Carlisle United have been here five times before, newly promoted to the third tier, and here’s how they’ve fared: relegated, champions, relegated, relegated, eighth.
History, then, offers us little guide. It might be golden, it might be the opposite, it might be somewhere in the middle. Typically, given the Blues’ long history for being unpredictable, 2023/24 is extremely hard to call.
The first thing to say on the eve of this League One season is that it’s still too early to regard this as the norm, something to be complacent about. Carlisle, according to last season’s pundits and pessimists, shouldn’t be here at all.
They should be slowly working their way up League Two, probably somewhere around the middle of it given their limitations and gradually growing strengths. Instead, thanks to a vibrant campaign and that wonderful play-off climax, they are at the third level for the first time since 2014.
At the very least they will enter League One in better shape than they left it nine years ago: a club in decline, a team barely worthy of the word after the record-breaking player tally of Graham Kavanagh, a trajectory so steep it nearly took them further down to the National League more than once.
We don’t know yet if 2023’s United have a side good enough to cope with the step back up, but they have a structure that gives them a chance. They have one of their greatest ever managers, a huge restoration of goodwill and belief on the terraces, an off-field set-up which has figured many better things out and the core of a squad that knows what it’s like not just to win, but win with Carlisle.
Momentum should be one of the Blues’ greatest friends as they move towards the new season. Carlisle will be at the lower end budget-wise and only reached this division on penalties. Predictably this means large odds with the bookmakers and some distinctly downbeat predictions here and there.
Well, the Blues shouldn’t mind that. Like last season, they carry little pressure – other than to avoid the fates of their 1962/3, 1995/6 and 1997/8 sides, who went straight back down after coming up.
Like last season, they have a figurehead who inspires enormous belief not just for now, but the medium to long-term. Unlike a number of League One clubs, they are on the up. Unlike a number too, they are not saddled with immediate and pressing crisis at financial level (unless you include the Purepay debt saga, which to some degree, until it’s resolved, we should).
These factors make you think the Blues will be ok, however challenging third-tier life will naturally be. It makes you believe that, should their summer recruitment yield more hits than misses, they should have clear enough minds, high enough sights and deep enough reserves to bloody a few noses as well as dig out what’s needed.
Not that, on the surface, this has looked an easy summer. From their promotion squad they have lost their captain, their top marksman and their pace ace/Wembley scorer. There is nuance, though, regarding that exodus, based on the question of how many would have taken Carlisle’s standards even higher?
You can make a case for Morgan Feeney, whose exit for Shrewsbury Town – or rather its circumstances – left a sour note about which the defender may find himself reminded when he returns to Brunton Park in September. He is someone you could have seen meeting the challenge of League One in Carlisle’s defence, even if his injury record is not pristine.
With Kristian Dennis, was he going to be the high-calibre third-tier scorer Carlisle need, and was Omari Patrick truly going to frighten the horses at this level? Paul Simpson thought so to some extent – both, after all, were offered contracts – but the Blues did not bend themselves out of shape trying to keep the pair.
They can move on, back to League Two, with thanks. United’s task was to establish a body of men able to do the business in League One and it is clear this has not been a doddle when it comes to the transfer market.
It strikes you as one where the ruthless wealth gap has been exposed regularly when Carlisle have gone out to find players that others, at their broad level or slightly higher, also fancied. At times the frustration in the always-measured Simpson has been very much detectable. United’s most recent League One era (2006-14) often saw them up against it in terms of size and money but things seem even more stretched now.
This puts a premium on smart recruitment and, unavoidably, patience: something Simpson hopes has paid off with the likes of Sean Maguire, someone who should be able to plot his way around League One games once he’s up to good speed, and Sam Lavelle, who ought to be a steady replacement for Feeney.
It also made it sensible for Simpson to go back to those he knows, trusts and who have a feel for Carlisle. There was logic in moving for, say, Alfie McCalmont – a diligent, committed part of the promotion team – instead of reaching out uncertainly for another midfielder of his ilk who might have taken more persuasion.
This is, as you’d expect after a year-and-a-half in charge, more than ever a Simpson team, the summer’s departures further reducing what’s left from the David Holdsworth director of football era. Jon Mellish, Callum Guy, Jack Armer, Jordan Gibson and Corey Whelan are still there, good and in some cases excellent signings which offer lingering reminder that past times are not always completely bad times, even if the wider picture and general direction was seldom great and ultimately vertical.
The immediate task facing their adept manager is to evolve Carlisle faster than they were expecting. If, a couple of windows ago, we’d been told the Blues would be lining up in League One with a strikeforce of Ryan Edmondson and Joe Garner, chances are that would have sounded like very good progress.
And it is. But this summer it has also felt an area in need of more; one of those (Edmondson) a frontman with many of the tools but still trying to pinpoint his exact strength in the side, another (Garner) in his dotage – a canny old owl and still a nuisance, for sure, but not with the elasticity that made him such a devil of a player in his earlier goalscoring years.
United simply have to snaffle the chances in League One that Dennis was expert at finding in League Two. They will not dominate games as readily and they cannot afford to lag behind their Expected Goals numbers. Over to Maguire and Luke Plange, the new loanee, to help Edmondson and Garner provide the answers there.
They will also need to capture the right blend of know-how and young thrust. In the first column, Paul Huntington should be able to negotiate the demands of the third-tier in his sleep. Dylan McGeouch, one of the summer signings in midfield, looks a calm footballing head who ought to help Carlisle manage spells of chaos.
But the thrill, and indeed the need, is also in players bursting through from the younger end, proving to themselves and us that, yes, they are ready for this level and maybe even further (instinctively you think of Armer, Mellish, Jack Ellis and Taylor Charters, whose Wembley penalty still gets the goosebumps going).
In the anti-climax of 95/96 it was Paul Murray, in the flop of 97/98 it was Matt Jansen and Rory Delap. In 2013/14 Brad Potts shone even as United didn’t. In better steps up, such as 2006/7, there were obvious rising stars, like Keiren Westwood and Danny Livesey, whose flourishing ability did as much as the older guard to help the Blues acclimatise in a campaign topped off by a couple of young, sharp, ambitious loanees in Danny Graham and, yep, Joe Garner.
In that respect, their loan dealings again look key, both this summer and in January. It’s a market Simpson and Greg Abbott always have to work well given how their budget compares with others. Done right, it’s a department that could make or break the Blues in 2023/24.
Another question concerns style. Carlisle’s play was sometimes sniffed at by outsiders as direct in League Two. Some of those deriding it, or couching their derision in faint praise, are gearing up for more League Two football. Feeding it forward, loading the box, working set-pieces, using your strengths, pressing the bejaysus out of teams: that’s nothing Simpson or anyone at the Blues has to apologise for.
It's not as if United were a version of 1980s Wimbledon managed by John Beck anyway. There was silk, too, in the likes of Owen Moxon, and a heart-pumping energy in Armer and Mellish. Signings like McGeouch and Maguire are not air-raid footballers, nor are others in the ranks such as the mercurial Gibson, whose pre-season performances were as good as anyone's. But as Carlisle move to a level where, on balance, the football will be more refined, teams’ passing games better-honed, their collective ability either to match that or take it on by other means will be examined harder.
Simpson is too smart to attempt the sort of tactical overhaul some of his predecessors tried. United will not ditch what got them here. Versatility will still need to be ever-present, but it cannot just be Mellish who slots seamlessly from position to position in 2023/24. Adapt or die, both individually and in system, might be a handy mantra as the Blues look to improve their repertoire.
The Moxon situation could do with resolution before too long, partly to temper what seems to be a bit of agent-opportunism, and also to put the midfielder in a more settled place than must have been the case these last couple of weeks.
A Moxon free from baggage can be a star in League One, just as he was in League Two. If that proves the case Carlisle may have to make their peace with his departure in the fullness of time. But it would be a rich sight indeed to see the lad from Denton Holme at least helping the club of his childhood familiarise themselves with the division initially, and make his name at some of its biggest stages.
The table offers tiers in itself. At the top there are the budgets, reputations, expectations and backgrounds of being leaders or thereabouts. Derby County, Bolton Wanderers, Barnsley and Portsmouth ought to be among the best. Peterborough United will most likely be in the mix even when they sack and rehire Darren Ferguson at least three times during the campaign.
Others of decent standing will depend on how new eras unfold, such as Charlton Athletic, Wigan Athletic (who start with a points deduction) and Blackpool (under Neil Critchley again). Those in last season’s middle rump – Wycombe Wanderers, Lincoln City, Shrewsbury Town, Burton Albion – may offer Carlisle the most realistic guide on what their step up needs to look like.
United will also have to go well against some of those we’d like to think they should equal or surpass: your Cheltenham Towns, your Cambridge Uniteds, your Port Vales; clubs who’ve outperformed them in the recent past but are now trying to find ways to go on again, or at least avoid going back again.
Finally there are the basket cases, those walking arm in arm with crisis either current or potential: Reading, with their transfer embargos, HMRC issues and owner antipathy; and Fleetwood Town, whose bankrolling owner is doing 13 years for fraud. Carlisle, despite what the bookies think, really should find enough opportunities to take amongst rivals with issues.
Off the field the Blues, as ever, seem on the brink of something. In the recent past that something has not always looked good but now it could, thanks to Simpson and his wish to build Carlisle United. The debt situation is the biggest impediment and does not look like it’ll be shifted on instant ‘football fortune’, however helpful may be the proceeds from big deals involving former academy players such as James Trafford (but not yet, contrary to summer hopes, Dean Henderson and Jarrad Branthwaite).
It would be a crying shame if Simpson’s ambitions for the Blues were slowed by top-level stalemate. One imagines he would not be slow in pointing it out should his overhaul of United look like bouncing off that ceiling and back down the way. One also imagines he won’t settle for defeatism, and is canny enough to see a long road should there be enough light at the end of it, even as the Purepay debt ticks up with interest.
Carlisle need him now as much as they did in February 2022, when this unlikely but transformative journey began. They need him to remain the touchstone for all the other good things that have flourished in that time, such as improved commercial and retail operations, a growing fan culture led by the superb young Warwick Road End fans and a record-breaking, luridly colourful new away shirt which, one of these days, will probably be seen on the moon.
United might not sail among the stars in 2023/24, and patience will have to be a virtue at times, but there is enough still about their direction to think they can manage, and make this a steady next foot on the ladder. The cups also offer them two more chances to beat Harrogate Town at last: take either of those, and we’ll start to believe anything in the universe is possible.
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