What did we learn from Carlisle United's defeat to Oxford?

1 LETTING THEM IN

It is grimly in keeping with the direction of Carlisle United’s season that, the moment they invest in a new No1 and give him his debut, they concede three at home for the first time in 2023/24.

No blame attached to Harry Lewis for Oxford’s goals, it should be said. But Saturday still emphasised that Carlisle’s difficulties were unlikely to be patched up instantly, however proactive they were able to be in the market.

Defensively, United carried a creditable record through the first months of the season but recent times have taken their numbers south.

Oxford celebrate their third goal - the 41st United have conceded in the league so far (Image: Ben Holmes)

It’s now 41 conceded in 27 games, and only one side (bottom team Fleetwood Town) have a worse total than that.

For all the scrutiny on the front end of Carlisle’s team for most of term, things at the back have notably declined over the winter. In their last nine games alone they’ve shipped 20 goals.

And then there’s that clean sheet run – 21 league games without one now, the worst sequence by a Blues team since 1974/75, when United had the reasonable mitigation of playing against top-flight sides every week.

None of these numbers may come by way of great revelation, but they point to clear aspects that will have to improve dramatically and suddenly if survival is to be anything other than a pipe dream.

2 LEAD TIME

“We didn't get ourselves ahead, which is something which we've really struggled to do this season,” said Paul Simpson.

He’s not wrong. If there was a feeling of inevitability as Carlisle started well against Oxford but couldn’t, for all their energies, score a goal, it’s for good reason.

We’ve had 27 league games now and the Cumbrians have only scored the opener in four of them: against Fleetwood Town (twice), Shrewsbury Town and Lincoln City.

Alfie McCalmont scored a consolation - but United are seldom able to take the lead in games (Image: Ben Holmes)

When United have won games, normally they’ve had to come from behind to do so (against Bolton Wanderers, Burton Albion and Port Vale, the 2-0 win over Shrewsbury the anomaly in this respect).

Five of their eight draws have been comeback affairs too. More often than not, alas, they’ve conceded first and then gone on to suffer further.

Carlisle have experienced being in the lead in League One this season for just 111 of an available 2,430 minutes – a measly 4.5 per cent.

By contrast they’ve been in arrears for 864 minutes – a hefty 35.6 per cent, more than a third of all their playing time.

Small wonder United, in good spells or bad, simply look unaccustomed to the idea either of getting in front or staying there. Dealing with this blockage, whether in psychology or individual/collective aptitude, will determined how close they can make this survival attempt over the remaining 19 games.

3 MORE THE MERRIER?

Not usually, when it comes to football. Even in this era of bigger squads it’s not difficult to correlate the amount of players you use with the general direction of your form.

In securing promotion last season, Paul Simpson used 28 players across Carlisle’s full League Two season.

This time, we’re not even two-thirds through and the Blues have gone past that number.

Harry Lewis was the 30th player used in the league this season by United (Image: Barbara Abbott)

Harry Lewis’s debut on Saturday meant United have fielded 30 players already in their 27 League One fixtures.

There will be more to come, too, if Simpson has his way in the transfer market.

It’s a simple but surefire way of recognising that the search for answers has been long, constant and so far, in terms of results, unsuccessful, on top of the injuries Carlisle have also had to contend with.

Portsmouth, the leaders, have needed only 24 players so far – not a gaping gap from Carlisle’s figures, but still a direction that points towards the sort of consistency, and identity, that a team struggling for its life often lacks.

We are not, thankfully, in the world of chaos United found themselves in during their last League One season, 2013/14, when the Blues somehow required 47 players to fulfil their 46 games: more than one new pro per game, on average.

No marks, though, are given for sticking with things that, over time, simply aren’t proving up to the job. Nobody in Simpson’s position, given what we’ve seen since August, would stick rather than twist at the opening of the window.

Let us simply hope the next changes deliver some sort of short-term hit, however much that total tots up further, however hard it remains to throw your hat over a likely Blues XI week by week.

4 WHAT’S LEFT TO TRY?

It is easy, in times of struggle, to conclude that a manager is just too stubborn or short-sighted to see obvious solutions that are sitting under his nose.

No doubt there are some out there who feel Paul Simpson is ignoring some clear and untried answers right now.

How many different and fresh combinations could the Blues boss have attempted, though?

Is Joe Garner best used from the start or the bench right now? (Image: Barbara Abbott)

In attack, there is perhaps now a case for seeing who would best dovetail with Luke Armstrong, who’s been served scraps in his first two games.

Would he benefit from working in the shadows created by Joe Garner? Would Ryan Edmondson’s energy and pace create a few profitable gaps for the record signing?

Is Dan Butterworth best deployed as a roaming forward, as he was on Saturday, or more consistently wide?

Are the theoretical drawbacks of selecting Jordan Gibson (no doubt exemplified by Exeter’s first, untracked goal the previous weekend) balanced out decisively by his evident creative powers?

Is Jack Armer now so far behind Jack Robinson that a case for giving him another run is out of the immediate question? Is Paul Huntington, at such time he returns to favour, going to chase United’s defensive ills away?

Maybe, maybe not. The uncomfortable truth, though, is that if something was that simple, someone as methodical as Simpson would surely have tried it by now.

The reality is closer to what many feel about Carlisle’s 2023/24: that their promotion, ahead of schedule and on a small budget, made building a squad to last in League One fiercely hard and Simpson, to be scrupulously fair, simply hasn’t had the tools to build one so far.

It has, instead, been a scramble to do so on the job, and the high general standard of opposition in the third tier has given United no room for error along the way.

Dumping every last piece of this on the manager is surely too basic. A broader appreciation of Carlisle’s struggles, shortfalls and prospects is needed even when their position is stressful and chronic.