Carlisle United impressed in many departments in their 4-1 victory at Salford City – but what else did we learn from the game?
Let’s take a look.
1 GOAL GLUT BENEFITS
The fact Carlisle United endured their equal lowest scoring Football League season in 2021/22 is an increasingly fading memory.
Likewise their history-making inability to score three goals in a game for the entirety of the league campaign.
Things are happily different this time, underlined by their prolific efforts at the Peninsula Stadium.
It was the fifth time in 19 league outings that they’ve scored three or more in 2022/23.
Saturday’s win also had the advantage of bumping their goal difference up to +10.
Only two teams in the division (Leyton Orient and Northampton Town) can boast better numbers in that particular column.
It's also the first time since February 2021 they've had a positive double-figure goal difference total.
Considering United are in that pack of teams jockeying for a play-off position just now, the value of healthy GD shouldn’t be underestimated.
Carlisle’s new-found goalscoring greed – they’re also the equal second highest scorers in League Two (on 30 goals, level with Orient, only behind Northampton on 34) – could bring about further gains the longer things go on.
2 COMPARISONS ARE DANGEROUS. BUT…
Paul Simpson’s last full season in charge at Brunton Park won’t be forgotten in a hurry.
It was the last time United earned promotion, and is the most recent of their three league titles.
2005/6 was, all in all, a magnificent campaign and cemented that side, and its stars, in supporters’ lifelong affections.
Well, not to get too carried away, but we are inching ever closer to the halfway mark of this one, and Simpson’s new team are actually outperforming the 05/06 lads at this stage.
After 19 games, they are on 32 points. At the same mark in the autumn of 2005, they were on 30.
Carlisle, 17 years ago, entered surging form approaching and after the turn of the year. It would certainly be going some for this side to keep pace with the team of Gray, Hawley, Westwood, Bridges and co.
All the same. If that side spent the early months of term constructing a certain platform, this current one are undeniably doing the same.
At the very least, it offers plausible encouragement for what they might do next.
3 CORNERING THE MARKET
While Carlisle got the better of Salford in the second half through a redoubling of effort, spark and strategy, another encouraging feature was their work with corners.
For the early parts of 2022/23, Owen Moxon dominated United’s set-pieces. More recently, though, we’ve seen extra variety with their flag-kicks.
Callum Guy has taken his share recently, while Taylor Charters has contributed some excellent left-footed deliveries of late.
On Saturday, there was also evidence of some positive training-ground scheming by players and the coach who oversees their attacking set-pieces, Gavin Skelton.
Charters and Moxon unfurled a canny short-corner routine which led to Guy’s goal, and shortly afterwards a more orthodox but well-aimed Charters delivery set up Corey Whelan.
In both those cases, there was invention at the outset and also clever movement in the box, with Ryan Edmondson and substitute Whelan particularly elusive to Salford’s defence.
Earlier, United had attempted another disguised free-kick routine – Moxon to Kristian Dennis – which almost paid off.
Carlisle are showing the wit and the confidence to try these things. It all helps to enhance their set-piece armoury – something which can never be underestimated.
4 MELLISH THE MARVEL
A few weeks ago I wrote in this space that Jon Mellish was, pound for pound, Carlisle’s most valuable player.
Did Saturday, at Salford, not simply underline the fact?
While Mellish’s United career has been reinforced by his return to the defence under Paul Simpson, he has certainly not been confined to barracks positionally.
Simpson has always been open-minded to deploying Mellish further forward when he feels the situation demands it.
It’s a tribute to the former Gateshead man’s energies and willingness to commit himself to all sorts of tasks that he goes about it as capably as he does.
Beyond doubt, his move from the back to the middle helped reverse the direction of travel when Salford appeared to have established a firm foothold in Saturday’s second half.
The effect was not instant but, as things shifted, Mellish might easily have scored twice as he made a nuisance of himself around Salford’s box. Then he popped up on the right wing to set up Kristian Dennis’s clincher.
How many other centre-halves do you find doing all this, especially at Carlisle’s level?
This far in, it's still hard to think of anyone more deserving of being known as their MVP - a man who's several players in one.
5 ABLE DEPUTIES
It says something for the character and readiness of Corey Whelan and Jack Ellis that Carlisle didn’t look in the slightest bit weakened by the loss of two of their star players.
You can imagine past and lesser eras when injuries to men of the calibre of Morgan Feeney and Fin Back would have fatally wounded the Blues.
Feeney’s warrior attributes at the back were on show at Salford, while Back had already shown a dynamic quality in helping Kristian Dennis put United in front and hitting the post himself by the time he also went off.
Simpson, while frustrated by both withdrawals, must have glanced at his bench on each occasion without any cause for fretting.
Whelan has shown his resourcefulness already this season in Feeney’s stead, and the former Liverpool man slotted in at Salford as though he’d never been out of the XI.
He also proved, as noted earlier, a real weapon at corners, and duly popped up with his second goal for the club.
As for Ellis…we are at the point now where regular praise for the teenage Cumbrian can simply be copy-and-pasted from his previous displays.
United must be assured that they have an excellent young pro on their hands each time they watch the 19-year-old throw off his tracksuit or see how he fares from the start.
Ellis took a little time to get to top speed at Salford but the longer things went on, the more his sharpness and defensive qualities glowed once more.
In both cases, it speaks highly of their professionalism, and makes United’s squad looked that much deeper, in a campaign of seemingly never-ending injury-enforced changes.
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