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Talking about the season so far, promotion prospects and the LDV Vans Trophy :
" It’s been tremendous for us, right throughout 2005. This season has been a strange one with the little run that we had where we went four games and didn’t look like we were going to get a result. We’re on a good run at the moment though, even looking back at that it’s still disappointing when I think of the Cheltenham game in the FA Cup where I felt it was a game that was definitely heading for a replay. Then we didn’t defend one long ball into the box and we allowed a runner to come in and we lost that game.
" The Wycombe game, for a slight second we switched off and we lost that one and we could be sat in an even healthier position and still be involved in the FA Cup but for those two little mistakes but maybe that’s me being picky.
" I’m not complaining though, I don’t think anybody could really because we’ve come a long, long way in the two years that I’ve been at the club and we’ve even come a long way this season. I’m not happy just to settle that for though because if in a month’s time we have had a bad run then everything will be forgotten and that is not what I want or what anybody at the club wants. We’ve all worked hard to get to this position and we’ve got to make sure we keep looking to move forward.
" Now we’ve got the next little period to take care of. I have to say I don’t really look too far ahead, I’m not looking to the end of the season and thinking will we be in the play-offs or can we get automatic promotion? I look at what has gone by and the teams we have played and I really think that we are one of the best teams in the league. "
" I look at Wycombe over the two games, although they passed the ball well and played good football I felt in both games we put them under a hell of a lot of pressure and maybe should have got a draw in the game at home. I also think that we had chances to get a win when we played down at their place in the first game of the season.
" Every team in this league will have a little blip. They (Wycombe) lost the other week at Bury and yesterday’s result was incredible (Wycombe lost 5-4 at home to Macclesfield). We heard at half-time that they were 3-0 down and you think that somebody is winding you up but then you here then they have gone 4-3 up and then at the end somebody came in and said that they’d lost the game.
" I have to say though that I fancied Macclesfield at the start of the season. I’ve been really surprised how poorly they have done this year because they made some good signings – a couple of players who I was trying to sign and both of them chose to go there because of the location. I did fancy Macclesfield to do well so it’s no surprise to me that they have had a really good December and they’ll probably kick on from there.
" In the LDV if we can take of Kidderminster then the way we are playing then I really would fancy us us over two legs against anybody whether it’s Macclesfield or Hereford. We’ve got ourselves into a tremendous position and we don’t want to blow it now.
" We don’t want to underestimate Kidderminster though, they’ve got here because they deserve it. I’m quite sure that the teams they have beaten along the way thought that they had an nice comfortable draw and they got there fingers burnt so we’ve got to make sure we don’t. "
Chatting about Derek Holmes and Livingston, Matt Jansen and Paul Murray :
" I was approached a couple of months ago by an agent in Scotland about Derek Holmes saying that there were a couple of Scottish clubs who may be interested in taking him. At the time I said there was no way I was prepared to do it. He then came back on to me about two weeks ago and said that he had a club interested and would I be prepared to let him go? I try not to do deals through agents, I prefer to deal club to club and manager to manager if that is case.
" So I got a call from Paul Lambert, the Livingston manager, asking if I’d be prepared to let Derek go in the January window. I said I would think about it, mull it over and make enquiries about bringing in a replacement and deciding whether or not it was the right thing to do. It all came to a head round about New Years Eve, I was getting pestered with phone calls when I was trying to relax and I just left it because I knew Derek was an important part of the side for the two games over the weekend.
" Today I made the decision that I didn’t want Derek Holmes to go. I told him about it and he’s accepted it, he says he wants to be here and wants to be a part of it. So we’ll see what happens, as far as I am concerned Derek will play a big part between now and the end of the season, particularly, and hopefully, in the LDV and we’ll see where we go from there.
" I haven’t made any enquiries for Matt Jansen. I’ve heard that he wants to go and if he could get back to the player that he was there will be bigger clubs than Carlisle United looking to sign him. I’ve no idea what his physical state is at the moment, he’s been through a really tough time. He would be a fantastic signing for us but whether or not we are big enough for Matt Jansen I don’t really know.
" I must admit Paul Murray is somebody who I would love to bring into our squad if we could get him fit. He’s getting treated by Neil Dalton very well, I was chatting to him this morning, he’s been doing some running and has a little bit of soreness behind his knee which he had about six or seven weeks ago but he’s going to try and nurse that through. Maybe a few weeks down the line he may want to get involved in some reserve games and get his match fitness up.
" If we could get Paul Murray up to the level of fitness that he was before then I’m quite sure there would be other clubs who would want to sign him. Hopefully though the fact that we have looked after him and nursed him through his rehabilitation would go in our favour and we may have a chance of looking to keep with him us. "
Talking about the support this season, squad rebuilding and United's strength in depth upfront :
" I think wherever we go our support this season, and last season even more so, has been absolutely tremendous. We’ve given them something to shout about but they have turned out in their numbers and they really have been tremendous.
" I don’t think anybody would turn down promotion if we got it. If we’re in that position then we are in there because we deserve to be. Doncaster got promotion from the Conference to League Two and then League One with virtually the same squad. We tried to do a little bit of chopping and changing in the Conference to build a side that we felt could cope when we got to the Football League and that’s proving to be the case.
" As with all football clubs, as we’re going along we’ll keep tinkering with it, players will leave and others will come in. We can hopefully do it over a slow process and keep building and strengthening as we go along.
" Every decision you make as a manager you are scrutinised and you mull it over in your mind and you chop and change and try and work out whether it is the right thing. I think when I got the opportunity to sign a quality player like Michael Bridges I jumped at the chance to do it. I think most people would agree that he is a good addition to the squad.
" He played a couple of games wide on the left or the left-side of three strikers and he wasn’t comfortable with it. I had to do something about it, he’d got a couple of goals, he was on loan and I needed to have a look at him in a central striker’s role so I changed it. I’m quite sure that as we go along, now that I’ve got him for the next 18 months, there will be times that he will play upfront with Karl Hawley, that he will play with Derek Holmes, Derek and Karl will play together as they did at Grismby, and he just gives us another option.
" When you add Glenn Murray to that who had a spell earlier this season where he looked a bit out of sorts and didn’t look anything like the player that we brought into the club. I think over the last month he has really started to look a lot better in training, he’s looked better in the two games he’s come on at Tranmere and at Grimsby, he’s improving all the time. With those four we’ve got options in the forward positions. "
Chatting about his own position, Karl Hawley's injury and the transfer window :
" I’ve got no intention of going anywhere myself. There is no talk of it as far as I know, maybe Fred Story is the man that you need to ask about that. I’ve said all along that I’m really enjoying it here. As a player I moved away just as I was turning 16 to move to Manchester and I kept moving on to different places, I got to the point where I thought I was never going to get a chance to come back to Carlisle. Then when the opportunity came I jumped at it and it’s been a fantastic move for myself and for my family. My wife and children are all settled up here and we love the area and the way things are going at the football club it’s a place that I want to be a part of. Everything is positive at the moment and there is no reason for me to think about moving anywhere.
" At the moment Karl Hawley’s injury seems to have settled down. We gave him a little rest just before Christmas and it tended to do the trick and he seems OK at the moment. Although he hasn’t been scoring I think his work-rate has been different class in the games over the last few weeks so I’m pleased with Karl. As I said earlier there will come a point when Derek and Bridgey will play upfront together and Karl will get a rest but at his present moment I’m happy with the way things are going and I want to keep him involved.
" There are areas where I do think we need to strengthen and I’m not trying to do anybody out of some information but I think it’s a bit direspectful of me to state the positions that I’m looking to get. It’s also a bit out of order on the lads who are actually in those roles at the moment. I would like to bring players into the squad because I’m always looking to improve it. I don’t want to go into a situation though where we have got a huge squad of players and we’ve got lads who can’t even get a game in the reserves because that is not really right for them.
" I’ll keep looking around, there are names who keep getting thrown at me all the time now that the transfer window is open and if I believe that they are going to improve our squad then I will go for them. "
Talking about suspended players, Peter Murphy, Kevin Gray and a captain's role:
" Kevin Gray has a one-match suspension this Saturday for a deliberate handball and denying an obvious goalscoring opportunity. Chris Billy is an accumulation of five bookings, he gets one game for that and we’ve been told that starts after seven days. The strange about it is that we have had the notification from the FA for Kevin Gray to miss Saturday’s game but nothing has come through for Chris Billy yet. So we’ve contacted the FA and they have told us is he suspended and we’ve just got to wait for the letter to come through, we’re planning that Chris and Kevin will be unavailable for this weekend.
" I think all of the players want to play in every game because they know that if somebody else comes in and does well then they might not get straight back into the side. As well as we have been doing of late and I think Chris Billy has worked tremendously hard in midfield. He’s one of those players that I know gets criticised from the Paddock because I have to hear the abuse that they hurl at me for Chris Billy being on the field but he does he a hell of a job for the team. He allows players like Chris Lumsdon to play and pass the ball for us and the wide players to get in because he does a lot of the spade work and covers the ground in front.
" Peter Murphy will captain the side against Bury, he is the club captain still. He does a hell of a lot of work off the pitch and Peter is a player who has been captain in the past. I know he was disappointed when I handed it over to Kevin Gray but Murph will be the stand-in captain for this weekend.
" There are different types of captains you can have, you can have the really vocal ones who go around roaring, shouting and organising and pulling people around or you can have the type who leads by example. That’s the type of player we have in Kevin Gray, he’s not a bawler and a shouter, he says the odd thing, he’s a voice in the changing-room and he’s an experienced head. He just leads by the way he plays and the way he goes about his business.
" He’s brilliant for me because I speak to Kevin a lot and he does a lot of the organisational stuff for me. He does the little social things that the lads have together that I don’t get involved in because I think they need to have time where they don’t see my ugly face looking at them all the time and scrutinising what they are doing. So Kevin organises a lot of that with Peter Murphy and the pair of them together are great for me and for Dennis (Booth) because they take a lot of stuff off our hands. "
Chatting about the play-off final and his memories from it:
" My favourite moment of 2005 is fairly obvious, it’s the feeling that you get at the end of the game at Stoke. I think when you know that all of the work you have put in has all come together on that one night. The feeling of satisfaction and the feeling that you have got something over on people who have criticised you over the year – that was a real sense of relief, satisfaction and a job well done because that is what it was over the year.
" It wasn’t about me, it was about all of the staff at the club, all of the players at the club, all of the office staff at the club. Everybody involved worked so hard to get that reward of that one night at Stoke and it’s something that will stay with me for a long time.
" To come out in that game and to see the fans on that side was tremendous. My son was mascot for the day and I’ve got a photograph of him in my office when he ran out. When he got down to the end of the tunnel Kevin Gray said to him : ‘set off running Dom because I’m going to chase you.’ To see Dom running down the tunnel and you could see all the blue and white of the Carlisle fans in the background is just a fantastic picture that I will keep with me for a long time. "
Talking about the kick-off routine and the availability of Jon Parkin :
" We do training each day and we work on set-pieces going forward and defending them. We do forward players coming in off the line, strikers crossing over, we do the defensive players getting a good line together – we do all that sort of stuff.
" We never actually discuss the kick-off but it is just something that we do in games. I think it started because we had a spell where we tried to keep the ball from the kick-off and we’d go back and there were times when we lost possession and we ended up conceding a shot against us or conceding a set-piece which put us on the back-foot. The idea is to try and get it into the corner, squeeze them in and pen them into that corner and make it difficult to get out.
" There are times when it works, we know it isn’t going to work all the time, but the idea is to get us on the front-foot and get them having to deal with possession from a throw-in in their own final third. As with most things the ball from Chris Billy doesn’t always go right and it can end up going straight through to their keeper or giving them possession and we can go under pressure. The idea in principle though is right in that we are putting them in their own final third and hopefully squeezing them and trying to win it back there.
" I think really though the only reason we do it Derek (Lacey) is to make your commentary start easy, you know what is going to happen and it saves you having to make a little error straight away.
" Jon Parkin has got goals, he’s had a really bad injury this season and he’s only just got himself fit again. I saw he got a couple of goals against Wycombe yesterday, he’s a big awkward striker but he’s not somebody I’ve looked to bring in to be honest. I’m actually quite surprised how Chester are in a position to offer £50,000 for anybody when I believe they are struggling to pay wages as it is. "