Carlisle United takeover: a day to fire fans' imagination

Football, a child’s game, is above all about a child’s feelings: hopes, dreams, fantasies. Often these are dashed, squashed or removed before they’ve been fulfilled. Often they come at a painful price. At Carlisle United’s level – at Carlisle United specifically, let’s be honest – this has often been the tale.

And, being honest again, none of us know whether it will be different under the Piataks. A regime is never so pure as on day one, when there have been no missteps, no controversial sackings, no relegations, no gaffes.

Yet before this new era gets occupied by the dirty detail, before the social media giddiness fades and those replica-shirt-wearing Floridians become less novel and more familiar, let nobody apologise for feeling energised by the news that broke at 3.45pm today. The Blues are in new hands, those hands have handled the last few months extremely adeptly, and the voices associated with those hands have said pretty much everything one would wish for from new owners.

The Piataks are of considerable wealth, they have demonstrated commitment and stamina, their public relations have offered barely a single misstep to here and their grip on the detail of what United want and need has looked impeccable. Put a checklist in front of a Blues fan and it’s hard to think of a box the Jacksonville folk have not so far ticked.

A new era is under way at Carlisle under the Piatak family (Image: Barbara Abbott)

Certainly, if the doing is as good as the talking and the setting of impressions – and yes, that ‘if’ always does heavy lifting with takeovers and their associated messaging – then this could be a period for all time: one that sees Carlisle United fired by modernity, not hobbled by historic drawbacks; one that delivers better facilities and a better team, not one where the head is always close to the ceiling; one that sees good times, better times, as the norm, rather than the occasional lucky break.

One that thrusts the Blues forward, confidently and with a youthful step. It’s no exaggeration to say the entire city could be refreshed by what happens next. Is this not what we all want?

November 22, 2023, then, instantly jostles for a high place in United’s history. If this all shakes down the way the Piataks reckon it will, and the way we dearly hope it will, it could prove one of the biggest dates of all.

In the calendar of the Blues’ journey, it will take a lot to match the highest highs: the First Division in 1974/75, other promotions, titles and cups, the real achievements and sporadic glories, the heroes on the pitch that made the heart dance. The mind’s eye, though, is full of possibilities again. And that’s everything we’ve wanted from this club we can’t help but love.

Checks and balances will always be necessary, today and onwards. Alongside things like vision and ambition, the Piataks must prove what the outgoing owners professed to be on their own day one: custodians. It’s their money we’re after, baby, but also their integrity, their transparency and their steadfastness.

United's uplift under Paul Simpson has reignited the Blues and their fanbase - now there is an opportunity to build on it, not let it fizzle away (Image: Richard Parkes)

Look after us, and we’ll get on fine. That line may not be in the EFL’s owners’ and directors’ test but it’s the principle on which all takeovers should hang.

In many ways, a good ownership is judged not on its start, nor even part of its middle, but its end. If United are higher, healthier, happier and more firmly intact by the time the American sextet take their leave, whenever that may be, this will have been a time to savour.

If it’s the opposite, the enthusiasm and quite blinding optimism we’ve seen over the last few months will feel part of a betrayal: same as with any ownership that goes unforeseeably sour (and United have had the odd one of those). On the media side of things, let us remember at the very beginning that, while many things are fine, outright cheerleading for a takeover is always unwise.

Reflecting the state of things is, though, necessary. And holding a mirror to the Piataks has been a favourable experience so far. Tom Piatak snr’s presentation to a meeting of supporters’ trust members in September was the most impressive pitch for control of Carlisle United that has surely ever been witnessed.

It was not laced with big-talking promises (“Own the North”, increasingly the slogan of recent weeks, was a crowd-pleasing phrase, no more, no less). It did not make pledges that sounded ludicrous before the door had even opened.

Critically, though, it did realise that Carlisle United is an institution that can raise its sights, where potential is plain. A club that, since the second advent of Paul Simpson, has regained touch with something vital to a football club’s health: its support, its very life force.

Tom Piatak snr's presentation to the CUOSC members meeting in September was highly impressive (Image: Richard Parkes)

United’s attendances and the vibrancy of those crowds have been reignited by the manager. Simpson himself has long expressed a yearning for this sort of happening to be maximised, built upon, not fizzle away like so many other false dawns.

So you can be sure there’s a certain clip in the 57-year-old’s step tonight too. Simpson played most of his football and has spent much of his coaching career at high enough levels to know what good resembles. When he returned here in February 2022 he said, with damning eloquence, that the club had not moved on in any remarkable way since he was last here. And he was last here in 2006.

In his field of vision will be proper training facilities, other improvements to infrastructure and, above all, a team that can further the name of Carlisle United. Soon we will discover what a “step change” budget really is, and how well Simpson – whose inspired work has surely led directly to this takeover – is able to spend it. The first months of the Piatak era will help determine what the next few years look like: United safe and enhanced in League One, or starting again in League Two.

This rebranded Blues must fight with every fibre to avoid the latter: returning to a basement division that can consume the downwardly mobile. Again: it’s not now that we judge the Piataks, but how they are when something bad occurs, when criticism starts to fly and bite, when short-term worries dominate the agenda no matter how reinforced the foundations may be.

This is not, though, a day for fearing or anticipating the worst. That has appeared to be a governing principle at Brunton Park for too long. The message since February 2022 has been that belief in Carlisle United can actually take you places. Why should that not, on this momentous day, be stamped on everything they do now?

And why shouldn’t we all, given a glimpse of an exciting future at last, look both ways and then jump headlong towards it?