In terms of distance it doesn’t get much further for the Cumbrians at the weekend as they head to the People’s Pension Stadium to face John Yems and his Crawley Town side.
Speaking ahead of the game, manager Chris Beech said: “They have some brilliant individual players and they work a lot on being a very strong unit, so I expect a really tough challenge from them.
“People are bound to talk about how meetings with them have gone before but history and different stats and factors count for nothing. They have no affect at all on what we’re looking to do on a Saturday.
“You can only respect players like Tom Nicholls and Ash Nadesan, and I know Carlisle people have a huge amount of respect for him because of what he did here. We’re talking about very good players.
“We definitely can’t take our foot off the gas or be under-prepared because this is a good team.”
But the Blues go there in good early-season form, having lost just one of their six league outings so far.
“We’re looking forward to our next opportunity, of course we are, but in terms of what happened last week that’s old news now,” he insisted. “We’ve got make sure we take on a very good Crawley team by representing ourselves correctly.
“If you play the same team, same shape, same formation and same things you’ll get a different outcome each time. It doesn’t necessarily mean you get the same outcomes if you keep repeating what you’re doing.
“Crawley are a different opponent, it’s an away game that’s quite a long distance, so there are all kinds of different factors to every game you play.
“Let’s be honest, if Tom Elliott scores a last-minute equaliser last Saturday nobody is talking about how well we played, we’re all down in the dumps because we didn’t win. That’s the reality of football.
“That’s why we’ll look at Crawley, at what they do, and we’ll try our best to be very difficult to beat and to turn it into a good day for everybody associated with Carlisle.”
Part of the reason for a solid start from the Blues as been the hard work put in out on the pitch.
“If you’re looking at style, work rate and ethics, it’s what I’ve tried to instil from the day I came in, because I know it can look after us so well,” he commented. “We have to make sure we look after ourselves and my job is to concentrate on our players and to make sure we’re ready for every game.
“If that means we make changes within the team to players or formations to get the points, that’s what we do. As long as we’re all supporting each other, that’s all that matters.
“I think it’s a little bit like being a Domestique in cycling, the lads support each other and they sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the team. If we continue down that mindset and route, we’ll do well. If it changes, we won’t.”
“One thing we all know is that Crawley is a long way to go, and if we’re going all that way we’ve got to try and make sure it’s worth something,” he continued. “I’m very respectful of the manager and players they’ve got, and we’re going to get ready to play a very competitive team and try our best against them.
“We’ll do that by looking to deal with their strengths as we look to maximise our opportunities. I’m really looking forward to it.”
