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Interviews

Neil Aspin not afraid to rotate squad ahead of Carlisle United

20 August 2018

Interviews

Neil Aspin not afraid to rotate squad ahead of Carlisle United

20 August 2018

Port Vale manager Neil Aspin says it's "not tough at all" to make changes to a winning side against Carlisle United tomorrow evening, as Vale look for their first away win in the league since their last visit to Cumbria.

The Valiants have failed to win away from home since their 2-1 victory away to Carlisle United back in December 2017, where strikers Tom Pope and Tyrone Barnett were on hand to secure Vale three precious points.

Despite the victory on Saturday against Crawley Town and keeping a clean sheet, changing a winning side ahead of Carlisle United will not be an issue for the manager. Neil used the loss against Colchester United as an example where he named an unnamed side following the opening day success. 

"You get a really good performance against Cambridge, then that same team performs really poorly against Colchester. If you think the team should be changed for a certain game then you have to change it.

"There's not set rule. Most people, myself included, were happy to play the same team against Colchester. The way the team played on that day, in hindsight, you could think well I could've changed a few people.

"I think you just have to do what you think is best at the time."

Both Carlisle United and the Valiants will be full of confidence going into tomorrow nights Sky Bet League Two fixture after both sides picked up three points at the weekend.

Neil Aspin says he is taking a balanced approach after three games into the season, but admits he is happy with the six points on the board so far.

The manager is aware that the Valiants have struggled to pick up points away from home in recent years, and is hoping to rectify that by making it nine points in 12 tomorrow against Luke Joyce's former side but acknowledges tomorrow won't be an easy test.

"Any game away from home in this league is a tough game. You have to say over the last few years on our travels, we've not won enough games and certainly we need to start picking up points away from home as quickly as possible.

"It's an opporunity, but Carlisle have had a good away win on Saturday so they'll be coming into the game confident.

"But we have to raise our level of performance up from Saturday and a great deal from the Colchester game."

You can watch Vale's fixture against Carlisle United LIVE on our official iFollow channel for just £10! For more information click here


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