Paul Simpson says Cheltenham Town have told Carlisle United they do not expect any issues over this weekend’s game.

Despite the freezing conditions during the week, the Blues are preparing for Saturday’s fixture in Gloucestershire to be on.

Cheltenham have had their pitch at the Completely-Suzuki Stadium covered all week.

Sub-zero temperatures have been felt across the country this week and are set to drop to -3 overnight in Cheltenham, but conditions are due to improve as Saturday draws closer.

United plan to train in Carlisle on Friday morning before making the trip to the south west ahead of the clash between League One's third and second-bottom sides.

“Cheltenham know that we're travelling,” said Simpson. “So they are going to inspect the pitch, but they've said to us today [that] they're not expecting any issues.

“The pitch has been covered for the week.

“I think the forecasts are obviously better down there than they are up here.

“We're preparing that the game's going to be on. We want the game to be on.

“We want to try and continue from Tuesday with how we were [in the performance at Barnsley]. So we've just got to just got to prepare as we did.”

Carlisle are preparing for the second of back-to-back away games, with Simpson admitting the time in between the Barnsley and Cheltenham trips has left little time for extensive training work.

The freezing conditions also limited Carlisle’s ability to train fully on Thursday.

“The group who played on Tuesday did a recovery today – we didn't get back [from Barnsley] until just before 2am,” added Simpson.

“That's not me moaning, that's just the nature of it. On Wednesday they've recovered at home then have come in today.

“And you can't do a lot with them. We've got the [indoor] Neil Centre to train on because even Gretna’s frozen – we couldn't go on a full pitch at Gretna because that's frozen. So it's a bit of a challenge.

“We've done some video work with them today. And they've done a recovery session.

“And then we'll see what comes tomorrow – we're not expecting a pitch tomorrow either. We can't even go on our surface [on the main Brunton Park pitch] because that's frozen solid.

“So we are restricted. And I suppose in a way, it makes the need to get a [new] training ground and an indoor area even more so.”