Eric Kinder spoke to the Official site about the 3-year contract extension that he will sign next week:

"The contract is all agreed, so it should be signed fairly soon.

It goes without saying that I'm delighted, and I'm actually really surprised at how quickly I settled in to life, not just at the club, but in Carlisle in general. I left my home town club, Blackburn Rovers, and even though I'd worked at different places over the years, this was the first time that I'd really moved away from home.

That was all made easier for me because I enjoy working with the people that are around me. The coaching and playing staff at the club are superb, and we've also got an excellent Board of Directors. They really are a fantastic group. I'd go as far as saying that they are the most honest group of people that I have ever dealt with.

Fred has supported me all the way, and Steve Pattison has been absolutely unbelievable with the things he has done for me on the Youth side of life. On top of that, John Nixon is probably the easiest Managing Director that I've ever had to deal with. Having that kind of backing makes life so much easier all round.

I have really enjoyed living and working in this City, and I've just bought myself a house up here, because it is a fantastic area. As I say, it's good to have it all agreed, and especially as we've been able to agree it all so quickly.

We had a fantastic season this time round, and I really want to step things up now. We're looking at different ways that we can do that, and knowing that I now have 3 years in which to do it gives me so much more scope. Hopefully I'll be here way beyond that as well, but it gives us a bit of stability, and we can build on that. It's a commitment by the club to me, and I am more than happy to commit myself to them.

I can now really start to look at the whole set up that we have. I want to review the Centre of Excellence, and see how we can do things better there, and I want to look at a number of other ways that we can improve across the board. I've already had a number of meetings with our staff, and put across a few of my ideas, and that seemed to go well. Now, I'm not saying that things aren't running well at the moment, because Dave Wilkes does a superb job, but we should always be looking to make things better. If you settle back and decide that you are happy with something, without looking at how you can change it, then things tend to jump up and bite you in the backside. That's why we will be driving things forward again next season.

I haven't really had any reason to look at the Centre, with Dave doing things the way that he does, but now that I'm here for 3 more years, I think it makes sense for us to have another set of eyes looking at it. The aim is to make that side of the club even stronger, because I think there is some fantastic ability in Cumbria.

It's not like working in a big city, where people can get out and find the lads quite easily, so we need to be tapping in to the talent from a very early age. If we can identify these boys and get them under our wing, then the big clubs will have to deal with us to take them away from us. That will benefit us as a club and as a County.

Most of my time up to now has been spent on the Youth team, and shaping that the way I want it to be, and I'm quite happy with what we are doing there. Again, I won't be relaxing on it, because it could just as easily start to wobble if I just let it lie, but I do think that we've got it running in the right direction.

I have heard the rumours that have linked me with a move to other clubs, but I think that's all part of football. In this game, if you enjoy a bit of success then you find that rumours will start. I can honestly say that I've heard nothing myself, and I'm quite happy for it to stay that way. I don't want to go anywhere. This club has been very good with me in every way, and I appreciate what they are trying to do in the same way, hopefully, that they seem to appreciate what I am trying to do.

Youth football, across the game of football, is evolving rapidly. I want Carlisle United to be part of that. I've been on an Academy Manager's course this week, and it was a real eye opener for me to be able to see how things are moving on at all levels. If we don't grab on to that then we'll be left behind, and I'm not prepared to allow that to happen.

The foreign player issue is a really big one around the game at the moment. We have talked about it all week, and we have spent four days thrashing out ideas on how we can make things better. Whether we will get them through or not is another matter, but we are trying to address the situation. The consensus is that, right across the country, we are giving in to it, so we need to find a way to work with what we have. We can't stop the way things are, because we are looking at more foreign coaches and more foreign players coming in to the game all the time. The latest development is the number of foreign owners that we now see.

The feeling is that we are not working hard enough with the talent that we already have here in England. I agree with that completely, but we all acknowledged that the facilities have to be there if that work is to be done. We're getting better with that already at Brunton Park, so we are already addressing that as a club, and I now see us as a club with real potential. One thing I have discovered about Cumbrians is that they are fiercely loyal. When I was at Blackburn we had a host of really big clubs on our doorstep, and we were always competing with them. Here in Cumbria, Carlisle are THE team for most people at the moment. We need to utilise that feeling with the young lads who have the ability to become good players, and make sure that they have signed for us.

There are places in this County that I have never even heard of, and I'm sure that there are good players waiting there. We have to start finding them first.

This last week I was sat in a room with people from the Premier League, from the England set up, and from clubs all over the country, and every single one of them had heard about Gary Madine. They all wanted to know how we'd found him. That's the kind of thing that we have to be doing more - finding the players that get people talking. Now, Gary isn't a Cumbrian, so we need to take it a step or two further and find the lads of that ilk who are from this County. Then we will really be succeeding.

Hopefully we now have the base to do that from, because we have a great County to work in and to tap in to. Let's see if I can make a difference on that over the course of the next 3 years.

One conversation I have had recently was on the subject of the first team, and whether we would ever see a day when Carlisle United was made up of eleven players that were from Cumbria. In all honesty, I can't see that happening, but we do have to work towards getting as many lads from this area through the system, and in to the professional game, as possible. That's a very long term plan, even just to make sure that we are getting a consistent number through each season, but it's a goal that we are now aiming for. We can dream about having a totally Cumbrian team but, at some point, we also have to be realistic. However, as I say, we need to be getting more Cumbrians through.

It was great for us last year, because we had 7 Cumbrians in our Youth Cup side. But, if you look at where we are now, we already have to accept that there will be less for this season. Three of them have been released, one of them has moved up with a full time contract, and we have only welcomed two local lads in to our new set up. That immediately tells me that the U16 age group wasn't strong enough this time round, so we need to look at that.

That's why we will look at the way we run our 9 to 16 year old phases, so that we are getting the best ones all the way through. The way we deal with that range of age groups eventually has a direct impact on my Youth team, so we have to get better at it. ideally, I will find myself looking at ten U16 players who are much better than anything else that is available, and they will all get a place in the Youth squad. With that number, you start to have a chance of pushing four or five of them on to the professional level. That, however, is a much longer term plan. It will take us some time to get there.

I'm taking part in the Carlisle City presentation night tonight, and I'm delighted to be there for that. I want to build up my connections with the local clubs, because that makes it more likely that they will ring me to tip me off about any bright young players that they see. It's all about us working together, if we possibly can. That's not just in Carlisle either, because we also need to be building our links with places like Penrith, Keswick, Kendal ... and some of those areas that I mentioned earlier that I haven't even heard of yet. It's something that I think is really important, so I'll be doing what I can to make that side of things run more smoothly.

What I want to get away from is this perception that I have come in and immediately started looking at Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesbrough, Blackburn and Liverpool for our players. The reason that has been done is because we didn't have the right players here, at U16 level, to fill the vacancies that we had. It is not ideal for me at all to have to move away from the Centre of Excellence for our YTS players, but I will if I have to. At the end of the day, it's about getting those players in who are going to have the best chance possible of making it through. The facts of the matter recently were that the players that were being released by the bigger clubs were better than what we already had in place. That's why I moved to sign them. What we have to do now is tip the balance back towards our Centre of Excellence, and we are all agreed that we want to work hard to make that happen as quickly as we possibly can.

We want to start the wheels turning on that next season. For example, I want our U13 squad to be extremely strong next season. If they are, which we hope they will be, then we will start to look at contracts for them when they are 14. That way, if one of the big clubs does come to look at them, then they will find that they have a real job of getting them off us. In the past, that hasn't been the case, and we have lost these young players without being able to put up much of a fight. If we start to do things in that way, then it means that the 12, 13 and 14 year old players that we have suddenly become extremely important. It means that we should be identifying some very good players at that age, and getting them committed to our club. If we don't do things that way, then we remain open to the big clubs popping along and signing them from under our noses. I really do want to stop that from happening.

A good, current example of the way that we want to take things forward is Steve Swinglehurst. I have already offered him a YTS contract for the 2009/10 season, because he has shown me just how good he is. He has already done it at U18 level for us, so I can easily see a situation where he is swamped by scouts when he goes back to U16 level next season. I made it quite clear to both him and his dad, when I offered them the contract, that I was being selfish. I wasn't doing it for them, I was doing it to protect me. I don't want to lose a player like that to a bigger club. To be fair to them, they never even thought twice. Even though I made it clear that bigger clubs might come along, Steve was up front and honest with the fact that the only club he really wants to play for is Carlisle United, and he signed the forms anyway.

The lad can now relax and enjoy his football next season. I will try to get him out of school on a Tuesday, so that he can come with us, and I will get him involved with the Youth team whenever I can. He'll come with us to Myerscough for pre-season, and he will make up the 16th member of the squad whenever we need him. If he plays for us on a Saturday, he won't play on a Sunday, and vice versa. It's good for us to have a local lad, who is typically passionate about his home town club, signed up. That's the kind of thing that I want to be seeing more of, and the type of situation that we have to work towards if we really are going to have a successful Youth set up.

So, I am just really looking forward to the next 3 years with this club. It's a really exciting period for us, and I want to do what I can to find the young Cumbrian talent, and make sure that it stays here with Carlisle United."