The Carlisle United manager, Keith Curle, has made a withering assessment of his struggling squad by claiming that some of them “don’t deserve to be professionals” and says he may allow supporters to give the players a dressing down.
The League Two side were left fourth bottom and only three points above the bottom two after suffering a 3-1 defeat away at Accrington Stanley, their fifth consecutive game without a win.
“The strength of character in that changing room is alarmingly weak. You’ve got to be accountable for yourself and have pride. There are players who can’t say they care. They put in a performance that shows they don’t,” Curle told BBC Radio Cumbria. “They are players who don’t deserve to be professionals. They are weak.”
Curle has five games to arrest the slide at a club that came down from League One last season and are in serious danger of suffering back-to-back relegations.
“It’s a time where people need to grow up, there’s a naivety, a softness, a lack of care and passion. You walk in that dressing room, things are happening and players are not doing anything about it, they’re allowing other players to make mistakes.”
The former Manchester City captain has said he would be prepared to make an extraordinary offer to fans of the club to meet with players to hammer it home to them what it means to wear the Carlisle shirt and just how important it is that the club stays in the Football League.
“I might get 50 supporters to come down, have an open forum and through Andrew Jenkins [the chairman] they can have half an hour with the players,” Curle said. “They can tell them exactly what they think of them, and they’ll have to take it. Supporters can see when people aren’t giving everything for the shirt.”
Carlisle have been relegated from the Football League before, in 2004, though returned from the Conference 12 months later via the play-offs.
