Two on the bounce and now we’re bouncing ourselves – the green shoots of the Stevenage Football Club recovery are perhaps just starting to pop their fragile noggins above the snow-swept ground. But we’re not completely out of the woods yet, though – not while teams sitting below us are still insisting on picking up points to get out of a tour of non-league’s finest next term.
Carlisle United v Stevenage: The Good Life?
We hinted earlier in the week that Carlisle United are a team that’s in fine fettle right now. But we have to call back that one – ‘cos it’s not entirely the case. The Cumbrians have the seventh best form in the division over the last 10 league games, but the Brunton Park outfit plummet to 20th over the last six League Two outings because draws have been their speciality in 2016.
Mind you, it’s not as if Carlisle have played many fixtures on home turf of late for obvious reasons. And that’s what’s keeping their record over the last six home games in the realm of the respectable. More notably, the Cumbrians can claim to have the second most potent attack when on their own patch: 27 goals in 14 matches, making for an average of 1.93 goals per game.
And we so nearly got to play them without leading marksman Jabo Ibhere – but his midweek red card has been binned. Bah!
Now, every away game we go into comes with the same health warning attached – we don’t keep clean sheets on the road. We aren’t that bad at the other end of the pitch on the road, to be fair, but we’ve been waiting for a shutout away from the Lamex since 18 April. It’s avoiding us like the plague and, quite frankly, we can’t help but feel a little insulted at such a shunning.
If you’re thinking of taking advantage of UK and Irish free bets this weekend, you’ll likely find the hosts best priced at 21/20 and the visitors at 11/4. If you’re pinning your hopes on plucking an anytime goalscorer out of the hat on your weekend card, we’d happily recommend Byron Harrison to do his thang yet again at a very attractive 5/2 – if you can get on board at that price.
We’ve not brought all three points from Scotland’s next door neighbours since the days of Darryn Stamp, with our tete-a-tete record against this weekend’s hosts taking a bit of a denting over the last seven encounters – winning just one of those. We’re going to have to pull something out of the bag to make it three wins on the spin – so let’s hope that something is Miracle-Gro.
BoroGuide’s Carlisle United club profile – to our members, the fifth emergency service
