Carlisle United v Crawley Town preview: Reds look to put previous two results behind them in arduous trip to Blues

A Tuesday night trip to Carlisle is far from ideal for the Reds and having to play away at Scunthorpe on Friday doesn’t help either as the busy Easter schedule commences.

Crawley will come in to the game looking to put the previous two results behind them and improve by becoming more defensively solid.

The Reds showed how good they can be at the back prior to the past two games with them picking up some impressive clean sheets but the defending against Barrow and Port Vale wasn’t up to that standard with Crawley conceding some poor goals.

They’ll remain without Jordan Tunnicliffe on Tuesday night, which will be a big miss but Joe McNerney and Tony Craig have shown this season how good they can be and certainly have the ability to keep teams at bay.

The pair aren’t the quickest which may result in Crawley sitting a bit deeper in what is a big pitch at Brunton Park that Carlisle like to use the width in.

Despite the last two results there’s been a massive improvement at Crawley this season in what has to me been the best season Crawley have had since returning to League Two.

John Yems has certainly improved Crawley with the way they play and the ability to get results and despite some blips along the road it has been a very successful season to this point.

If Crawley can finish the season strongly there’s no reason why they couldn’t snatch a play-off place and a win on Tuesday night would take them just three points off the top seven.

However, their opponents Carlisle are not completely out of the play-off picture and will be looking to re-gain their early season form by leapfrogging Crawley in the table with a win.

The Blues got hit with a Covid outbreak at a similar time to Crawley and simply haven’t looked the same since.

They’ve slowly slipped down from the automatic promotion places to mid-table since the Covid outbreak with some of their players maybe still suffering some effects of Covid which may be a cause for their slump.

However, we all know the quality they possess as they were one of the best sides I’ve seen at The People’s Pension Stadium as they came and bossed Crawley 3-0 earlier in the season.

Joshua Kayode’s long throw is certainly something that can cause problems but with experienced defenders like Craig and McNerney you’d expect Crawley to cope with the aerial bombardment they may get from the throw ins.

If both sides perform well it will make for a very good game and it is expected to be a tight contest with maybe just a goal edging it.

A point on the road wouldn’t necessarily be a bad result for Crawley, especially at a place they generally struggle at so hopefully they can bring some points back to West Sussex.