Portsmouth boss Michael Appleton spoke to his club's official website and BBC Radio Solent ahead of his side's League One match against Carlisle at Brunton Park tomorrow afternoon, Appleton surprised at United being defeated 3-0 at home on Tuesday evening:
"I must admit I was surprised when I heard the Tranmere result at Carlisle. But when I watched the game later and went into it deeper, I saw that they were undone by three great individual goals. Despite this result, they only narrowly missed out on making the play-offs last season. They will be hurting and will come out like wounded animals – that’s something we have to be prepared for.
"I think they are a strong side, they wouldn't have expected that result in midweek but I do genuinely believe that they'll be in and around the top six this season. Greg Abbott has done ever so well up there and has some good players. It's going to be a tough game, I expect nothing less than a hard test and if we can take something out of it on Saturday we know we come back to a home game that we have a fantastic opportunity to get three points from.
"Playing on Tuesday night and then making the long journey to Cumbria a few days later is not ideal preparation. We've got a six-and-a-half-hour journey up there to deal with first and I've told the players they need to look after themselves this week as we'll be spending a lot of time on the road. We're are going up the night before, even by our standards it would be expecting a lot of the players to play after a six-hour journey. But everyone has to put up with that and it’s another game where we will need maximum concentration and will have to do the right things.
"There are players like Luke Rodgers and Izale McLeod that teams will know all about. But we also have younger players, especially in the wide areas, who are less known to others. In many ways I thought our performance at Colchester was better than the one against Bournemouth, although at times it was like playing in the land of giants. That’s why when Lee Williamson came off injured, I replaced him with Adam Webster.
"Adam gives us a bit of height and, to be fair, he and the other defenders coped well with the diagonal balls that were raining in on our goal. That in turn allowed the pacy players like Mustapha Dumbuya to break free from the shackles, as he did in creating our second goal. The key now is maintaining that improvement and perhaps taking things forward again on Saturday. That will then leave me with a completely free week with no distractions where I can work with the players.
"With the wide players, I haven’t got wide left or wide right players. They are more wide midfield players. I like chopping and changing and sometimes going with a player who gets at the full-back, or someone else who gives us width. Sometimes I want a left-sided player on the right or right-sided player on the left, who comes in off the line. We’ve got Jordan (Obita), who scored on Tuesday, Kieran (Djilali) and Conor Clifford who can play wide and give us some strength. We have options."