Carlisle United manager Paul Simpson added a third promotion to his CV with the Blues and his second victory in a Play-Off Final with today’s triumph over Stockport County, and the Cumbrian-born boss was delighted to defy the odds.

‘Not many people gave us a chance’

“The players have been absolutely magnificent going back as far as June when we started back and said we wanted to make it a good season. I’m not sure many people gave us a chance but we’ve surprised a few people with how we’ve gone about it.

“I’m unbelievably proud of the group, the Football Club as a whole and the supporters. I mean, what a way to finish it. I’ve had five other experiences of Wembley and lost all five of them, so I knew I couldn’t keep losing.”

‘I didn’t expect this’

A promotion is a promotion. If you get any success in football, you have to earn it. This is up there. I’ll be honest, when we went into the Conference in 2004, we had a real belief in the group that we were going to get promoted and unfortunately, we had to take that to the Play-Offs and we got over the line there. I had incredible belief in the group that we’d go and be successful in the second season when we were champions of League Two.

“This one, the players have probably overachieved from what we were expecting and I’m not saying that to be disrespectful, but I didn’t expect this. All credit to them.”

‘We went gung ho’

“We knew we had to chase the game because we were a goal down. We just had to hang in there and I always felt if we could hang in until 60 minutes and with the changes we were able to make and the energy coming on from Edmondson and Patrick and Charters, it was a case of just going gung ho.

“We went 4-4-2 like the good old days and tried to get balls in the box for our strikers. I’m so pleased with the way we stuck at it and I’ve got to say, that’s the way we’ve done it all season.”

‘Who’s going to make the step up?’

“I said to them at the end of 90 minutes, ‘We’re not changing it because we can’t. You 11 players are going to get us over the line. You 11 players are going to play game 49. All the writing is on the walls in the tunnel: who’s going to make the step up?’

“I’m so pleased for everybody. The reward came in a penalty shoot-out; great execution of all five and a brilliant save from Tomas (Holy).”

‘We had the belief’ 

“We’ve come into this game and everyone wanted to make a big deal of the fact that we haven’t won many games in the last 13 but I felt as though we came in on the back of two really strong performances against Bradford – probably as strong as we’ve had since the turn of the year. We had the belief that we were able to finish the job today and that’s what we’ve done.”


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