“Great winning mentality”

Brad Carroll has described the ‘great’ winning mentality currently within the Reds dressing room after seven league games unbeaten.

Carroll, who played the second 45 minutes as captain on Tuesday evening against Kendal Town, spoke at training last night and discussed the stellar start.

It’s not going too bad, is it? You can see it in the dressing room, the winning mentality has been great,

said Carroll

Carroll is one of many leaders inside that dressing room, helping the youthful team transition into a new squad from last season’s relegation campaign.

There’s a few new faces which I think we needed after last year. 

Goose [Dan Wordsworth], Sam [Smith], Gaz [Rowntree] and Tinners [Conor Tinnion] staying has certainly helped up with a bit of experience.

Manager Dannny Grainger has retained the midfielder as his vice-captain, and was given the armband when he replaced Tinnion on Tuesday.

Following a frustrating pre-season with injury, Carroll feels that he has been rewarded by his new boss.

I spoke to him quite a bit over the off-season and we touched a bit on it.

Then when I signed, he let me know. It’s nice to know that he’s got faith in all the lads.

For me, missing a lot of pre-season, to keep me as vice-captain it’s rewarding.

On that long term injury, Carroll explained how it was dealing with the setback during the summer and getting back into the starting XI.

It was hard missing out, you just wanna be involved but Ronan [Irving] got me involved in as much as I could.

Danny was the same, if there was anything that I could do, he let me do it.

You’ve just got to stay focused, knuckle down, hope the manager keeps faith in you, and you’re knocking on the door for the starting XI when you’re fit, because the lads were great in pre-season.

Reds travel to face Mossley at Seel Park tomorrow for a 3pm kick-off in the Northern Premier League, hoping to make in eight games unbeaten at the top of the North West division.