Paul Simpson hails Carlisle players for strong mentality in victory at Tranmere
Posted Sunday, October 30, 2022 by PA
Carlisle manager Paul Simpson commended his team’s mentality after they secured a 2-0 win over in-form Tranmere to end a run of two consecutive defeats in Sky Bet League Two.
Kristian Dennis bagged a brace to secure all three points for the Cumbrians, opening the scoring with less than a minute gone and sealing victory with a coolly converted penalty in the 54th minute.
The win follows a three-match run that saw them fall to defeat to Barrow in the Papa John’s Trophy and then suffer back-to-back losses against Leyton Orient and Stockport.
“I think when you come into every football game as a coach, as a manager, you always think how’s it going to go, especially after the little run of results we’ve been on,” Simpson said.
“I said to them in training, this game today was about mentality.
“We had to have the right mentality to come here, to roll our sleeves up, to work hard, to compete, to win first and second balls, and then if we do that our quality will come through and it certainly did in the (key) situations.”
Carlisle were straight out of the traps and took the lead within a matter of seconds as Jack Stretton drove a low cross to Dennis to slide the ball home.
It looked as though the visitors had doubled their advantage in the 13th minute when Stretton found the net after Ross Doohan’s smart save from Taylor Charters’ effort, but it was ruled out for offside.
Tranmere immediately went down the other end and nearly equalised through Josh Hawkes’ shot from the edge of the box, only for it to deflect and go inches wide of a post.
They also went close in the 34th minute when Kieron Morris’ header from a corner was well saved by Tomas Holy and tipped over the crossbar.
But their endeavour came to nothing and nine minutes after the restart Carlisle’s win was secured as Dennis sent Doohan the wrong way from the spot after Stretton had been brought down in the box following a free-kick delivery.
Simpson was delighted with how his team managed the game as they moved up to seventh place and into the play-off spots.
“I think their two forward players are a threat, I think their two wide players are a threat, but we’ve dealt with it,” he added.
“We knew that a big part of their game was getting crosses into the box.
“We had to work hard to try and stop crosses, but then when they did come in we had to have a goalkeeper and we had to have centre-backs who were prepared to go and put their head on it, and that’s exactly what they’ve done for 94 minutes.”
Defeat for Tranmere sees them suffer a first loss in eight league matches and drop below their opponents to 11th in the table.
Rovers manager Micky Mellon had no arguments with the result and apologised to the fans for the performance.
“It was always going to be difficult when you give a goal away so quickly,” the Scot said.
“We didn’t really get any kind of measure of what the game was going to be.
“It was a poor that we gave away the goal so quickly.
“Sorry for the performance – we’ve got to say that. We were poor today.
“That (the early goal) puts you on the back foot, I get that, but we didn’t really recover.
“We tried a few different things to try and get us going.
“Nothing really worked because we probably had so many of us off what we’ve been today.
“We tried to get it rallied.
“You’re still in the game at 1-0 but then we gave away a blatant penalty that makes it even more difficult.
“But we weren’t good enough all afternoon to try and get that goal back.”
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