Carlisle United 0 Exeter City 1: After several weeks of bridging gaps, masking flaws and hurling themselves at higher-ranked opponents with an enjoyable sense of theatre, this was perhaps a game and a result Carlisle United needed.
Okay – burn that sentence if a ten-point cushion drifts into single figures and this survival attempt drags awkwardly on. But if the Blues do get the job done in the next couple of weeks, Saturday might be the afternoon that shone the clearest light yet down the long road still ahead.
The revival of recent weeks, the injury-time fun of several victories – it’s all been absolutely crucial. Yet so, when things calm down, are matches like this; when you stand at one side of a crossing and see a much better opponent on the other.
Exeter, with sharper finishing, would have been more than one 89th-minute goal beyond Paul Simpson’s Blues. Their play was superior, their command of space more refined, their advancement, in terms of League Two football, quite plain against a home XI still trying to dig their way out of a deep hole.
That’s why there was no need to consider the visitors’ late winning goal and bemoan the fact that United were close to a draw. In reality they were far short and Simpson, in accepting this, spoke with the freedom of a man who has nothing to gain by protecting egos.
“It shows the gulf, the big difference,” the manager said. “That’s the total reality of it. I don’t really know how long it will take as a football club for us to be able to get to that level, but that’s what we have to strive to do.
“As a football club there has to be a desire to change it, to make sure we’re going to go and compete at the top end of the table.”
That can be taken as another clear message fired through a barrel into the boardroom and through the office windows of others who have the future of this club at their fingertips.
Can Carlisle be more like Exeter? Again, nobody is entitled to feel their pride wounded by such a question. United’s horizons, in this late stage of 2021/22, extend to getting enough points to be in League Two next season.
The bigger questions, the more daunting challenges, must then be answered with much more conviction than currently seems in the air. As we know, they require executive decisions of higher calibre than those that have put the Blues into this struggle.
They require, Simpson added, an overhaul not just of the playing side but the club itself. One hopes all involved listened to the 55-year-old when he said such things. The spirit revived by Simmo will get United so far. Building something more convincing is a job of many more deliberate steps.
Until then, they’ll be left to reflect on occasions like this with a faint emptiness. Carlisle created next to nothing against Matt Taylor’s visitors, and nor did they have the vim and vigour of past outings.
Exeter, for a time, looked like they might pass and play their way to an equally dissatisfying point. But then Padraig Amond found space and a good team at last had the points their play merited.
Before then, it was a stubborn spectacle on a chilly spring day. United spent so much time defending their territory that Cameron Dawson, the Exeter keeper, could have scattered some wild flower seeds in his goalmouth, pulled up a chair and watched them grow.
Exeter passed, moved, probed, Jevani Brown a floating threat between the lines, Offrande Zanzala a notch down from the devilment they needed to finish their enterprising attacks. Morgan Feeney denied the former Carlisle striker in the third minute and by the sixth they’d had a cluster more shots already.
Tim Dieng, from central midfield, provided the presence and roaming authority United lacked. When Carlisle got it wide, their men lacked support. When they got it centrally, too often they simply gave it back. Their wing-backs struggled to get far forward and a central midfield of Danny Devine and Jon Mellish lacked poise against Taylor's bright bunch.
Exeter tested the Blues’ fortitude via Archie Collins’ free-kick and a further shot from the midfielder and, beyond a rare Omari Patrick shot, comfortably gobbled up by Dawson, there was nothing from Simpson’s hopefuls.
Mark Howard saved from Matt Jay and then superbly from Dieng. Carlisle looked mentally weary from all the empty chasing.
Tobi Sho-Silva, a half-time arrival for Kristian Dennis, was sent on with a brief to add physicality against Exeter’s three-man defence as Simpson tried to stretch out Carlisle’s attacking line. It gave the guests marginally more to think about but only stemmed things somewhat. Howard still had to pull off an excellent stop from Dieng at the other end, while Feeney and Dynel Simeu had to be on their mark when Taylor’s side got around and beyond their team-mates.
Once Mellor, after a corner, had drawn Dawson’s only real save, Carlisle went back into retreat. Taylor had also refreshed his side with subs for the closing stages and one of the arrivals, Amond, finally found space to head home a corner which United had defended badly.
As he and his team-mates cantered into the corner and celebrated with 403 travelling fans, promotion started to become more than a glint in the Grecians’ eyes. United, alas, need a telescope to see the day they can enjoy such scenes themselves.
This stark realisation, as much as the exuberance of recent weeks, simply has to be the guiding thought from here.
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