Carlisle United head coach Chris Beech has heaped praise on his young squad after they battled to victory over league leaders Newport on Tuesday.

The United boss was keen to point out the relative inexperience in his squad following the 3-2 win.

A first-half penalty by Lewis Alessandra was followed up by two goals from the in-form Jon Mellish, before Newport pulled two goals back in the final 10 minutes thanks to former Blues man Jamie Devitt and a curling effort in added-on time from Josh Sheehan.

Beech was delighted with his side’s efforts against a team that had won their last five games.

He said: “It’s actually amazing because Nigel [Clibbens] told me a stat the other day which was that in the 92 clubs we’ve had the highest turnover of players, and we’re the youngest team in terms of games played.

“That includes Lewis Alessandra and Paul Farman who both have a lot of experience. It’s great credit to everybody, to go on there and put a plan in place, to then express themselves individually within that plan is superb.

“We’ve scored another three goals in our third consecutive home game.

“It’s a shame we conceded, but for 84 minutes we were pretty dominant.

“I have a lot of respect for Michael Flynn and the team he’s got together because he’s been doing this for a few years at Newport.

“They’ve got a good squad, but we’ve beaten them when they’re at the top of their form which is great credit to our players and everybody involved.

“We were comfortable for the majority of the game and we still did good things after they’d scored.

“We could actually have scored more goals, even at 3-2, so we’ve just got to keep doing what we’re doing.”

Mellish, who was signed from Gateshead as a defender, is the club’s top scorer this season, with his double in midweek taking him to eight for the season.

The 23-year-old from South Shields is in the form of his life, and typifies some smart recruitment by Beech despite financial constraints.

He added: “Our budget is low but we’ve recruited intelligently; we want players with ambition and room to grow.

“Jon is a great example of that, along with everybody else.

“There are a lot of players not playing so if we’re missing a few players, we’ve still got players wanting to play who are young and hungry.

“Those players are working really hard individually, and that’s why we’ve recruited the lads we have.

“You can see the lads are fit. We blasted some very good players tonight physically.

“If we had our shooting boots on we could have been three or four up at half-time, but overall we’re delighted that we beat the league leaders with the current run of form they’ve been on

“Five home wins from five home games is good, but we’re only a quarter of the way through the season. We’ve got to keep going. There will be no change to anything.”

Carlisle take on Hayes and Yeading United on Sunday in the first round of the FA Cup at the SKYex Community Stadium (12.45pm kick-off) before hosting Cheltenham in the league the following weekend.