Football moves quickly, episode three million. Eleven months after that blissful day at Wembley, just four of the Carlisle United players who started the game are still at the club.
They are also now a division below the team they defeated at the national stadium. Winning the play-offs was, it turned out, simply a ticket to slide.
And also the precursor to an exodus, down the line. United’s retained and released decisions at the end of a hollow 2023/24 League One season take a further scythe to the XI who gave supporters one of the merriest days they can remember.
Gone: Tomas Holy, penalty-saving keeper, charismatic Czech. Gone: Paul Huntington, captain, defender, upstanding Cumbrian. Gone: Corey Whelan, Mr Dependable. With others having departed previously, only Jon Mellish, Callum Guy, Alfie McCalmont and Jack Armer remain from Simpson’s starting team sheet against Stockport County.
Another from that day’s substitute ranks, Jordan Gibson, adds to the departures. Failure, which 23/24 has unquestionably been, can do that to a team. And when the manager’s as safe as Paul Simpson currently remains, it is those in the ranks who carry the can at this point.
As United move into another rebuilding phase – both in personnel and, one hopes, culture – one strong thread runs through these decisions and more. Simpson must be right about most of them, and what comes next. Any slack, any imbalance in the good and bad calls, and one of Carlisle’s legendary managers will be in peril.
That much has been implied by the club’s owners, the Piataks, who are backing Simpson to oversee this overhaul but expect results at the end of it. Results are what United have not had from August to April. Instinct, then, says that the eight-man outgoings just announced must only be the start of it.
Carlisle still have 18 senior pros on the books for next season, some of whom you would prefer not to hang your hat on for an immediate rebound in League Two. “Ruthlessness”, Simpson’s watchword for Monday’s decisions, is easier to apply to those out-of-contract. Yet the more complicated matter of ousting other unwanted players needs scrutiny and sensitive yet decisive action now.
Otherwise, the risk is of a hangover by numbers, a majority who have taken Carlisle to one of the worst seasons in their history expected suddenly to become a winning team – yes, one hopefully supported by some major arrivals, but still a group who have only known losing for their recent time in blue.
There would be no “sentiment” with those released, Simpson had intimated, and that much is apparent, if in most cases straightforward.
Huntington is perhaps the man to attract most of that s-word, and the most debate in his departure. To some supporters, the 36-year-old Cumbrian has been fatally ignored by Simpson for too much of 2023/24, his defensive strength and organisational bearing oddly missing from a back line conceding by the bucketload.
To others – and, seemingly, the manager himself – Huntington was no longer a forbidding figure at the back, certainly not in the athletically mobile level of League One, not totally fit enough for long enough either, Simpson has made clear.
The Carlisle-born defender leaves, at least, with clear respect. His outstanding part in 2022/23’s promotion convincingly rehabilitated his image in the eyes of those Blues fans who found it hard to forgive his infamous antics with Leeds United in his professional youth. As United held on to go up for the first time in 17 years, Huntington was their kingpin, a local lad ushering younger colleagues over the line.
His place in history, as a promotion-winning United skipper, is permanent. It feels a shame someone of his standing and gravitas no longer has a place with the Blues. Simpson’s task is to import a commanding defender in his place that does not leave anyone pining for Huntington, and by consequence picking up another stick with which to beat the manager.
In the other senior cases, Gibson is the only other about which disgareement might occur. Last autumn, the midfielder was terrific: a skilful player seemingly rising to the level, making his home in League One, often carrying United, creativity-wise.
He was, in the event, a victim of a January revamp that did not improve results, and of Simpson's evident doubts about what Gibson brings in other areas of the game, on and off the field.
His next destination will be the most fascinating of all those let go on Monday. The former Bradford City man, we should remember, performed well in a hard 2021/22 season to help keep United up. His impact was undulating last season but he was there at Wembley, off the bench and helping fashion Carlisle’s comeback. This season he gave fans some high moments and a bundle of frustrations, not least the Botchergate night-out controversy which served up a sour ending to something that threatened – but only that – to be very good indeed.
Again, Carlisle have lacked on a scheming front for too long. Their XI last season lacked pace and invention, consistent chance-creation. Without Gibson – and the longer-departed Owen Moxon – there are vacancies for players with craft. Again, Simpson and his recruitment staff must fill them well.
Elsewhere, no alarms, no surprises. Sean Maguire always seemed a model pro but his goals output in one United season was desperately disappointing for someone stepping down from the Championship. Josh Emmanuel appeared to have some of the tools to be a good right-sided contributor, but not often did they appear all at once.
Whelan deserves a solid handshake as he disappears, a defender who had the character to remain through hard times and hold his ground in better ones. That speaks well to his reliability, right up to the point where Simpson no longer wanted to rely on him.
His exile from the squad sheet from January, amid attempts to convince him to settle his contract and leave, was a patently uncomfortable scenario, particularly when Carlisle’s defence did not improve, and when mid-season recruitment in that area delivered nothing of note.
As for Tomas Holy…emotion may attach itself to the big Czech, who cut a wistful figure in his goodbyes on the pitch a week or so ago and was a magnetic character in the good times, but releasing a third-choice goalkeeper should not unsettle the horses.
This is another area where the moving on, the replacing, must simply prove better. The jury is still considering that particular verdict given the performances of Harry Lewis since his January arrival. Holy was a characterful No1 in 2022/23 before starting the League One campaign with some mediocre showings, yet what happened after his removal was not particularly reassuring either.
Jokull Andresson soon played his way back out of the team, chaotically. Holy returned but diminished, as though knowing he was only back in by default. A badly error-prone winter spell was terminal, as Simpson promoted Gabe Breeze then bought Bradford’s Lewis.
Breeze, the young Cumbrian, had the composed air of a young keeper who deserved backing, and a new contract duly came. Lewis, now first-choice, has not stemmed the goals and, if not mistake-strewn, has not yet brought the air of dominant authority Carlisle need in their last line of defence.
Once more – a big summer, a good start, is needed there. On the younger side of things, loan spells for Max Kilsby and Kai Nugent appeared to have benefited those aspiring players but not to the point Carlisle want to back their potential any longer.
For Nugent it is a quick cut after one year as a professional which he has spent learning the trade under Peter Murphy at Annan Athletic. He is now subject to a more ruthless call than Anton Dudik, the Ukrainian wildcard who is the only one of the out-of-contract group to be offered something.
The rewards of retaining Dudik whilst jettisoning a Nugent remain to be seen. This is not the front line area where a manager’s judgement will be most strongly examined, but the fates of both next season will still be revealing. Dudik, Simpson has stressed, has only been offered a development contract and remains a "punt". Meanwhile, Kilsby, a good young pro, has ample games under his belt from two seasons with Annan and Queen of the South as he picks up the challenge of proving United wrong elsewhere.
Good luck to him, and indeed all of them told to take their careers to a place that isn’t Carlisle. And good luck to Simpson and United too, in the campaign to show Monday’s actions were the right ones, that more right ones are soon in coming, and that this team can now be salvaged, improved and refitted with so much of what was missing in League One. Anything less, and the slide will only feel greasier.
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