Saturday 2 March. Carlisle United v Reading. Brunton Park. EFL League One.
Rather than being the labour of love that they should be and have been, these posts are currently just becoming a labour. What is there to say that’s new after a ninth defeat in ten games? The same failings are evident, and it’s difficult to put a new spin on the same old problems.
Following Tuesday’s win at Burton Albion, I sensed the faintest shoots of revival, and the remote possibility of a late run to survival to match that engineered by Paul Simpson two years ago. I should have known better. All yesterday did was highlight how poor a team Burton Albion were on Tuesday night. They made the same players who performed so abjectly yesterday look quite good.
This wasn’t just another defeat; it was another convincing defeat. None of the recent defeats have been by narrow margins, where we could claim we were unlucky. Yesterday’s score could easily have been much worse than a 3-1 defeat. After a positive start, imposing themselves on the opposition, it all started to fall apart after seventeen minutes, when the defence was prised open predictably easily. By the time Reading had tripled their lead just before the hour mark another thrashing looked on the cards.
The introduction of Gibson and McAlmont led to Carlisle mounting a sustained assault on the Reading defence, and they even pulled a goal back when Jon Mellish powerfully headed home a whipped free kick from Jordan Gibson, but it was too little too late.
The one silver lining was the attendance of 7,891, boosted by 1,360 Reading fans. That means that over 6,500 United fans are still keeping the faith despite the awful run of results. Maybe we have more season-ticket holders than I thought, desperate to get their money’s worth for this campaign.
I wouldn’t have minded yesterday so much, if it wasn’t for the fact that Reading are not exactly safe from relegation themselves.
Saturday 9 March. Charlton Athletic v Carlisle United. The Valley. EFL League One.
And so the nightmare continues. We’ve now won just one game in the last eleven, the other ten results all being defeats – just three points out of a possible thirty-three. In that time, we’ve conceded twenty-seven goals at a rate of about 2.5 a game and scored just eleven. It’s pretty easy to identify where the problems lie!
I wouldn’t mind but we actually scored first for a change, thanks to an opportunist striker’s goal from Luke Armstrong. During the current run if we concede first then it’s pretty much game over. Heads drop and confidence dissipates almost instantly. Following Armstrong’s twentieth minute opener there ensued some comic-book defending, and Harry Lewis had to make some outstanding saves to keep Carlisle in the game. It came as no surprise when Charlton equalised in the 37th minute and took the lead in the 54th minute. At that point it looked like a case of damage limitation at best, but a 63rd minute penalty, superbly dispatched by Taylor Charters, provided a lifeline. Unfortunately, that was undermined when a woeful back pass from Sam Lavelle let in Charlton for the winner.
Lavelle did not have a good day. He was released by Charlton last summer, and judging by yesterday’s performance it’s not difficult to see why he was deemed surplus to requirements at The Valley. In the reverse fixture, the first game of the Piatak era, he was the hero, scoring the equaliser against his former club to secure a point. Yesterday he was at fault for all three Charlton goals, twice losing his man and then misjudging his back pass. With Paul Huntington being increasingly beaten for pace on the ground (not surprising at thirty-six) and far too many conceded goals stemming from Carlisle’s right, the defence needs major rebuilding in the summer, ahead of next season’s League Two campaign.
Such a dreadful run of results would have seen most managers lose their job. I still retain my belief that Paul Simpson is the right man to take Carlisle United forward with his wider vision for the long-term future of the club, a vision that seems to match the new owners’ plans for the club. The Piataks also seem to retain faith in Simpson – if they were minded to sack him, surely they would have done so by now.
Nonetheless, certain questions need answering. Why was the recruitment last summer so poor? Only Sam Lavelle has earned a regular starting place, and he’s hardly covering himself in glory. Why was defensive strengthening not a priority in the January transfer window? And why does Simmo appear to have become a reactive manager, slow to make changes, rather than the decisive, proactive mastermind of last season?
I’m not going to draw any crumbs of comfort from Tuesday night’s 13-0 victory. That came in the semi-final of the Cumberland Cup against Whitehaven Miners’ Social, and was achieved by a second-string side, so hardly relevant to EFL League One.
Tuesday 12 March. Carlisle United v Barnsley. Brunton Park. EFL League One.
What is there to say that’s new? I think I’ll start by scrambling around for a few crumbs of comfort from our eleventh defeat in twelve games.
We started well, pressing high and making Barnsley looking distinctly rattled, just as we did at Oakwell in January. We all know how that ended. We took an early lead through a Luke Armstrong goal, just as at Oakwell. But there the similarities end, other than the result. We’re losing less badly recently, scoring two goals in each of the last two games and only losing by a single goal, though both scorelines flattered us. Substitute Dan Butterworth took his consolation goal well, displaying a composure that was glaringly absent when he squandered three golden chances in the first twenty minutes at Oakwell.
And that’s it. I can’t find any other straws to clutch at. I’m not going to bore you by repeating the problems I’ve already identified in previous posts, other than to state that all the problems stem from the defence.
A word about substitutions. Last season Simmo was proactive, on the front foot. He tended to make his first substitutions around the hour mark, actively seeking to change the direction of the game. On Tuesday three of the four substitutions came after the 76th minute, by which time the team were already losing 3-1.
The attendance was significantly down, just 5,522, and Barnsley fans constituted 813 of that number. I suspect that a significant number of supporters have reached the same conclusion as me – there’s not much point expending time and money to watch the team when there’s nothing at stake. I’d rather husband my resources for what I fervently hope will be a successful League Two campaign next season. Given the distance from Wakefield to Carlisle I think I’ve got some justification.
The brevity of this post doesn’t indicate disengagement or disillusionment with my club. It just reflects dejection and depression!
Saturday 16 March. Shrewsbury Town v Carlisle United. The New Meadow. EFL League One.
I will not detain anyone for long with this entry. There was no chance that we were going to travel to Shrewsbury for this game, given the club’s irretrievable situation, and we weren’t even able to enjoy the dubious pleasure of the live stream, as Adam and I were bound for Nottingham University for an offer holders’ day. Probably a good thing.
So my comments are based on the information about the game that’s generally available. I’ve read Simmo’s post-match interview and there’s little significant there, other than we need to keep the faith and realise that the club is in the very early stages of a significant medium to long-term plan.
I was surprised at some of the selections today. I cannot for the life of me see why Dan Butterworth earns selection ahead of Jordan Gibson, and I was surprised to see Huntington dropped while Lavelle retained his place. I can only infer that this means that both Gibson and Huntington are unlikely to be retained in the summer. The substitutions were again “interesting”. The first two didn’t take place until the 73rd minute, and the remaining three were all made during the final ten minutes of the game.
As the season nears its end, there’s increasing speculation about which players will be released, which will be offered new contracts, and whether it will be possible to offload any of last summer’s deadwood signings, who are on two-year contracts but have failed to step up to the mark. I await the close season with interest.
Oh, we lost 1-0. That’s now twelve defeats in the last thirteen games. Er, that’s it.
Saturday 23 March. Carlisle United v Stevenage. Brunton Park. EFL League One.
This was a bit better. Only a bit, mind you. Instead of the usual “we were crap and lost” this time it was more a case of “we were quite good but still only drew”. But at least there was sufficient difference from most of the dozen games that preceded this one to give me a bit more to reflect on and get my teeth into.
When the starting line-up was announced I once again struggled to understand how Dan Butterworth gets picked to start ahead of Jordan Gibson. For me, Butterworth has promised much and delivered precious little. He’s an exciting dribbler but too often seems sadly lacking in some of the other basic skills of the game, such as passing and finishing. But he was about to defy my preconceptions.
Paul Simpson had talked before the game of the need to finish a dismal season on a positive note, and that there were still places in next season’s squad up for grabs. The team started the game as if they’d taken Simpson’s words to heart, playing with a freedom and boldness seen all too rarely recently, making early inroads and making Stevenage look distinctly ordinary. Their endeavour bore fruit as early as the thirteenth minute with a beautiful goal, a contender for goal of the season. Harrison Neal delivered a superb pass from midfield to the advancing Jack Ellis on the right, just inside the defender. Ellis could have shot himself, but squared the ball to the onrushing Butterworth who had an easy task to side foot the ball home at the Waterworks End.
Carlisle continued to play on the front foot, while Stevenage did everything that you would expect of a side managed by Steve Evans. They niggled, they cheated, they time-wasted, they appealed for everything, they were constantly in the referee’s face and ear. I take issue with the pre-match description of Evans as a “Marmite” character. That suggest that “love” is actually an option! If he ever becomes Carlisle manager, I think that will mark the point at which I’ve watched my final Carlisle game. The stats show that Stevenage had nine first-half corners, but that really doesn’t reflect the overall balance of the first period.
Carlisle were equal to Stevenage’s early efforts in the second half and should have doubled the lead in the 64th minute. Butterworth beat his man on the left and centred low to present Charters with a gilt-edged chance on the edge of the area. He hesitated and the opportunity was gone. Fortunately for him Butterworth made amends just moments later. As the ball was cleared from the Stevenage goalmouth, he took what initially appeared to be a rather heavy touch to his left. But what it did was to create space, and as he ran onto the ball, he was able to angle a left-footed shot back across the Stevenage goal, which went in off the right-hand post.
If my memory serves me right, the only previous time we’ve had a two goal lead was in the dying seconds of the away game at Bolton, when Jordan Gibson’s hat-trick goal secured a 3-1 win after the Bolton keeper had gone up field for a last minute corner. On Saturday, with a quarter of the game still to go, we were in uncharted territory. The optimist in me felt that maybe this was a turning point, though much too late to save our season. The pessimist in me said that we’d probably find a way to mess things up. And so it proved.
A Luke Armstrong chance went begging in the 70th minute after he had been set up by the ubiquitous Butterworth. Then, in the 81st minute, an innocuous tackle by Dylan McGeouch was deemed worthy of a penalty award. The Stevenage player must have run at least another three paces before he realised he wasn’t going to reach the ball and collapsed dramatically to the ground. The spot kick was duly converted, and suddenly both players and fans seemed to be convulsed with nerves.
Even so, Carlisle had a further chance to secure the three points in the 88th minute. Substitute Jack Diamond, one-on-one with the goalkeeper, inexplicably failed to score. As the game headed into time added on, there was a sad inevitability about what was to follow. In the final minute Stevenage won a corner which Carlisle failed to clear, and virtually the final kick of the game secured an equalizer. Just as scoring a last-minute equalizer feels almost as good as a win, conceding one feels just as bad as a defeat.
At the end of the day, familiar failings cost us the win – a failure to convert excellent chances, and defensive panic and lack of decisiveness in the closing stages. To return to a familiar theme, the officiating was absolutely dire. The referee made numerous inexplicable decisions, and even when he could justifiably claim to be unsighted, his assistants proved to be similarly myopic. To return to a more recent theme, the approach to substitutions was again mystifying. The only replacement was Diamond for Butterworth in the 79th minute, an attacker for an attacker. What was really needed was a couple of defensive substitutions to see out the win. And are we the only team in the EFL who doesn’t use late substitutions to waste time?
As for Jordan Gibson, it seems increasingly unlikely that he will be offered a new contract, and even more unlikely that he would accept one, given his treatment in recent weeks. He remains this season’s leading scorer by some distance and was undoubtedly the best player of the season up to the New Year. To put things in perspective, before Butterworth’s brace on Saturday, any one of last season’s central defenders would have been second only to Gibson in this season’s scoring chart.
At the end of the day, it matters not a jot. We’re doomed to an immediate return to League Two, and what happens at the fag end of this season is largely irrelevant. But it would be nice to have the odd crumb of comfort.
It’s 1994-95 hero Derek Mountfield with his tongue out in case anyone is wondering.
Friday 29 March. Peterborough United v Carlisle United. London Road (sometimes known as the Weston Homes Stadium). EFL League One.
Well, I certainly didn’t see this one coming! Then again, it is Easter weekend, and United obviously decided to stage their own mini resurrection a couple of days early.
The portents weren’t promising. Last Saturday we threw away a 2-0 lead (after eighty minutes) at home against a team challenging for a play-off place. This time we were playing a team who are firmly established in the play-off places, on a good recent run of form, and have yo-yoed between League One and the Championship in recent years. The bookmakers’ odds were stacked against Carlisle.
Simmo went for an unchanged starting line-up but was forced into an early change when Taylor Charters was injured and had to be replaced by Jordan Gibson, with Jon Mellish moving out of central defence into midfield. What a difference they both made. Within minutes Gibson had supplied the cross from which Mellish headed Carlisle into the lead in the 27th minute. His performance possibly put to bed the idea that Gibson and Butterworth are an either/or option. They played together to great effect for most of one of our best wins of the season.
Although Carlisle have become better at scoring first in recent games, they’ve generally proved to be incapable of holding onto those leads, so it was encouraging to reach half-time with the lead intact. To be honest, I was dipping in and out of the game, but in the final minutes I saw of the first half, Peterborough looked poor for a team that is challenging for promotion. They had plenty of possession but seemed to lack cohesion, with far too many passes going astray.
The game was settled in the first fifteen minutes of the second half, and that man Mellish was at it again. He was worrying Peterborough with his marauding runs from midfield, and when his shot in the 49th minute was blocked and rebounded to him he hammered a superb volley into the roof of the net. Just ten minutes later, after the ball had ricocheted around the Peterborough area, he was on hand to hit another superb volley, this time low inside the right-hand post, and complete his first ever hat-trick. It was what used to be called a “proper” hat-trick, three goals in a row without another scorer intervening, just like Jordan Gibson’s hat-trick at Bolton in another memorable 3-1 away win.
But with half-an-hour still to play, and bearing in mind last Saturday’s collapse in the last ten minutes, I wasn’t taking anything for granted, particularly when Peterborough pulled a goal back within three minutes. But I needn’t have worried. Despite a couple of Peterborough chances, the Carlisle defence held firm, with Mellish returning to his centre-back role for the closing minutes, following his hat-trick scoring sojourn in midfield. Rarely can a hat-trick hero have started and ended a game in central defence! There’s a new lyric to David Bowie’s “Starman” currently doing the rounds. It goes:
“There’s a Starman
Plays in blue and white
His name is Jonny Mellish
And he’s fucking dynamite.”
In fact, the margin could have been greater. Carlisle were denied a penalty when Gibson appeared to be brought down by the Peterborough keeper, and both Armstrong and Kelly had good chances towards the end of normal time. It was nice to get a first glimpse of January signing George Kelly as a latish substitute, hinting at the type of partnership he might forge with Luke Armstrong. Somewhat surprisingly there were seven minutes of added time, but by that stage Peterborough appeared to have given up on the game.
This win will make no difference to our fate at the end of the season, but it was an encouraging performance, hinting at better things to come next season, and a win and performance that was long overdue. It was a deserved reward for the 486 Carlisle supporters who made the long trip, despite our recent form.
Too many thoughts left over 