Pundits, bookies, the great and the good (and others) appear to be overlooking Carlisle United somewhat in the various season previews that tend to flood the media channels at this time of year, but you won’t find too many people bothering much about that around the corridors of Brunton Park.
“The bookies predictions don’t matter at all,” boss Paul Simpson said. “I haven’t read them so I haven’t seen what they think, but I would imagine not many have them have got us competing to be champions.
“It’s quite an interesting thing, I was on an EFL zoom call with the other managers, and at the end of it they put up a finance slide to show the last three years average league position based on budget.
“It was a bit of a scary graph because on our budget there’s only twice in the last three seasons that it’s finished higher than 18th in the table.
“It gave me a bit of a slap, because I’m really optimistic, but it made me think, right, I need to get my sleeves rolled up again because I’ve got some hard work to do.
“For me, and this isn’t a negative, but if we finish above 18th then we’ve gone against the last three years.
“I want to be competing in the top half of the table, that’s where I want to be, and I want to make sure we defy that graph.
“The players have shown me they’ve got a desire to do it, and we’ve got to make sure we keep fighting to get ourselves as high up the table as we possibly can, regardless of EFL graphs and bookies.”
And it goes without saying that to achieve that it once again throws the spotlight on recruitment, and having the players in place who can throw the negative predictions out of the window.
“The recruitment is always looked at, but ever since I was here the first time, and had John Nixon guiding me on how to work with budgets, I’ve spent the money as if it’s my own,” he told us.
“I don’t want to fritter it away, we have to make sure we spend every pound wisely. We can’t afford to have a little gamble, we can’t do that as a football club.
“I don’t think any manager or coach should ever do that with somebody else’s money, you have to spend it wisely. It makes the recruitment a challenge, but also a really exciting thing to be involved in.”
Click HERE to watch an interview with Paul Simpson on iFollow United now.
Click HERE to see a clip from this interview on our YouTube channel. Follow the same link for more FREE content right from the heart of the club.
