Carlisle United boss Chris Beech says his straight-talking Crawley Town opposite number John Yems is someone he’d have loved playing under.

The manager of tomorrow’s opponents has a reputation for giving blunt answers in post-match interviews.

Blues head coach Beech says he admires people such as Yems who tell it like it is.

Ahead of the clash in Sussex, United’s boss said: “I’d never come across him before [becoming a manager] – he’s a southern-based coach, was at Bournemouth, worked with some high-profile players when developing them – but I enjoyed it when we first played them [in early 2020].

“We drew 0-0 and had 28 shots or something – Nathan Thomas was shooting from every angle and we couldn’t score.

“But I got to know him [Yems] a little bit through that [game].

“If I was playing now I would be quite happy playing for somebody like that, with his personality.

“He’s obviously organised and he’s just a normal bloke. There’s no airs and graces about him - I like people like that.”

Crawley are third bottom in the early league table after one win, one draw and three defeats from their opening five games.

United, meanwhile, are unbeaten in their last FIFTEEN meetings with the Red Devils – and have never lost an away game against them in the Football League.

Beech, though, says he respects the players the home side have at their disposal – not least former Carlisle striker Ashley Nadesan.

And he warned against reading too much into stats.

“They have some brilliant individual players and they work a lot on being a very strong unit,” Beech said. “I expect a really tough challenge from them.

“History and different stats and factors count for nothing, they have no effect at all on what we’re looking to do on Saturday.

“You can only respect people like Tom Nichols and Ash Nadesan, and I know Carlisle people have a huge amount of respect for him because of what he did here.

“We definitely can’t take our foot off the gas or be under-prepared because this is a good team.”

Nadesan hit 13 goals in 43 United appearances across two loan spells in 2018-19. He has one to his name for Yems’ side this term.

Beech said it would be wrong to dwell on early-season form when preparing for the fixture which, at 348 miles, is United’s longest trip of the campaign.

He said: “I’m not really gonna do that anyway. We all get in front of ourselves when we do things like that.

“You look at the next month’s fixtures, the next three away games are all overnight stays…you can go on and on.

“It’s dead simple. We go to Crawley on Saturday, it’s a long way, let’s try and make it worthwhile, understand their strengths, treat each game as an individual opportunity and make sure we represent ourselves and community to the best of our abilities.

“If we do we’ll be happy coming home on that bus.”