Chris Beech has challenged his Carlisle side to be more clinical after their Cumbrian derby victory over Barrow.

A Jon Mellish header settled the first Football League meeting between the sides since the 1960s.

United had to hang on towards the end after Aaron Hayden’s 55th-minute dismissal and Beech felt his side should have had a bigger lead to protect.

“The lads and the fans can feel very proud because they’ve been made to work hard for this,” he said.

“We could have been out of sight before the sending off, and my only criticism is that we need to be scoring more goals.

“Our chances to get forward were curtailed after we lost Aaron, but we stuck to our shape and our jobs and we deserved the three points.”

Beech is leaning towards appealing against the sending-off, which came after Hayden appeared to kick a leg out at James Jones as the pair tangled during a corner.

“I’ve seen the incident and I’m not convinced, but we never seem to get the opportunity to talk to the referee about it,” Beech said.

“For me it’s an appeal, but we’ll have to look again and see how we feel.

“What it became about then was making sure we kept our concentration, and to a man we did that

They had a couple of ricochets that went our way and not for them inside our box, but you tend to make your own luck if you work as hard as we did.

“It’s two wins and two clean sheets from our home games now, and it’s something to build on.

“Obviously the immediate boost is the fact that we’ve won the first Cumbrian derby in 56 years, and that’s something that will have the Carlisle side of it smiling.”

Barrow manager David Dunn is still waiting to see his side claim a first win since earning promotion back to the EFL.

“I think managers who come out after a defeat and look for excuses, that just isn’t the right thing to do,” he said.

“Our first-half performance was probably the poorest it’s been since I got here, and I was a little bit disappointed with that, to be honest.

“The second half was better, our tempo was slightly higher, but there was still something that meant I’m disappointed with the overall performance.

“Of course you’re going to have more possession after they’ve had a man sent off, but lacked a bit of composure in the final third despite having more of the ball.”

And the lack of clear cut chances was another concern.

“When they go down a man they’re always going to defend deeper, and that’s what happened,” he said.

“Like I say, I stand here now and I can’t make any excuses. It was a poor game and we played our part in that by not using the ball well enough when we had it.”