m very honest and there are things going on in the background,” he confirmed. “As I’ve said before, if I let too much information out and it doesn’t happen Chris Beech just looks like a big fool who talks gobbledygook as a manager.
“What it comes down to is it depends where you are on the food chain of finance. You can often be in front of a lot of things, keep things at bay if you’re strong enough to do that, and be strong enough to go into the market and get what you want before you let something out.
“It all depends where you are. Where I sit, I might just chuck my phone in the river to make sure it’s off completely, and have a bat phone to try and get some in.
“Look, I’d like to be able to provide more information, but until something’s done it isn’t done. It’s like the last day of trying to buy a house, or something being committed to.
“You get more anxious and nervous but it’s not actually sold or bought, gained or not gained, until you’ve got it. Until I get to that point I can’t really share anything with you.”
And with loan spaces still available, it could mean that United are open for a number of different ways of adding to the mix, should the opportunity arise.
“We’re looking in all markets,” he said. “If you’re looking at loans, it’s going up the chains in terms of the level of football club, and it will be a young energetic player who is ambitious.
“It’s like Brad Young, he must have looked on at the Barrow game thinking that if he’d still been there he’d have got 20 minutes, and his mate scored a hat-trick, didn’t he.
“These things happen, but we go up the chain to have a little look, of course we do, and we’ve still got free transfers and the market itself. That’s difficult to work within, that’s where you’re competing with teams who may have the wherewithal, but I’m always looking.”
Could there be any movement going out the other way, with rumours linking a number of our players with potential suitors?
“There are always rumours,” he commented. “What I’ve been able to do is create a younger more ambitious style that gets recognised from outside of Carlisle walls. I can’t stop that, because it helps us to try and get three points.
“What I’ve got to do is make sure we try our best to protect it. I did say in the summer, the biggest strength of us getting better, as you’ve touched on, is we still have a good core from last season which enables us to play, be strong and hard to beat.
“We want to enhance that, I don’t want it to decrease – I want it to be stronger and better. I obviously want a good group of people to help us to achieve what we want to achieve.
“I only have a certain element of control because that’s what it is in your area of where you are. I don’t want, if you look at our squad, anybody leaving. It was difficult, seeing what happened before the season started.
“That’s why I decided to release a statement rather than speak because emotionally sometimes you can get too involved, especially 10 minutes after a game.
“There’s six days to go as we speak now and let’s see what we can do, because you just never know in football.”
