The quality Carlisle United boss Paul Simpson will surely still look to add to his evolving squad

“Hardened criminals”.

You know - experienced customers, blokes who can handle themselves. Men, not boys.

Now Simpson and Abbott are actually working together at Brunton Park, it may be reasonable to expect such qualities still to be on United's summer wish list.

So far, manager and head of recruitment have, with one exception, brought in promise and potential.

There is Owen Moxon, handed a chance after shining for Annan Athletic. There is Sonny Hilton, a young midfielder on loan from Fulham. There is Ryan Edmondson, a former Leeds United striker with long-trailed potential.

And yes, there is also the 30-year-old goalkeeper Tomas Holy. But if there is one trait United’s evolving squad rather lacks right now it remains that extra grizzled, stubbly characteristic often felt desirable in a good League Two squad.

Carlisle's business so far has largely been at the younger end of the market, such as the signing of Owen Moxon (photo: Amy Nixon)

Someone to stiffen the spine. A warhorse for those horrible evenings in February when the weather is poor, the football dreadful, the atmosphere turgid and the game there to be muscled from the opposition rather than smoothly taken.

Not a posse of such players, let’s be clear. If Carlisle are to progress in 2022/23 it will still very much be down to, for instance, the compelling pace and skill of Omari Patrick and the emerging defensive leadership of Morgan Feeney, 26 and 23 respectively, as well as those brought in and the best of those retained.

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Filling your ranks with old heads at this level is no more a guarantee of success than doing the opposite. Last summer, Colchester United were practically camped outside Ipswich Town's Portman Road to pick up veteran player after veteran player.

Good CVs. Good pros. All, alas, on their way down, and the gamble on supposed sure things led the Essex club into a relegation fight almost as gruesome as Carlisle’s. They finished two points above the Blues and won the same number of games.

If recruitment was simply a case of assuming age and experience would put you on top, a legion of analysts would be out of work. Yet, as the final bits of this summer’s jigsaw are clipped together, it’s still not hard to imagine Simpson and Abbott spotting just a small void that’s ripe for filling.

Greg Abbott often declared a liking for "hardened criminals" when he was United manager (photo: Stuart Walker)

History certainly guides us that way. When Simpson was initially trying to rout an indisciplined, hard-drinking dressing room in 2003, he did so primarily with emphatic older heads: Andy Preece, Kevin Henderson, Tom Cowan, Kevin Gray.

When the first part of that job was done, and he could improve the team with younger talent, there was still an established framework. Gray, Zigor Aranalde and Chris Billy were mainstays of the last Carlisle team to win promotion. A sense of security accompanied the glittering work of others in 2005/6.

Abbott, too, very much liked his “hardened criminals” when he could get them, as he negotiated a way through several League One seasons. Right to the very end he was still promoting the idea, describing his last signings of Troy Archibald-Henville and Leon McSweeney with that exact term before what turned out to be his final game in charge against Port Vale in 2013.

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Carlisle’s financial position (albeit with an apparently increased budget this summer) may make the younger end of the market still more comfortable to address right now. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, per se.

It’s not, after all, the case that the best of League Two last season, Forest Green Rovers, surged through the rest with a battery of veterans.

By and large it was with younger, fresher players. Here and there, though, there was a degree of street wisdom. In the champions’ case, it was provided by the 32-year-old striker Jamille Matt, while at the back, 28-year-old Jordan Moore-Taylor brought the best part of 300 career appearances to the job.

Jamille Matt provided hardened experience in Forest Green's title-winners last season (photo: PA)

It is simply this sort of calculated addition, depending on what is attainable, that we are talking about here, rather than age for the sake of it. Carlisle improved critically for the composure of Mark Howard last season, and while there will hopefully not be the same emergency circumstances this time, that factor is unlikely to be lost on their manager, even though Howard himself has been released.

Just now Holy and Kristian Dennis are the only United players aged 30 or over (Jamie Devitt will be a third if he earns a new deal). A number of their younger players are accumulating good appearance numbers (Jon Mellish, Jack Armer and Callum Guy, for instance) and in that sense are more experienced than many of their age.

The likes of Feeney, too, are built to lead, likewise Patrick at the other end of the pitch. One game last season, though, also brought a certain idea home: Simpson’s first, at Leyton Orient, when he took one look at what Carlisle had and decided it was best served by the nous of Dennis and Devitt on the pitch from the start rather than the bench, no matter their sub-100 per cent fitness at the time.

Their knowledge of course and distance at a fragile moment proved vital to the initial improvement from which the rest of the Simmo-resurgence flowed. It helped make an extremely tense situation at the time feel a shade more manageable.

Simpson relied on the experience of players such as Chris Billy in his first United spell (photo: Stewart Blair)

It helped players like Patrick show their full colours, rather than asking them to do every aspect of the high-stress job themselves. And at some stage in 2022/23, you just know the same feel and instinct for the realities of fourth-tier football are going to be needed again, on those days and evenings when Carlisle are not at their slickest and their young creators need a bit of solid back-up.

Simpson and Abbott, their careers show, enjoy youth and vim. They also, it's as plain as day, like the odd warrior too. As such, if at least one hardened crim is not somewhere on the agenda in what’s left of this summer, it would be rather a surprise.