Carlisle United's Paul Simpson on Stockport County draw and 'abuse'

Simpson was delighted with the Blues’ second-half efforts in last night’s pulsating 2-2 draw with Stockport County.

The manager feels fifth-placed Carlisle can still make it a finish to remember this season.

And he said his belief remains despite coming in for criticism which many would regard as surprising given United's record this campaign.

“I’ve always had the hope. I’ve got the belief we’ve got enough in there,” he said.

“I’ll be honest, I think the supporters had started to lose that hope. I think they’d lost that belief.

“I’ve had people shouting abuse to me on the training ground in the last day or two. I’ve had letters coming in the post that we’re not doing things right.

“But I always kept that belief.

“It’s not something I’m going to talk about, but I’ve heard people have said ‘Carlisle United are punching above their weight’.

“The truth is, we are. But we’re punching really, really well, and now we’ve got to make sure we punch really well for the last three games, like we did in the second half [against Stockport].

• Jon Colman's big match verdict on Carlisle's 2-2 draw with Stockport

“I thought we were aggressive with our running, pressing, forward play.

“I’m delighted we’ve got [goals] because that stops idiots keep making sarky comments about, ‘Are you showing them where the goals are?’

“The players know. That’s 62 goals this season, that’s not bad going. Let’s just keep our heads, keep together and let’s see where it takes us.”

Corey Whelan and Jon Mellish high-five after the latter's goal against Stockport (Image: Barbara Abbott)

Carlisle are now four points below the top three, and three above eighth place, after their dramatic encounter with Dave Challinor’s County.

Myles Hippolyte put the Hatters in front before United turned things around in the second half as Jon Mellish, after moving into midfield, levelled – and then Owen Moxon fired his first Brunton Park goal.

A header from Stockport sub Connor Evans then forced a draw – a goal Simpson felt his defence and goalkeeper could have done more to prevent – but the manager said his team simply have to take heart from their second-half efforts.

“Without a doubt, that’s what we’ve got to do,” he said.

“Little things have gone against us in the last few games, but I felt we’ve not been far off – we had to be really front-foot and go and flip it over.

• Carlisle United v Stockport County - as it happened

“Especially in the second half I thought we definitely did that. The change of shape certainly helped us, but I thought the players just went about it in a different way, and Jon Mellish was the catalyst with the way he ran and chased.

“I’m a big believer that it’s not systems that win games, it’s players. The players went out second half and put us in a position to win it, but just didn’t quite handle the game well enough for that minute or so [after Moxon’s goal].

“We needed to manage it better. It’s something we need to look at. We’re a little bit inexperienced in that sort of thing – you can see they [Stockport] have got experience, they break the game up, make small fouls and stuff like that.

“They put balls into the box and cause problems which we expected, we just didn’t deal with that one in particular as well as we could have done in probably three different areas.”

Simpson also saluted United’s fans at Brunton Park for their vocal support, with a crowd of 7,298 – including 1,052 Stockport fans – at the game.

“They’ve been absolutely brilliant. The atmosphere inside the ground was incredible, probably a better atmosphere from when we had the big crowd against Tranmere, because everybody got behind us, there was no silent watchers,” he said.

“Now we’ve got to keep it going. We’ve got to give ourselves a fighting chance, and that starts on Saturday.”