United need results to go their way and to win their final three fixtures if they are to make a late jump into the play-off places but Carlisle boss Keith Curle insisted today that there won’t be any signs of anyone at the club giving up on anything until the maths tell him otherwise.
“We’ll never say it’s over,” he said. “Stranger things have happened. We’ll prepare professionally and everything will be exactly the same this week. There are three points up for grabs and an opportunity to represent the football club again on Saturday.
“It’s not about wishing and hoping, it’s about planning and preparation.”
“Until the maths say otherwise we will keep going,” he added. “There are always twists and turns at the end of the season, at the top and bottom of the table, and all we can do is do our job.
“The gap to the play-offs is a challenge, but we don’t shy away from challenges. We know that some results could and should have been better and we acknowledge that overall there is still an element of improvement needed.”
“I am still approaching the games ahead in a very positive frame of mind,” he commented. “I’m the manager of the football club and I love my job. I love the work that I do and I’m very fond of the people I work with.
“I’m proud of the work that I’m doing, until that stops my affiliation with the football club will not change. That’s the professional outlook I have. There’s a job to do and a role to fulfil and, until that role is taken away from me, nothing changes.
“If I’m the manager for the next three games or the next three days, I’ll keep striving to improve areas of the football club which can have a direct impact on improving results.”
“The pleasing thing is that over the past three years we’ve raised expectations,” he added. “I think I said that last week that we came away from Swindon with only a point, because people expected us to win.
“People can say that in the position we’re in, we need to win, but there are other measurables in the result. I think we had five players who have played League One football missing from the Swindon game, as well as Hallam Hope coming off in the first half, missing from our squad.
“We were playing against a team who had just come down from League One with a very healthy budget and expectations themselves to be in the top seven. We were disappointed to come away with a point, but I think that shows how far we’ve come.
“Looking forward we expect and want to win every game we play. That’ll be the case through these next three fixtures.”
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