Leyton Orient 1 Carlisle United 0: The best spin we can put on Carlisle United’s terribly-timed sterile run is that, as ever, they are just doing things the Carlisle United way – taking the scenic rather than the direct route, plotting a path via all the landmines, booby traps and hidden monsters they can find instead of the straight road home.
By following this course, the Blues go from sensational to struggling and then give supporters a few afternoons of heart failure before going up thanks to a 98th-minute goal at Sutton on May 8 that goes in off someone’s shadow.
Well, right now we’d settle for that shadow. If the shadow knows where the net is, sign him up. The truth is United’s need to resolve their goalscoring problem is urgent and won’t be solved by fantasies or wishful thinking. Many more days like this and promotion will probably be off the menu.
Remember that Ryan Edmondson goal at Swindon Town – the injury-time winner when it seemed fate and League One were very much beckoning the Blues? Six hours of football have been played since then and it remains their most recent strike.
This is not the work, and these are not the numbers, of a side puffing out its chest and believing it is ready to go up. Rather, it is the toiling of a team who have done very well to get this far, but aren’t entirely sure how to do the next bit.
Not surprising, in many ways, given many of them haven’t passed this way before. Apart from a small number of exceptions, this is not a Blues collective who can call upon the muscle memory of late-season success.
Instead, they have to dig it out for the first time. As such, instinct says, even at this highly frustrating point: they need to retain the backing that’s got them this far. The backing and the belief. There is a better side in those blue shirts than is currently being shown.
If it reappears over Easter, it’s back on. If not, a fine campaign may end to the strains of regret, and some qualified assessment of how things went wrong in the wider context of genuine improvement.
The shouts and boisterousness of Leyton Orient’s fans could be heard long after full-time on Saturday. Richie Wellens’ side are surely just about there now, having benefited from a multi-ricocheted Jon Mellish own-goal, a shocking miss from the same player, as well as Carlisle’s inability, again, to be as dangerous and cutting as they used to be.
Only the superficial reading of events puts the blame on Mellish. Yes, he should have scored after bursting through and rounding Lawrence Vigouroux in the 87th minute. Yet the deeper look says United still aren’t creating enough, probing enough. A point earned by their versatile, wholehearted defender would have been welcome against the division’s most miserly home side, but would not have dealt with the problems Paul Simpson has to work like billy-o to solve with just over a month of 2022/23 left.
In isolation this could have been a diligent and unfortunate defeat against the best team in League Two. Context, though, is all. Carlisle, in an injury-ravaged first half, looked in some respects like their old selves in the appetite of their pressing, shape and general competitive standards.
They made an even fist of it against Wellens’ side. The best of it involved some neat interplay on the right between Fin Back and Alfie McCalmont – the latter the busiest player on the pitch, early on – yet the best opportunity from this faded when Back, on his first start since November, slightly delayed his cut-back, with Owen Moxon in tempting space.
Who knows, alas, whether this will have been Back’s last start for another spell. The sight of the wing-back walking off, utterly disconsolate, was sad indeed and, following Morgan Feeney’s earlier injury (also to a hamstring), set United another unwanted problem to solve.
They did so with Jordan Gibson joining fellow sub Ben Barclay in an effort which, when Orient built some momentum, entailed United dealing with the darting runs of Paul Smyth, some persistence in numbers and a few shots which, although a concern, did not greatly extend Tomas Holy.
There was, then, something in this game for Carlisle. If only they could have claimed it. The second half was more clearly Orient’s, with Smyth growing more elusive between the lines, Kieran Sadlier flirting with the idea of opening up the game and United, in contrast, hitting a wall in terms of creativity when they ventured into the last third.
Smyth rifled one decent chance wide, Paul Huntington denied him with a slide, while Holy made a fine, strong-arm save from George Moncur. Carlisle were not creating openings like this, even though the moment that cracked them open was unfortunate: sub Ruel Sotiriou’s drilled ball hitting one body and then another, the ball finally looping off Mellish and dropping agonisingly past Holy.
Orient had, you have to say, fashioned the circumstances where that piece of luck might visit them. United only did so the once – Mellish unable to make the most of it, a while after Charlie Kelman's two-booking red card for Orient – and they must now lift themselves for an Easter double which looks bigger than it ought to have been.
The critical task from here, you would think, is for Carlisle to walk out against Tranmere Rovers on Good Friday with minds clear enough to attack a seven-game season, not be hung up on these recent woes. Do that, and that exciting finale can still happen. Succumb to the mounting mental toll, and the history of Blues regrets will have a new line.
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