Carlisle United under-18s are on the road on Saturday morning, as they take on Preston North End in their Professional Development League Cup opener (11am kick-off).
The Blues have won two out of their opening three league matches, and they will be hoping to carry their positive form into the domestic cup, which will be United’s first ever game in the competition.
Speaking to CUTV, Professional Development Phase Lead Coach Mark Birch is looking forward to the challenge that the new competition presents for the group.
“It’s a good opportunity, and it’s a competition we’ve not been in before and it will certainly be new to us.
“It adds more games to the program, but that’s exactly what we want.
“Having success like we had last year will bring more games for us to navigate, so it’ll certainly be intense,” he added.
United have been drawn into a tough 4-team-group where only the winners advance, with themselves, Fleetwood Town, Huddersfield Town and Preston North End all looking to get through to the quarterfinals, but Birch sees it as a chance to impress against strong opponents.
“We’re aware of Preston, we’ve played them many times over the years, and we know that will be a tough match, as it always is.
“The other two sides (Fleetwood and Huddersfield) are more of an unknown quantity for us, but we’re certainly up for the challenge that they’ll both present when those games do come around.”
The young Blues have been dealing with some injury issues over the last few weeks, but the 49-year-old is hopeful of having a few players back for the game against the Lilywhites on Saturday.
“We’ve been trying to get players back from injury, we’ll have to wait and see if we can get some of those involved.
“We think Josh (Wade) could be available, he’s been back training with the group.
“Zac (Tonge) possibly could be available, Saturday might come too soon so we’ll have to see where he’s at closer to the game,” he explained.
Saturday’s fixture against Preston North End will take place at Springfields Training Ground (PR2 1XR), with the game scheduled to kick-off at 11am.
