It was the evening of Friday, August 29, 2014, and the mood was light in Carlisle United’s team hotel. If anyone had told you that a sacking was coming, you’d have thought they'd picked the wrong place.
It was one of the last days when it was common for club and media to be in the same pre-match accommodation. Around the table, in the bar, sat manager Graham Kavanagh and various members of staff, as well as a couple of hangers-on (hello).
There was good discussion, a friendly spirit, a story or two and a pint or three, and absolutely no hint whatsoever that the sky was going to fall in about 17 hours later.
Okay, there had been a degree of build-up. Carlisle had failed to win any of their first five games but, after back-to-back draws, there was a little hope that things, after a considerable summer overhaul, might be settling.
And then…Cambridge. Cambridge happened with crushing force. A 5-0 defeat that could have been worse, and discussions over Kavanagh’s future were being held by the hierarchy even before the smoke had settled at the Abbey Stadium.
A couple of days later, he was gone, to nobody's surprise. Losing so badly, so incompetently, was deemed unforgivable. Carlisle then continued into the hellscape of a League Two relegation battle having just come down from League One.
The campaign that unfolded was, let’s be honest, brutal. Keith Curle found a way to keep United in the Football League but nobody would confuse what we saw throughout as good, or progressive, or anything other than excruciating and stressful.
Things were set, more or less, in that first month. For all the talk of it being a long season, in reality it can be a very short one. The vibes of August set the music for the rest of it.
Not always, but often. Last season, Carlisle began by taking two points from a possible 15. That average did not greatly differ for the rest of term. The previous campaign, eight points from the first 15 produced a points average that held pretty much exactly until the end.
2021/22 saw a mediocre start that tipped into crisis before a late revival, and their points average from 46 games was only marginally smaller than that of the first month. Other examples – 2016/17, unbeaten start, play-off finish. 2013/14, leaking like a colander, relegation. 1994/95, multiple August wins, runaway champions. 1988/99, draw after draw, mid-table ending.
1985/86, no wins until mid-September, relegation. And if there are anomalies along the way, such as 1973/74’s unimpressive start followed by promotion, the following season’s historic beginning and then the fall, and 2008/09’s fragile false dawn leading to a last-day scrape, more frequently things tend to be guided by what happens immediately the curtain comes up.
In other words, Carlisle surely need to start 2024/25 well, or at the very least competitively, since the opposite can lead to a spiral effect which can take patience clean out of the equation no matter the summer dealings, no matter the supposed new principles.
Right now the feeling among supporters appears one of concern, not simply based on the shoddy performances at Gateshead and Rochdale but because of what they follow: a 30-defeats-from-46 season and the weariness that came with it.
Expecting a sudden turnaround, and a successful team to surge back in front of us straight away, always felt a stretch. Paul Simpson acknowledged this a few days ago when he said an “overnight” transformation in terms of a new winning culture was unlikely.
“It’s going to have to evolve, and that’s what we’re working to try and do,” he said.
The Piataks, United’s owners, have so far given Simpson and the footballing operation the gift of time. How much patience the current evolution is to be granted will, one imagines, be at the mercy of immediate results given what Tom Piatak snr said earlier this summer about how “disappointing” it would be if things don’t work out, and that, in such circumstances, “things would have to change”.
None of this will be revelatory to those involved in preparing United for a new campaign. All are seasoned in the game, all will have experienced directly, one time or another, how the sport can feel cold and callous at times, how a piece of string felt to be long can sometimes shorten before your eyes.
This is a long way of saying that Carlisle could a) do with showing something brighter in their last friendly against Stockport County this afternoon, but most importantly b) put strong enough performances together against Gillingham, Barrow, MK Dons and Tranmere Rovers in order for things to remain on the level, or higher.
It does not look the easiest start, given United’s record at Gillingham and the Kent club’s status among the favourites (MK Dons likewise). Yet there can be no expectation of lots of grace if Carlisle don’t show at least some degree of being able to equal or better what is offered by sides who finished 12th, eighth, fourth and 16th in League Two last season.
The false nature of pre-season friendlies mitigates, to a degree, what we’ve witnessed against sides in the upper-to-middle region of the National League over the last seven days. As much as it’s been concerning, that dissolves if Carlisle turn up in a big way at Priestfield.
That day, the plan needs to look good, feel good. Cohesion must show itself in Kent and be even more visible by the time autumn breezes its way in. Whatever questions exist at this stage, August’s answers will illuminate, and fast.
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