Like it or not, this is Pressure Derby for Carlisle United

We all participate in this, not just spectate. It is not enough to ask about and comment on the pressure without acknowledging that the asking and commenting is part of that pressure too.

This is a communal business, not just the isolated experience of those picking the team and picking the passes whilst the rest of us look on dispassionately, fingers and thumbs close to our phone screens.

Yet to go the other way would be even more dishonest. To describe Carlisle United versus Barrow AFC as just another game, one more 90-minute experience with no greater weight than the others, would be inaccurate and disingenuous.

Pressure can’t be inflated if it isn’t there to start with. And it is there today. It is very much there, not just at 12.30pm but in these hours of build-up, when it feels 2024/25’s first ‘derby’, if it is that, has greater potential to take us to one of two very distinct places than any previous Blues-Bluebirds encounter.

Cue a 0-0 draw, then. Or maybe…something else. If we are to call this the Pressure Derby then that applies most heavily, most evidently, to the home side. Barrow would no doubt relish the idea of kicking Carlisle down, beating them in league football for the first time in 64 years and sending them further down the road of recrimination and who knows what else.

Stephen Clemence's Barrow are seeking a first league win over Carlisle since 1960 (Image: PA)

Stephen Clemence’s visitors are on two wins from two, rebuilding after a play-off near miss, already with the scalps of a recent Wembley finalist (Crewe) and a promotion favourite (Port Vale) by the middle of August.

Clemence is not saddled with long and changing opinion as his opposite number this afternoon, his team do not have United's recent past of regularly losing. If you were wanting to approach a game like this with the clearest mind, you’d want to be where Barrow are, on balance.

So – pressure, then. On Carlisle. Pointless ignoring it. It is not that defeating the south Cumbrians would be football’s ultimate prize, but what rides on it still feels heavy. One senses we are facing a game that is capable of producing a massive exhale or a shove further down a road nobody wants to explore this early into a season.

“If we lose to Barrow…” has been a sentence-opener of regular currency in the days since Gillingham. It refers to how this season could be shaped, if Carlisle are not careful, what it would mean for Paul Simpson’s job prospects and how it would examine the Piataks’ view on the footballing direction of their otherwise bright ownership enterprise.

We don’t want to go there, Barrow would delight in taking us there, so…pressure.

And yet…that p-word shouldn’t, in many departments, crush Carlisle. Their team, their set-up, is full of individuals who have faced pressure, had to handle and accommodate it, on larger scales than this. Charlie Wyke has carried goalscoring burdens at bigger clubs than United, as well as the much more serious burden of fighting for his life. And he is going to buckle at Carlisle v Barrow? Really?

Harry Lewis has played in front of expectant Valley Parade crowds every other week. Aaron Hayden had to play his part in sustaining the Hollywood dream at Wrexham. Archie Davies went to Ireland not knowing where his career was going, and having to battle for it.

Jon Mellish has taken a play-off penalty at Wembley (and how). Terell Thomas captains his country. Gavin Skelton has played in a Scottish Cup final. Paul Simpson, in football, in health, in life, has encountered pretty much the lot.

So perhaps the pressure is both generated and felt by us, the watchers, more than the doers. Yet it’s there from other angles too. It comes from the wider United environment, given that Brunton Park fully reopens today, more or less: new executive boxes, new electronic advertising, new fan zones, new facilities, new lounges – a stadium polished up for an exciting future.

Brunton Park will be fully reopened and expectant today (Image: Ben Holmes)

That demands a team to measure up, and a manager that can make it so. The danger of anti-climax is duly highlighted in LED. Lose, and ‘Own The North’ becomes less a catchy statement of intent than something for Barrow fans to laugh at on their way out of Brunton Park.

Win, and the Blues faithful can point to it with a little more defiance, a little more belief, than before.

Pressure comes in numbers too. Carlisle have not won a competitive home game since New Year’s Day – a painful record amounting to 11 games (one draw, ten defeats) in the face of which fans have, remarkably, remained strong. This said, Barrow haven't won away since December.

Also, United don’t all that often lose back-to-back games at the start of a league season, but when they do…alarm bells. It’s happened 11 times in their history, five of which have led to relegation, and all of which have pushed United to an average finishing position of 16th.

Simpson and his players are unlikely to pore over stats like this but they are still landmines that need to be sidestepped. Don’t let us go there either, Blues.

These do feel like thorny times, when finding a way back to a clean winning formula remains complicated. A thumping good day against rivals from down the road could blast United forward in the way everyone wants. It can deliver a riposte from Simpson against doubts, it can provide timely force for players and team.

On telly, with an early kick-off, it can make a good statement indeed should United find a way to rise to it, in front of an excited but also worried crowd, who’d be lying if they said they’re not a fair bit of both.

So there it is: the Pressure Derby. And if you think that’s a label that doesn’t help, you’re right again. But neither do a lot of things, and here we are: either ready to face it, or to pretend it isn’t real. Which, for the avoidance of doubt, it is. Enjoy.