It is said that, when the Neil Sports Centre pitch was once full of holes and crying out for replacement, the case had to be made with surprising vehemence to those at the top of Carlisle United.

This was some years ago now, when the Blues were not backed by American millions and investing in improvements could not be so easily nodded through. All the same: ripping up an unsuitable and even unsafe artificial indoor pitch, putting a better one down, drawing in the reliable revenue this would bring…even a doofus could see the business merit in that, surely?

Truly, we are in different times now. At one of the last fans’ forums before the Piatak takeover, former co-owner Steven Pattison spoke wistfully about the transformation to Carlisle’s fan zone, recently established on the west side of Brunton Park.

“If you’d told me years ago that we’d have an ice cream van in the car park…” he said, before sitting back in his chair and weighing the appropriate scale of disbelief. Imagine that! Two scoops AND a flake, and THEN going to watch a 0-0 draw with Rochdale! Fantasy land.

The fan zone came before the takeover: a sign of the right influences inside United at last having their way – and not before time. It has been a great success, a credit to those who birthed the idea. Like many aspects of Brunton Park, it has now been leapt on by the Piataks as something that can be souped-up, improved, uplifted, enhanced.

That once largely dead area, a walkway for fans onto the stadium footprint, and a place for a few cars but little else, is now helping deliver something many had long hoped for when they thought of United. In itself it is an emblem of what the place is trying to become and, in many ways, already succeeding.

A hub for people, the community. This summer the fan zone has benefited from an enormous big screen and has been opened for Euro 2024 games at £2 a pop. The downside of this is that England’s performances can now be seen from quite some distance away.

The upsides are, though, many and tangible. Already the financial benefits of the initiative will have been felt. That screen may not have paid for itself yet – it’s only been a couple of weeks – but the potential is now clear, and Carlisle’s old ground is now recast as an open-air viewing area for big national footballing events, and who knows what else: something new, even unique in the city.

And it’s right there, at Brunton Park, the place of all our gritty memories and occasional successful ones with that team in blue. As it should be – the club as a touchstone, a magnet, a beacon, all those fine but relevant words. Somewhere people are pulled towards and will naturally gather.

As with everything else taking place in this summer of overhaul, it has required hard cash. But not exclusively. It needed the vision first, and the principle of what the place could turn into.

When those aspects come in hand with the money, doors can swing open. Seeing the place teeming with people has been one of this month’s most rewarding sights. It has been a business win but also a moral one too: the result of people realising how Brunton Park can flourish, can wear more interesting clothes, not display only its limitations, things we simply have to put up with.

It is aspects like this, rather than the pure matter of spending on the team, that suggests United, and by extension all of us, have lucked out with the Piataks. Putting on events for the people is a PR win of sorts, but not in the way that spending a lurid fortune on a striker would be.

Improving the referees’ changing rooms is not the way to give fans a sugar rush. Concentrating on the Warwick Road End disabled facilities won’t create many dancing headlines.

United's American owners have shown a focus on improving Brunton Park for supportersUnited's American owners have shown a focus on improving Brunton Park for supporters (Image: Barbara Abbott)

That these and other facility-based projects have been given priority shows the Piataks’ focus is right and grounded, is aimed at creating a legacy through the strengthening of assets and the day-to-day experience.

Making this point sometimes collides with the view that it’s only what happens on the pitch that matters. It seems surprisingly easy to counter that opinion by saying that it’s possible to focus on more than one area at once.

Indeed, when asked about the Piataks’ list of projects at the start of this summer, Paul Simpson said the number was approaching three figures. It does not take a leap of imagination to imagine these wealthy business people equipping the football side of the club with new funds and systems as well as upgrading the ground and identifying one area after another where other benefits can be applied and drawn. These things can happen at the same time.

“Chaos,” was Simpson’s word this week for how the summer at United has been so far. It was, though, delivered with as much of a smile as he could muster amid the pain of his knee operation. Carlisle has not seen a close-season like this: one of infrastructure developments everywhere you look, of a hundred jobs the Piataks want finished yesterday, of a million offshoot-tasks also to be addressed on top of the normal day-to-day work.

Good. About time. The era of stagnation, in this respect, is firmly over. If this isn’t something to celebrate emphatically, what is?

Well, success on the pitch, naturally. This remains the crucial unknown amid the scaffolding and the plant hire machinery. United have a steep 2023/24 decline to arrest, have a period of more pressure on Simpson than has been the case in all his previous Blues pre-seasons, have significant gaps yet to fill in their recruitment, notably in the departments of invention, threat, pace.

Time for those to come, of course, before a season of renewed hope but no guarantees. The footballing journey will test the Piataks differently, require different shades of drive and acumen. In all other departments, though, they’re kicking the Blues confidently into the present and the future. For which we can be genuinely excited, and glad.