Carlisle United: After statement signings, things must click

Jones, a winger of evident quality and experience, ought to raise the Blues’ level. A three-year deal is another statement, too: one of confidence, of resources, of a commitment not just to building a better squad but retaining it.

These are all good things and, if progress came purely down to that, we could all sit back, light a cigar (but maybe not in a pub garden eh, Sir Keir) and watch United rise.

Yet the harder part must also be negotiated: the part that has not come so smoothly at Brunton Park since the Piatak takeover. Those leading recruitment at the club these days might scoff at the idea of signing players being the easy bit – even with a “step-change budget” there have been challenges – but it is undeniable that the owners’ wealth has removed a certain number of obstacles.

What the Piataks and their money can’t yet do is make this a team that clicks, that finds its groove, that makes performances like Milton Keynes Dons 3 Carlisle United 0 relics of an old, transitional era, rather than agonisingly familiar experiences.

That is, needless to say, down to Paul Simpson and his staff, whose task it is to find a better and more reliable way than has been the case since the increasingly bad days of League One and the decidedly mixed early ones of this League Two adventure.

Any expectation that Jones the “statement signing” will single-handedly put Carlisle on a brighter path should be resisted. We have been here before, very recently and recurringly, and not yet have the results vindicated the idea that recruitment is all.

It was only in January, after all, that United invested a record deal into what one might easily term a 'statement signing'; a striker previously coveted by Wrexham and who might be on that Hollywood journey now had the Welsh club not been lax with the paperwork on deadline day.

Today, Luke Armstrong is simply fighting to regain a starting place in a Carlisle team and squad where other ‘statement signings’ also exist.

United have made other 'statement signings' in the recent past but are still waiting for a successful run (Image: Richard Parkes)

What, for instance, was the six-figure spending on a highly-regarded League Two goalkeeper in January if not a statement signing? Going to a club of Bradford City’s size, taking their number one who had, not too long before, been in the sights of other third-tier suitors…that’s a strong statement, clearly.

With Harry Lewis in goal, United have not yet achieved maximum security, not that the MK Dons result was particularly on him. Charlie Wyke was, until this week and perhaps still, the summer’s statement signing, a striker of strong repute who is awaiting his first goal of the season. Behind him, Carlisle have a midfielder and captain they took from a direct rival last term, another international defender and captain who was playing in League One regularly, a midfielder on a Premier League club’s books at the time, a former League One club’s player of the season, a defender who captained a League Two promotion-winning side at a young age...

Whether or not you regard Josh Vela, Terell Thomas, Harrison Neal, Dylan McGeouch, Sam Lavelle and others statement signings, nothing like that or somewhere in the middle, their CVs at least implied an upskilling of the Blues – perhaps more evident in some departments than others, but still in theory a lifting of the squad.

Now Jones joins the ranks, making more irresistible than ever the message: now make it click, Simmo. Make it work. If this is still a staging point in the evolution of a team, that does not mean a struggle such as that witnessed a week ago, injuries notwithstanding, is anything close to par at League Two level, where United are hardly in a minority when it comes to a moment of overhaul.

Recruitment, now we’re at August 31, has done its bit. Now it’s down to coaching, gelling, working all this into a team that can play and gather momentum, not one that is swept off the park as clinically as it was at the cavernous Stadium MK and in too many games before.

The outcome must be more whole, more complete, better fashioned than it has been after any amount of ‘statement signings’ so far. There is pressure upon today’s game, Paul Simpson has admitted, but no more than exists every week, he also argued. Unfolding events against Tranmere Rovers might determine how people regard that, one way or another.

If Jones does prove a catalyst, individually and in the wider group, it would be highly welcome and far from the first occasion when a signing has turned out to be extremely timely for manager and team.

One or two supporters have speculated that Jones might have a dynamic impact akin to that of Michael Bridges in 2005/06. That comparison does not feel the most on the button given that, pre-Bridges, Carlisle were already a team in form. Before Bridges’ October debut against Oxford United, they’d won three in four, Karl Hawley had scored six in two and Simpson was guiding his team towards League Two’s upper reaches, a season after promotion.

Now the window is closed, Paul Simpson must work United into more reliable shape (Image: Richard Parkes)

Bridges provided a high degree of gloss and indeed generational sparkle to something that was already good, making it better. A more telling comparison, should all go well this time, might be Vincent Pericard in the autumn of 2009: a signing that saved Greg Abbott’s job, introduced new colour, positivity and form to a side not blessed with either, gave them the kind of platform they’d long been craving after a period of struggle and despond.

Alas, the benefits of Pericard only lasted three months (though Abbott, as a result, was seldom at such risk again for years), whereas any pluses from Jones could be felt for years. If that does happen then we will be into a revived era of Simpson. If it does not then it will tell us for all time that ‘statement signings’ aren’t everything if you don’t have the schemes to make a collective statement too.

That is the question that looms after the first Piatak summer window. “We think we’re one of the best teams in the league,” argued club captain Lavelle after the MK Dons defeat, and the time for reality to start joining up with that lofty and as yet highly unproven idea is very much upon us.