'Cash doesn't always win, especially in this league,' that's the view of Carlisle United chief executive Nigel Clibbens as he looks ahead to next season.

Althought he admitted that every penny has to count, Clibbens insisted the Blues were in a good position and that any changes to the salary cap wouldn't impact the club.

He told the club website: “In our case, our spending has always been based on the amount of cash we’ve had coming into the club rather than the limit of the salary cap.

“The fact that the cap is dropping to whatever it’s going to be won’t impact on us because we don’t generate enough income to spend that money anyway.

“From our point of view, whether they bring the rules in or not, it won’t change our behaviour. It will just mean that the gap between us and the other clubs who do spend right at that limit could get bigger.

“Part of the way we work is that we know we’re having to deal with the fact that we haven’t got the most cash in this division, but I’ve said this over and over, cash doesn’t always win, especially in this league.

“We don’t need to be afraid of that and it doesn’t affect our decision making, we will spend the money we’ve got available to us and make every penny count.”

Clibbens insisted the most important thing to Carlisle is whether fans will be allowed into the ground for the new season.

He added: “For us, the only things that might change the approach to recruitment are what we decide ourselves, not the rules we’re dealing with.

“That’s why, for us, when and how we start the season and whether we have fans in the ground is far more important.

“That could make a difference, because we set our budget on roughly what we think we’ll make from iFollow or from limited numbers of fans in the ground.

"We can work different scenarios out to give ourselves a range, but the gamechanger for us will be if suddenly we get told that we can have socially distanced fans in the stadium and we need to get our paint out and draw some circles.

“Depending on the rules, with the size of our stadium, if that is what happens we could get significant numbers of fans in. If that is the case, it wouldn’t affect us anywhere near the amount it would affect a club with a 4,000 capacity stadium who could maybe only fit 500 fans in, no matter what they do.

"That could work to our advantage, which would mean more income to us.”

Clibbens also added that the eagerly anticipated 20/21 kit launch will not be far away and he hopes fan will be delighted with the new strips.