Carlisle United manager Steven Pressley says he is “not concerned” about criticism because he is convinced he and the Blues are on the right track.

Pressley’s side go to Newport tomorrow hoping to build on last weekend’s home win against Oldham.

The 1-0 Latics victory came despite what many supporters felt was a poor Brunton Park display.

Pressley, though, says his 16th-placed side deserved “great credit” for the result against what he felt was a strong Oldham side, and are doing enough to encourage him.

Speaking at his weekly press conference, he said: “I’m never satisfied when we don’t play well.

“But let’s be honest. Football management is the only job in the world where everybody else knows better than me. Everybody has an opinion, everybody knows better than me, and that’s the reality of the job.

“You can’t do anything now as a football manager and get credit. That’s what goes with the territory. So am I concerned about criticism? Absolutely not.

“Because I know how hard I work, know how hard my players work, know how close we are and within this club we know where we are. Those are the important things for me.”

Pressley will tomorrow be aiming for a second straight win for only the second time in his reign against a Newport side who are among the high-fliers so far in League Two.

The sixth-placed Exiles are unbeaten at home and have kept seven clean sheets from their 11 games. United’s manager highlighted his team’s two clean sheets in their last three games as another sign of improvement, but said that will come under scrutiny against Mike Flynn’s side.

“We will be absolutely put to the test this weekend against a team who haven’t lost at home since February, have only had one defeat this season and have the second-best goals-against record in the league,” Pressley said.

“That in itself shows you the magnitude of the task ahead of us. But that should be an incentive to us, something we look forward to. We have to turn these stats on their head and go and win the game.

“They’ll put it into your box from free-kicks, from throw-ins, from corners, they continuously ask questions of you and you’ve got to answer those questions and do the basics of football to get a result there.

“When you play Newport, there are no variables about the type of game it is. The game will come down to the basics.

“When you play the likes of Forest Green the game is more pure. As you go up the levels the game is more pure, more predictable, more tactical – but this is a game where they [Newport] will say to you, ‘Can you deal with us?’ We have to find the answer.”

United have taken just one point from five visits to Rodney Parade since Newport returned to the Football League.

Pressley added: “Like every game, we treat it as an individual game, analyse it, and if we have to make any tweaks tactically we’ll certainly do that.

“We respect what they are, we have to find a way and a team that can deal with those aspects, but at the same time not lose what we can be.

“That’s the balancing act for us – that we respect what they’ll throw at us but also [understand we won’t] get anything from the game if we don’t impose our own ways on them

Pressley also praised his highly-rated counterpart Flynn for doing an “excellent job” having been given “longevity and stability” and time to build the club.

United’s manager, meanwhile, says his preparations have benefited from the work of two analysts he finally has on board at Brunton Park.

The two interns have linked up with the Cumbrians after Pressley met Penrith boss Andy Coyles, who is a senior lecturer at Northumbria University. Pressley said: “We’ve now got in place a couple of analysts and that’s a great thing for us.

“Both of them fed us good information this week. They supplied us with a couple of presentations on Newport, and we also watched the relevant footage we needed to.

“Andy Coyles has been hugely supportive. He’s involved with number of universities, has supplied the likes of Sunderland, Newcastle and Middlesbrough with interns, and he’s managed to supply us with a couple of interns ourselves.

“He’s going to add a third one in another month, which takes a degree of burden away from myself.

“At times as manager you need a bit of thinking time. I really appreciate what he’s done for us. The good thing is he [Coyles] is a manager himself, understands the job, and hopefully this will be a good addition to the club.”