Carlisle United players: prove you're as good as we think

“You’ve never won anything fairly – you’ve won it by cheating,” he went on. We can ignore that bit when it comes to Carlisle United. But the bit in the first paragraph? Well…maybe there’s something there.

What have you done for us lately? That’s the question that needs to be answered by all those wearing the blue shirts today. An assumption is gathering speed at Brunton Park yet it needs the present-day evidence to catch up with it now.

It is that Carlisle have a successful squad which was only hindered by Paul Simpson: a collection of high-flying talent waiting to be unleashed by a more open-minded head coach. 

“We know we have good players. We have the talent now. We have the players in the squad that should be winning,” owner Tom Piatak said this week. “We brought in Charlie Wyke, Jordan Jones, Aaron Hayden, Terell Thomas….these are quality players.”

He is right – these are good players on record, good players on repute. Yet not, collectively, good players on up-to-the-minute performance and results. Either this changes, now Simpson has gone and a new regime waits to be ushered in, or United will have more problems than they and even Piatak currently believe.

This is where the medals, the past statistics and accolades, need to be binned. Carlisle do not need the CV of Charlie Wyke but the 2024 version that can prove a telling blend of experience and goalscoring wiles.

United do not need the memory of Luke Armstrong nuisancing them in a Harrogate Town shirt, but a 2024 equivalent that can prove prolific for the Blues.

Players such as Luke Armstrong must deliver more than they managed under Simpson (Image: Richard Parkes)

Wyke is yet to score this season, even if these remain early days, while record signing Armstrong is yet to start a league game and has three goals in 26 appearances overall. This sort of outcome is either on Simpson and his departed backroom team entirely, or there is some broader and more exacting judgement up ahead.

It will be determined, be sure, by what we are about to see. Are these players good enough for United’s lofty aims (Piatak said the promotion goal has not been revised by their poor League Two start) or are they not, in the context of their ambitions, all that?

If the latter turns out to be the case then, sure, that is another stick with which to beat Simpson, who recruited a great many of the current squad, but it would also train judgement on other areas.

Have United played it as wisely as they think in the transfer market, with a recruitment department now bolstered by data? Are they a group of talented and proven performers simply in need of renewed direction?

We would certainly like to think so but along the way there must also be responsibility within those blue and white jerseys. You do not, as some of this squad has, lose 30 of 46 league games, then five of six in all competitions at the start of the next campaign, and put all of it on the boss and none of it on yourself.

You do not embrace the “step change” world on offer, produce results and performances that do not live up to it, and offload the entirety of the blame onto the bloke who everyone knows will eventually carry the can, whether he’s a club legend or just another boss passing through.

Carlisle, to some extent, must have assumed they were hiring some sure things with players like Wyke – a striker, and now captain, with the record that could prop up a team even in struggling times, whose class would cut through any chaos.

This afternoon at Valley Parade would be a good and urgent time for more of that to appear, for he and others to show they can be part of a more vibrant and constructive state of affairs. Plainly how United have been playing, latterly, under Simpson has not unlocked the best of what they have.

How good that best is, particularly in Carlisle’s precarious early-season position, is a question that needs a high-quality answer. Some of this can always come from within, as well as from the person or people setting the tactics and drilling the shape.

There was no more turbulent season in a squad sense over the last decade or so than 2014/15, when Keith Curle inherited Graham Kavanagh’s squad and set about unsettling and reshaping it.

One or two presumed sure things found themselves in exile. This was not a comfortable spectacle and the style with which it was executed still jars. Yet even in the most awkward of times another individual or two managed to rise.

Take Danny Grainger, for instance: signed by Kavanagh that summer and an early lightning rod for supporter criticism as results further tanked. In the trying days of autumn, though, Grainger came through as a player of durable and reliable character.

Danny Grainger emerged as a positive figure in trying times - others now need to emulate him (Image: Barbara Abbott)

Before too long he had the captain’s armband. Five years later he walked away from Brunton Park an immensely respected figure from 197 appearances and a good many happier times.

The uncertain interim period now is a good environment for Carlisle’s new touchstones to appear, and to inspire others. These early weeks have not been without their bright contributions – Archie Davies, for instance, has been a prominent contributor, while if Dominic Sadi brings Tuesday’s electric skill to the league then who knows what is possible? – but more can now come forward, show they are as good as many of us and the owner think, determine with solidity of performance that the “talent”, as Piatak declared, is very much there.

The road to more comfortable times is rarely a straight one and expecting sudden transformation probably bogus, but considering how little those players have said about Simpson since he left, one presumes they are not shedding many tears on the matter.

In which case: over to you lads. And it’s not what you’ve done before, not why we’ve signed you, but what you can come up with now and next. A great deal hangs on the result.