Carlisle United 1 Gillingham 0: Not a hiding, not the opening of floodgates – barely a trickle of water through a crack, in fact – but Carlisle won’t care about that. And was there ever a goal that better summed up the way a team had to win, rather than the way they’d have ideally preferred?
Sometimes the door has to be forced open, rather than have its lock picked. In which case – enter Jon Mellish, the defining player of this grinding but strangely satisfying victory in the late-summer Cumbrian sun.
If you want subtlety, go elsewhere. If you want determination, relentless running and the ball going on a mini-adventure before entering the net, Carlisle’s defender-cum-midfielder-cum-striker is your man.
As a team United did not lay on anything like a complete performance against Gillingham, but individually Mellish did. At the back he was excellent, a pugnacious rival with the dominant Paul Huntington for man-of-the-match honours (Mellish got the official nod).
In the 55th minute, in that old Mellish way, he then happened to be the United player furthest forward to finish – after a fashion – a chance put his way by some right-to-left play and Jack Armer’s helpful flicked assist.
Not many left-sided central defenders in League Two will launch themselves into such a place. Mellish has started the season well back in his original position, but Saturday’s crucial moment was also an echo of his raiding days under Chris Beech.
Whether or not the ball touched him last, or finally went in off Gillingham’s Max Ehmer, matters not. To a sufficient degree it was Mellished, and that was just what Carlisle needed on a day they weren’t slick or creative by any means in pursuit of three important points.
The day they give a side a “hiding”, as Corey Whelan had forecast, is not yet here. This was a case of result trumping performance by quite a few notches, taking United to eight points from five games: a tidy return which keeps any bottom-half anxiety firmly at heel as September approaches. That ought to be a platform to progress, to expand their range again, after a couple of weeks of moderate attacking displays.
The gusto of Carlisle’s earliest league games of 2022/23 has been replaced by a more qualified way of starting proceedings. After a poor show at Stevenage, Saturday saw a patchy, uncertain opening which Paul Simpson later diagnosed as a shared “nervousness” between team and fans.
United, after an early headed chance which Omari Patrick put wide, struggled to connect, found themselves incapable of playing with due pace and poise. Things were bitty, hasty, passes astray, the whole thing calling for someone to place their foot on the ball and state more strongly how things needed to be.
At least, while this was unfolding, two other factors were in play. One was Carlisle’s defensive foundation. Huntington was an instantly commanding presence, aerially powerful and a natural, vocal organiser. Within minutes you could see the asset he should be at this level.
The other was Gillingham’s aversion to scoring. Despite the channel running of Mikael Mandron and the tricky turns of Jordan Green, they gave Tomas Holy little in the way of piercing examination, and nothing that backed up Neil Harris’s view that the “floodgates” were about to open at his goal-shy side’s will. United’s keeper – a former Gills No1 – collected crosses well and saved shots that came towards him, but never with any grounds to fret.
Elkan Baggott had probably the best of them, a near-post attempt which United’s big Czech zapped comfortably. Other forays only flirted, while upfield a lack of conviction also cost Carlisle in the final third. They gave you, alas, little sense that this was going to be the day Kristian Dennis would break a club record by scoring for his sixth straight match at the start of a season.
Still – nice to know United can do it without him after all. They were, to give them their due, sharper at the start of the second half, Huntington testing Glenn Morris with a header before Mellish steamed infield to score - showing greater anticipation than anyone else in the process when Armer had the chance to glance it inside.
From there, it was by and large a matter of containment. Gillingham – who really should have lost David Tutonda to a second booking, Harris substituting him minutes after ref Marc Edwards reprieved him for upending Fin Back – stretched Simpson’s team when Scott Kashket came on, his pace off the shoulder coming closer than anything else to ending a collective goal drought which now stands at five games.
Yet when he truly threatened, Whelan was there with an impeccably-timed saving tackle, while another Gills sub, Lewis Walker, made a hash of a very decent headed chance in front of goal.
When it came to the rest, Huntington took charge and, when he went off with 20 minutes to go, Morgan Feeney came on in his place with the air of a man who’d been denied his red meat for a few weeks.
These are good, refreshed, encouraging options for Simpson. They make you dare hope that the harm injuries could have done to Carlisle’s full journey since early August might have been kept in check.
There is plainly work to do on the creative aspect of this team as they move on, but winning games while that is fully remedied is certainly the way to keep spirits on the right level. And where there’s Mellish, there will always be a degree of hard-running, sweat-pouring, unvarnished back-and-forth old-school hope.
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