Carlisle United boss looks ahead to Leyton Orient test

Last season’s League Two champions head to Brunton Park for the latest third-tier encounter.

Carlisle, who are 19th, can overtake the 16th-placed Os with victory.

But Simpson anticipates an opponent similarly difficult to overcome as the high-flying side who beat the Blues twice last term.

“There’s been a change of personnel but not massive change in style,” said Simpson of this weekend’s opponents.

“They still want to play out from the back, they still want to try and build.

• Blues boss calls for 'calm heads' as Wellens returns

“They’ve still got Theo Archibald who’s got a wand of a left foot for getting crosses in and they’ve now added Joe Pigott up there as a target man.

“They’ve still got people like Ruel Sotiriou, [other] midfield players who can play.

“Their system seems to shift during games, it can be a 3-4-3 or a 3-5-2 or sometimes a back four.

Leyton Orient got the better of United last season (Image: Ben Holmes)

“They’re quite fluid in the way that they play, but it will be a good football game and a tough test for us.”

Richie Wellens’ side have 14 points from their 11 games so far, after romping away with last season’s fourth-tier title.

United, buoyed by last weekend’s win at Bolton Wanderers, are eyeing further progress themselves.

“They [Orient] won the division really comfortably last season so it shows it isn’t easy and it is a big step up,” added Simpson.

“We’re all adapting to it, we’ve just got to make sure we get our performance right.”

The Carlisle boss is expected to recall the first-team players who he left out of Tuesday’s EFL Trophy XI against Nottingham Forest’s Under-21s.

Simpson, meanwhile, is expecting a positive response to his scathing post-match words from those who did start the game.

United’s manager called the display “disgraceful” and added that careers at this level would be in peril unless standards improved.

“It’s [now] a case of them coming and showing us they deserve to be involved,” said Simpson.

“I purposely took that group [on Thursday] morning for their recovery session rather than giving it to somebody else, so it wasn’t me just ignoring them.

Simpson was scathing about Tuesday's Trophy display (Image: Ben Holmes)

“They only did a short bit then I joined with the first team group to do our prep for Saturday.

“I’m one of those people who says my piece, say what needs to be said, but then it’s gone and it’s now about how we react going forwards.

“I said to them on Tuesday, ‘You’re going to have to now show us that you can actually step up to the plate’.

“If you look at the group of players out there, some have shown me they can actually do a small impact role off the bench, but now they’re going to have to do more to show [they] deserve to play, because they are going to be called upon.

“We’re in a position now where we’ve got a couple of players on four yellow cards, a couple on three, we’ve got twos, and it’s very easy to pick up yellow cards.

“We are going to need them. But they’ve got to be able to come in and do a job. There’s no point us throwing them in there and they can’t do a job for us.”