United media officer and first team kitman Andy Hall spoke to BBC Radio Cumbria's James Phillips before Carlisle's League One match away to MK Dons, Hall suggesting the Blues need a good performance after the disappointment of losing 1-0 at home to Swindon on Saturday :
" Along with Doncaster Rovers and Swansea City, stadium:mk, they are the better ones of the new identikit, if you want to call them that, of the new stadiums that have been thrown up. Certainly when you look inside it and you get inside it, it is impressive, it has got the hotel that is part of it as well. So it is obviously making money as well so it has been done properly.
" I think it was good that we had such a long away trip that we had to come to after the weekend. Because it meant that we had to get away early Monday morning, we got ourselves down to Nottingham. Even once the lads were changed there was a good half hour or 45 minutes where it was a case of let's sit down, let's talk about what happened over the weekend and are we happy with it?
" The answer is obviously going to be no but I think to be away from the club, to be away from Brunton Park and to be away from Carlisle and the background noise if you like. To be able to do it somewhere neutral like Nottingham and for Greg (Abbott) to be able to get the lads together, I think it was needed.
" Greg has been fantastic to be honest with you, he is a very good motivator, that is one thing we can say about Greg. He needs that period and I think everybody does, when something goes as badly wrong, and we have to hold our hands up, Saturday was horrible for everybody, for the fans, for the players and for the manager.
" So when something goes that badly wrong Greg likes to take a moment just to think about what it is that happened and why it happened. So he did that, he did that over Sunday, he did it Monday morning, and the first time we really heard from him as the team manager was just ahead of the training session. "
" That little talk that normally takes five or ten minutes went on for a good 45 minutes and it was needed. Because it gave him the chance to take the floor and then it gave the players the chance to react. I can't really stress enough how much in a situation like we had after Saturday, which was awful, that we needed to be able to do that.
" I think that every game we go into as a football club, whether it is a youth game, a reserve game or a first-team game, is treated as must win. So that is absolutely no different from any team-talk that he will say to the boys, but I think what he was trying to get at was the performance on Saturday was completely unacceptable. What he won't want to see tonight is anything like that so we have got to come here and we have got to put it right.
" It is a completely different situation to last season where if we had had a first-team goalkeeper injury with Ben Williams then we would have been stuffed really. But this season, these two lads are pushing each other all the way, and you saw with the way that Adam (Collin) has performed against Morecambe and Chesterfield and in games like that, that he is actually a very, very capable goalkeeper. He has worked hard, he has kept his nose to the ground and certainly Greg has taken this opportunity, as any manager can do, to say OK - I am going to have a look at you now.
" Character-wise you couldn't get two more different people than Lenny Pidgeley and Adam Collin. Lenny is the life and soul of the party, he is an absolutely fantastic bloke to have around, Adam is a little bit more quiet. I am not saying he is not fantastic to have around by the way but he is a little bit more quiet and a little bit more subdued.
" So character-wise you couldn't have anything more different, but when you get those two lads onto the training pitch it is so similar it is unbelievable. They work hard, they push each other, they are shouting at each other, they are cajoling each other, there is a little bit of banter as well. When Lenny found out that Adam was playing, it wasn't a case of taking it on the chin, it was a pat on the back for Adam - he said go out there and do it lad.
" After what we produced for our fans on Saturday we have to take it on the chin and say that is not acceptable. We want to change that around, the only way we can change it around, we can talk about how good training is, we can talk about how well we prepare. If we don't go and do it out there on the pitch, it all comes back at us and rightly so. So let's hope that tonight we turn it around. "