Tuesday night sees Dale take on Carlisle United at Spotland. It's pay on the day for all supporters.
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In the old days, game three was always something a bit special. The first couple of games of the season were good, but they had some sort of novelty value about them, game three was the one that mattered. For after game three of the season, we started to get league tables appearing in the papers. We might not have have got lines appearing in the tables until around March time, but we had proper League tables that we could peruse and start calculating how far off the top we were.
Not these days. Now we get the League Table after one game. Indeed, with games moved around for TV and cancelled due to riots, flower shows and an influx of bees, we even get tables produced when some sides have yet to play a single game. Everton supporters will be remarking on another disappointing start to a season purely down to a few London based angry youths. Moyes Out and all that. You never got this in the days of the old Shoot Magazine football ladders where you had to work out the tables yourself. Anyway, enough of such nostalgic witterings, and onto this game where Carlisle come to Spotland. In a rather bizarre bit of fixturing (if such a word exists), this will be Carlisle's third visit to the Greater Manchester area in the space of seven days after trips to Oldham and Bury in the League Cup. Of course, former Oldham Chairman and Dale director Ian Stott may have had a plan to make things so much simpler for the Cumbrians but thankfully his ramblings were pretty much on the whole ignored by one and all. Games with Carlisle over the years have always been a staple of the Dale fixture list, and always seem to bring something that will go down in the history books. Whether it be the Paul Connor hat trick, Simmo winning the title at Spotland, Grant Holt effectively relegating his hometown club and even the excellent goals that Carlisle won last year's game with. Will this be the same? Well with nine goals in our last two home games you'd tend to think that the chances of a goalless draw were about the same as full house signs up outside Spotland, but you'd hope that this game doesn't follow the same pattern of our previous three where we give ourselves a mountain to climb by going behind on or around the fifteen minutes mark. Undoubtedly, the star of the show has been Ashley Grimes so far this season. With three goals in his past two games, we seem to have found a genuine goalscorer, and you could rightly argue that we've not even seen anything like the best of him so far. There's been obvious comparisons made with Dagnall and Le Fondre, but his finishing ability could see him surpass any achievements of those two. Carlisle will be tough opponents for Dale, and they seem to have shaken off the effects of their first day trouncing to Notts County. It's going to be business as usual from them as they look to repeat their wins over Bury and Oldham, and you sense a trip to Dale is the perfect away game for them right now as they look to make a clean sweep of the Manchester North End. Team News: It's highly likely that it's going to be the same again for Dale, and will be for the foreseeable future until some new bodies are brought into the club. One each of our games so far, we've had a youth player on the bench, and whilst Dale boss Steve Eyre will be pleased with the experience that they gain from doing so, they are not there by choice. We've still got Simon Hackney, Brian Barry-Murphy and Reece Gray ruled out for the next few weeks limiting the options, and aside from the Joe Thompson substitutes, some have suggested that even our bench hasn't given us any real options to change things mid-game. There's been suggestions in one or two parts that we could see Thompson come into the starting line up for this game. It's been noted that in our previous two games, he has come off the bench with Dale trailing to see then see a victory and a draw recorded. Few would put this all at Thompson's feet, but we look more comfortable as a side with him on the right, and Tutte back in the middle. Carlisle have something of an injury crisis of their own for this game, with the Carlisle OS reporting that six first team players are struggling. Out of these injuries, only one of these is a new injury that being Paul Thirwell who picked up a knock in their win at Bury on Saturday, but he is expected to be fit. The other injuries are ones that have been here all season long, and whilst players are on the mend, they won't come into contention for tonight's game. Last Ten Meetings:
Dale win: 5-4 Draw : 12-5 Carlisle win: 13-8 First Goalscorer odds:
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