What we learned from Carlisle United 2-3 Fleetwood Town

1 NUMBERS SHAME

You have probably already read that this is Carlisle’s worst start to a league season for a decade…

…and that this is the first time in their Football League history that they’ve lost seven of their first eight games of a season...

If you’re of a particularly masochistic persuasion – or want yet more data to underline the nature of the job facing the new head coach – plenty more is available.

Try this sequence for size: 1, 3, 4, 1, 4, 3, 3, 2, 3, 1, 3, 0, 2, 3.

Another one goes in... (Image: Ben Holmes) This one’s for home fans in particular. It’s the run of goals conceded, per league game, at Brunton Park in 2024.

At an average of 2.4 per game…this is what the faithful have had to put up with in the calendar year to date.

In league games in that time, Carlisle have won two, drawn one and lost 11.

Truly, the surprise is not that Saturday’s home crowd had dropped another thousand from the previous one. It’s that numbers (7,090) are still so high.

How long, even considering the remarkable off-field improvements under the Piataks, can this faith hold in the same way? Without a significant positive impact under a new boss, we will surely find out.

2 EMPTY SPACES

However United’s caretakers set the team up to play, the way Fleetwood got in for their first two goals – and on a few other occasions too – exposed it.

It cannot be easy for interim managers to try and find a new way for a listing side. Carlisle’s dreadful momentum and losing ways are not in any significant way at the doors of Steven Rudd, Mark Birch and Jamie Devitt.

The trio have changed formations and shuffled the team but a more reliable way of playing has not yet emerged – and Saturday’s first half appeared to set things back further.

It did not help that United were, at key moments, individually slow on the ball and at the mercy of a sharp-pressing Fleetwood side.

There was, when they coughed up possession carelessly, very little margin for error given the vacant spaces suddenly left as a result of their set-up.

The accent on attacking from midfield, other than with Dylan McGeouch, meant not enough in terms of security was there when Fleetwood sped back at United, particularly with their central defenders having split by way of the Blues' attempted passing game.

United's average player positions against Fleetwood (Image: WhoScored.com)

The above graphic from WhoScored.com also serves to show the distances Fleetwood managed to exploit, be that between United’s defenders at a point of turnover, or from defence to midfield to attack.

That cluster of bodies along the middle, in the average position graph, is not that of a side in fullest command of the pitch, to say the least. Fleetwood’s movement and angles were much more varied and both their build-up and counterpunching was smarter than United’s.

They certainly sensed Carlisle’s weakness and soft structural underbelly early on, truly went for it and their rewards were as clearly earned as was United’s punishment.

3 NEW YEAR RESOLUTION

One would like to be a fly on the wall when the Piataks, in their most private moments, talk amongst themselves about how some of their money has been spent.

United’s American owners have always been generous in their assessment of last season’s struggles.

Tom Piatak has tended to agree that Carlisle started the season without the necessary resources to be competitive in League One, and that their fall to relegation could in part be explained by this shortfall.

All the same, they did load Paul Simpson and his staff with renewed spending power in January and the impact of that particular period of recruitment was not reflected well by Saturday’s events.

Luke Armstrong was again a sub - along with some of his fellow January signings (Image: Ben Holmes)

In the mid-term window, Carlisle invested in Harry Lewis, Luke Armstrong, Harrison Neal, Josh Vela and Georgie Kelly as permanent signings.

Only one of that quintet – Lewis – started Saturday’s game. Three of those “step change” additions were substitutes and the other was out injured.

These were, do not forget, players brought in with the aim of making United more robust and with a better punching chance in League One.

That they are now dispensable in terms of a struggling League Two starting XI – Armstrong, the record signing, has still not started in the league this term – shines even less forgiving light on the shopping Carlisle did in the winter.

Many things can be sudden victims of upheaval after managerial change, but return on investment, right now, is looking meagre indeed – more evidence than ever that it’s not how much you’ve got, it’s how smartly, and to what plan, you spend it.

And if it goes wrong, or is significantly short of the mark, you’re left with more than one tab to pick up.

4 IN ARREARS

Carlisle have spent most of the season losing, that much we know, and that doesn’t just apply to the results themselves.

It is also to do with the patterns of the games, and the fact that United have known positions of lead or parity for a pathetically small amount of the overall picture.

In no small way because of the early goals they are consistently conceding (on Saturday they shipped in the tenth minute), United have been behind for 66 per cent of the entire time they’ve been on the pitch in league games already this season.

That’s 355 minutes out of a total 540.

Behind...again (Image: Ben Holmes) They’ve been in the lead for a meagre 10 per cent of that time, and been level for 24 per cent of things.

So, they are accustomed to being in a losing position for two-thirds of all the time they are on a football pitch.

This highlights the problem that United are not even making things competitive, or precarious, for opponents for any stretch of time. Other than against Barrow, Carlisle have not been ahead in any of their other games despite scoring in four of them.

When people talk about a losing culture, and losing habits, stats and patterns like this provide the cold and hard evidence. Shifting the Blues, psychologically, into a place where they are more in tune with saving and sustaining games, never mind winning them, is going to be a real task for the new head coach.