Carlisle United 1-3 Reading: Jon Colman's big match verdict

All we know for certain is that it’s happening. How it happens remains to be determined. The job of managing the decline, which looked a fraction brighter at Burton, returned to the old gloom on Saturday.

There was, for the latest sorry Brunton Park afternoon, very little to encourage. Some fans trudged home through the puddles after Reading’s third goal. It was scored in the 57th minute and there could be no confidence of a fightback.

Most stayed until the bitter end, which was not quite as bitter as the start and the middle, but was still decidedly bitter. This was a day as miserably predictable for Carlisle as it was enjoyable and defiant for Reading, whose fans sang against their owner (the wretched Yongge), the EFL (for those points deductions) and even against Paul Simpson, for suggesting before the game that “repeat [financial] offenders” such as the Royals should be punished more firmly.

Jon Mellish attacks for Carlisle (Image: Barbara Abbott)

A team and fanbase with multiple grievances can be a dangerous beast, but only if they have the players to carry out the angry intentions. Reading certainly had those. In performance they were not so much affronted as simply too good for this to be a fair fight. Had they been more bloodthirsty, they could have doubled their three-goal return.

Burton was, then, the exception: an uncommonly direct team at this level who set Carlisle a problem they were able to solve. The norm in League One is more like Reading: progressive passing, decent pace, focused athleticism and proficient organisation.

United, it can be painfully concluded, do not tick the first three boxes and whatever Simpson attempts – and wherever you sit on the quality of that department right now – it is not going to cover up shortcomings so large in this third tier.

Harvey Knibbs (left) scores Reading's second (Image: Barbara Abbott)

Carlisle, as we’ve seen before, began with energy. Their opponents, as we’ve seen before, soon picked up the necessary threads and played football of a standard United could not meet. The Blues did not go under as humiliatingly as they had against Cambridge United here two weeks earlier but these are wafer-thin “positives” to take from such a thorough undressing.

Evidence that Carlisle could live with Reading was there none. Grounds to think they can step towards this manner and quality of football in order to become a League Two force in 2024/25, the same.

Much to be done before then, it’s fair to say. Simpson named an unchanged side following the Burton win but on a chilly, rainy afternoon, United did not get more of the same. Well, for three minutes they did: an inventive early free-kick, Taylor Charters feeding Jon Mellish, the defender raiding down the left, Reading scrambling to get his cross away from Luke Armstrong’s toes.

False dawn, episode 22. In the fifth minute, Reading dinked and ran their way around United on the right as Andy Yiadom’s cross flashed to safety. Minutes later, the Royals passed smoothly from the back and Kelvin Ehibhationham had a shot saved.

Jack Diamond tries his luck for Carlisle (Image: Barbara Abbott)

The finishing was so far ordinary but the visitors had still put more passes together than Burton had attempted all game. In their 4-2-3-1 system, Ruben Selles’s side were as composed and fluent as Carlisle were flat and clunky.

The Blues had battle but no boldness on the ball. They almost went behind when Harrison Neal was caught and Sam Smith streaked through to hit the post. Then they did – Smith peeling untracked onto Lewis Wing’s good, floated ball, and then turning it across the advancing Harry Lewis and in.

That old deflating feeling was back. Reading’s fans, noisy throughout, boomed out some songs about survival in spite of the points they’ve had shaved off amid Yongge’s refusal to meet HMRC demands and wage requirements. Selles’ team deserve a proper figurehead, a responsible owner, since they could fly at this level.

Harvey Knibbs gets up to clear for Reading (Image: Barbara Abbott)

Here, they mixed a passing game with further attempts to catch Carlisle over the top. United continued to be sterile, slow of thought and action, one-paced and outplayed from front to back. Ehibhationham almost caught them out another time and then, after Jack Diamond had cleared the bar with a rare Blues foray, it was two: Yiadom skinning Diamond, dropping the shoulder away from Mellish and Harvey Knibbs steering his cut-back home: swift, simple and, once more, levels above the Blues.

United’s remaining efforts were hopeful rather than crafted. Mellish and Armstrong tried to battle their way in, but Amadou Mbengue’s challenge was well timed. Wing then warmed Lewis’s palms from 25 yards, and then Carlisle’s keeper saved exceptionally from Femi Azeez.

Simpson sent Mellish into midfield, and as ever there was no denying his energy, his gusto. But United needed much more than that, and then Reading added a third: a corner coming back to Azeez, nobody going with Knibbs, his sliding finish going inside Lewis’s near post. Sigh.

For some home fans, it was quite enough: a movie they’d seen too many times. Those who remained saw Reading toy with a fourth before Carlisle flirted with a comeback: sub Jordan Gibson, who’d earlier shanked a corner into high heaven, got his next set-piece right and Mellish powered home his free-kick.

Sam Lavelle tries to fend off Femi Azeez (Image: Barbara Abbott)

That brought about closing stages of belated energy and better football from Carlisle, and Wing denied another sub, Dan Butterworth, a close-range goal. Yet it was, really, a paltry moment in terms of the overall significance. By now, we know the plot and we know the ending.

It remains as tough a watch as ever, and so the campaign to soften the landing continues, at Charlton next weekend: a search for scraps and little more in this stark and perishing campaign.