Carlisle United face Shrewsbury Town in their sixth league game of the season. A game at home that is very winnable and provides us another chance to get our first 3 points of the season.
In terms of injuries, I am not aware of anyone being unavailable with McGeouch and Nugent playing in the Central League Cup game on Tuesday.
With that being the case, this is the team that I would like to see.
After dropping Holy I can't see Simmo bringing him back in, however I feel more comfortable with him between the sticks compared to Andresson.
I want to see more pace and better passing out of defence with Barcaly in. I feel like Huntington and Lavelle are too similar-paced and like to play long too often.
The wingbacks pick themselves.
I want to see Harris in the starting eleven, but just don't know who you can drop. Gibson has to start for me, he is our most creative player from open play at the moment.
Maguire is a certain pick up front and Plange looked okay in flashes against Vale. Play them again for a bit of continuity.
In Shrewsbury's last game, they had a 0-1 win over Fleetwood. They played a 3-5-2 and players to note are, of course, Feeney and Bowman.
Fleetwood had two players sent off in the game with one of them just before halftime albeit, Shrewsbury were already leading at the time.
The four goals they have scored this season have come from four different players; Dunkley, Udoh, Bowman, and Bayliss.
Bowman is the forward player who gets into the best attacking positions having created 0.29 xG this season.
There are some interesting facts about Shrewsbury, one of them being that they have one of the worst defensive set play records in League One conceding two goals with an xG of 1.9. If we are to get 3 points on Saturday, I would definitely think a goal off a corner or freekick would help us out massively.
Shrewsbury have created less open play xG overall compared to Carlisle. 2.79 vs 2.93. They have scored 3 goals, though, with us only scoring 1.
One thing is for certain, we need to take advantage of our high press. According to the stats we are the 2nd 'pressest' team in the league behind Bolton, with a PPDA of 9.9 (PPDA is the number of opposition passes allowed outside of the pressing team's own defensive third, divided by the number of defensive actions by the pressing team outside of their own defensive third. A lower figure indicates a higher level of pressing, while a higher figure indicates a lower level of pressing.)
We have made 52 high turnovers (the number of sequences that start in open play and begin 40m or less from the opponent's goal). But have only created 3 shot-ending actions from those 52 high turnovers. As a comparison, Charlton have made 57 high turnovers, resulting in 16 shot-ending actions.
It is going to be another tight game, with the first goal the most important. I feel like if we can score first, we can win this. On the other hand, if we concede and have to chase the game with them in a deep block, I struggle to see how we will break them down.
Up The Blues.
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