Simpson pleased to see Carlisle return to winning ways

Paul Simpson was pleased to see his promotion-chasing Carlisle side return to winning ways with a hard-fought 1-0 home win over Colchester in Sky Bet League Two.

The Cumbrians’ winner at Brunton Park came in the fourth minute when Alfie McCalmont pounced to clinically fire a shot past Kieran O’Hara from just inside the Colchester area, after Connor Wood’s attempted header back fell short.

It was the perfect response from Carlisle, following their 4-0 midweek defeat to Mansfield and boss Simpson said: “We needed that today.

“We needed a solid defensive performance, we needed our goalkeeper to come and do what he did today, the clean sheet is wonderful and to get a goal early on just settled us down a little bit.

“But credit to Colchester. I thought they made it really difficult for us today, especially when the subs started coming on and putting (on, Tom) Hopper and (John) Akinde and Matt Jay.

“They were a flippin’ handful today and I was delighted and relieved when that final whistle went at the end, because it was a case of us just getting ourselves over the line and having a positive reaction after what happened on Tuesday night (against Mansfield), which was out of character from what we’ve seen so far this season and hopefully it’s the last time we’ve seen it this season as well.

“It wasn’t a free-flowing game of football but we defended so well as a team.”

Carlisle’s early goal proved enough, although Jon Mellish might have made it more comfortable in the first half when he blasted wide with the goal gaping.

Substitute Kristian Dennis blasted a good chance over late on for Carlisle but Colchester were made to pay for their early mistake.

Their boss Matt Bloomfield said: “Apart from that (individual error) so early on in the game, we’re coming away with another clean sheet, something we’ve been priding ourselves on recently.

“Carlisle are a top team – they’re going for automatic promotion and we went toe to toe with them away from home. There’s plenty for us to be proud about.

“I thought the reaction after the goal was very good from our boys, the resilience that they showed and the second half, I felt like we were the ones in the ascendency apart from a couple of deflected shots that fell for them at the end.

“It’s a game of small margins and unfortunately an error from us has led to us conceding early and we couldn’t get one back.

“It was obviously frustrating from our part, because we spoke about the fact that they’d lost here on Tuesday night and about keeping them quiet early and building ourselves into the game.”