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.