Battles at the bottom will test Carlisle United's mettle

A lengthy editorial article written by yours truly tried its best to whip up some positivity, a mood of defiance, fighting spirit. Yeah. Subsequent events were slightly more cry than rally, it's fair to say.

“How much of a difference could it make,” the article blathered, “if, in their hour of need, the build-up of problems and worries was put aside for 90 minutes and a few more people than usual gave them a helping hand?”

There was much more of this, though I won’t inflict it on you. It was published on March 25, 2014: crunch time, more or less, in the Blues’ waning bid to stay in the third tier.

Carlisle, early that spring, faced a succession of games against near rivals. Four fixtures on the spin against Stevenage, Notts County, Shrewsbury Town and Tranmere Rovers in a period of 15 days would test United’s mettle once and for all.

Well, they failed to score in three of them, and in the other their one goal was trumped by Notts County’s four. Three points from the defining run of the season was…well, defining. United did not have the quality or character to produce when it mattered most. A few weeks later and Graham Kavanagh’s team were relegated in ignominy. 

Another line in that well-intentioned but entirely deluded article may be relevant now too. Carlisle, it was argued, had gone up against some of the bigger clubs at their level and won: Bradford City, Coventry City, MK Dons. They’d also taken a point from Wolverhampton Wanderers, who were marching to the title.

If they could do that against those opponents, surely it meant they had the calibre to compete with the lesser lights?

United, when it mattered most, couldn't lay a glove on their direct rivals in 2014's survival fight (Image: News & Star)

Absolutely not. It didn’t and doesn’t work like that, and what we learned then is no different now, when a different team and a different (and, let’s be blunt, enormously superior) manager are trying to find a way through testing League One times.

Carlisle, we are often told – and not without accuracy – have been “in” many games this season. They got through their first 18 league games without an annihilation, and often performed well against some of the table’s higher-reaching sides.

Yet those are not the games that will put bread on the table. United’s position in the relegation fight is not a matter of shame, given where they came from after Paul Simpson’s return to the club, but only by handling their present predicament when things get really down and dirty will they escape it.

In other words, it’s not lifting themselves and stretching their capabilities to live with a technically polished Charlton Athletic side that will tell us what we need to know. It’s how they fare against direct rivals, fellow strugglers – fixtures that carry a different aspect of expectation, when the Blues don’t have to be valiant, just…good enough.

One of the reasons Simpson wants to overhaul his squad is perhaps because, when these circumstances have come along so far in 2023/24, United have not very often impressed.

At Cambridge United on October 28, for instance, they visited a home side without a win in ten games: so not a Charlton, nor a Portsmouth, nor a Bolton Wanderers. They underperformed and lost 1-0.

At Reading on Tuesday, it was a case of taking on one of the two sides beneath them – a team who’d still have started the night below United even if they hadn’t had four points taken off them for financial shenanigans.

They contrived to lose 5-1 in a game where, at times, the margins seemed narrower than that, but by the end were so gaping that the home side could have scored more.

This is surely as psychological as it is physical. Pressure is perhaps the wrong word but it still comes down to the need to win against someone whose equal you ought to be, rather than the desire for something good and in a way surprising against a side who you know, nine times out of ten, are going to be better.

Just as the wins against such as Bradford and drawing with Wolves counted for nothing when it was trenches time in 2014, beating Bolton 3-1, as Carlisle did this season, carries very little value indeed when the same side goes to the group sitting 24th out of 24 and produces such a substandard performance.

Paul Simpson will be under no illusions about what's needed at Carlisle (Image: Richard Parkes)

It points, if we are to be completely bald about this, to United not being good enough in their present form: an injury-hampered side in need of considerable surgery to give themselves a punching chance.

And so, to winter. After next weekend, Carlisle face teams in 13th, 24th, 21st, 14th, 19th and 20th in the period up to and including January 7, which is the earliest date they could involve transfer window signings in their squad.

It is going to be, then, a fair test of stomach for those longer on the books, including those who failed miserably at the Select Car Leasing Stadium. A harvest of points is going to have to come from this run for the Blues to be in realistic touch. 

No two seasons are alike, needless to say, and little is gained by comparing 2013/14 with this one in any further way. That one fell apart from a reasonable position through two much meddling, far too many signings, a loss of identity and control; this one is more obviously ripe for change. A decade on, we also have a manager with a firm track record of lifting clubs called Carlisle United out of difficulty, as well as promoting the Blues’ wider interests and operating with general and high levels of credibility.

There will be little among our concerns that isn’t fully occupying the mind of Paul Simpson right now. Tuesday, he admitted, was an “eye-opener” but a manager of his calibre will have seen the full picture long before then.

He’ll know, as he has before, that United will need to scrap as well as play, battle as well as improve and, when crunch time comes again, beat the worst as well as live, now and again, with the best.