Carlisle United 2 Grimsby Town 3: A fortress, Mike Williamson wants this to be. At least the first letter is firmly in place. In truth, it never left, the most common part of the Brunton Park vocabulary for well over a year still the first thing that leaves your tongue when watching Carlisle United.
This was not a game to swear at the complete desolation of a Blues performance, which has been too often the case in the recent past. But it was certainly an afternoon to reach for the profanities at the way things turned from good to bad, and how some uncomfortable realities popped back out of the box.
And truly, if Carlisle, given their superiority at half-time, even given their position by the 80th minute, can lose games like this, then the road to better times is going to be complicated indeed. Which, even accounting for the fun of the previous week’s win at Swindon Town, we already knew.
Much work lies ahead, then. Again, no great revelation here. This was a defeat suffered by a side that does not yet know confidently how to win, but is on much more fluent terms with defeat. At Swindon, United gained and developed a lead but here they failed totally to restrain Grimsby’s fightback and the visitors’ ability to change things up, to keep biting at and unsettling a home team searching uncertainly for a new tone.
Carlisle’s approach after the break was from the don’t-lose menu rather than the do-win chart. Understandable, perhaps, when not losing has been…a bit of a problem area. Yet when Grimsby smelled this, United were not adaptable enough. And while both the visitors’ late goals were not, on the surface, about style of play, about passing and principles and tactics all those things the Blues are hoping to improve, they were very much the consequence of one side standing still and another making their move.
United, without question, switched off when David Artell’s men struck, particularly for Harvey Rodgers’ winner, the defender glancing home a cross after a short corner which Carlisle had failed to anticipate. And that is no doubt the result of jaded minds – yet it also reeked of a previously bright performance turned passive.
How could this have been intercepted? Williamson may not have been overburdened with dynamic possibilities on the bench but things seemed to be calling for an earlier overhaul than that which came with a double 87th-minute substitution.
The changes we, as spectators, might have made, never get tested, never fail. There is no promise that shifting things sooner would have put United back in control. All we can say is that leaving things as they were did not have the desired effect either. “It was down to that fatigue and our concentration levels, and we just lost that aggression and desire to do the simple things cleanly and clinically,” Williamson said.
As such, United remain in the lower reaches of League Two instead of climbing into the middle rump, which looked on at half-time. The first 45 minutes were genuinely excellent: Carlisle positive in their play, well worth their 2-1 lead and people starting to wonder if things under the new boss were taking effect in an immediately transformative way.
We should not have let that assumption in. "It's a new chapter in the history of the club..." said the man on the public address system as Williamson, all in black, took his place in the technical area, to widespread applause. His Carlisle, to begin with, showed intent and endeavour. They could have had a penalty in the second minute, when Charlie Wyke seemed to be pulled down, and that was just the first of Seb Stockbridge’s decisions that had the Blues and their fans reaching for the hipflask.
United progressed confidently from there – confident in their patience, then confident in their working of the ball forward and wide. Their eyes were up as they broke, in the 11th minute, through Jordan Jones and Dominic Sadi, and won a corner. Cameron Harper’s delivery was good, Sam Lavelle’s near-post run was proactive, his finish firm and true.
Lovely stuff. Jake Eastwood, the Grimsby keeper, then ended up in some serious bother in his own net and it was a sad sight indeed watching him stretchered off. Seb Auton, a teenage rookie, came on in his place. Carlisle remained on the front foot, Wyke bobbling a shot on target, Sadi closed down after a sweeping move, Harrison Biggins covering turf, winning possession, turning United repeatedly back at Grimsby.
Even when they conceded against the run of things – Luca Barrington running through to convert a long, central pass that United failed to intercept – they soon found their footing again, Sadi arriving to put away Archie Davies’ tidy cross after Grimsby had been pulled over to Carlisle’s right side, exposing space the other way.
This was good, very good, Williamson’s United rolling with a punch and then throwing a firm haymaker back. A couple of flurries at the other end needed attentive work by Lavelle and Harry Lewis, but that duly came and late in the half Sadi found space three times to test Auton. Jordan Jones, in another move, lured Tyrell Warren into a foul with the simplest of bait. Were Carlisle...swaggering somewhat?
Deceptive, deceptive. Grimsby got into their space after the break, made things patchier, more combative, more aggressive, more irritable. Lewis did well to deny Donovan Wilson after the flag questionably stayed down, but Carlisle failed to find their mojo again.
Too often, from here, their play from the back and the middle lacked the same poise, and their play from the back developed splinters under pressure. Biggins, with an overconfident, outside-of-the-foot pass, helped Grimsby onto the attack and this sort of thing became more common from the team in blue, while disgruntlement also grew with Stockbridge as the visitors won decisions and Carlisle attracted bookings.
This was no longer a favourable pattern and United did not look like they had another gear, physically or strategically – and they certainly did not examine the debut nerves of Auton. Lewis saved from Wilson, Jones denied sub Lewis Cass, but tension was creeping in. And eventually it proved too much.
Carlisle, from a now rare attack, saw the ball run under Wyke’s foot: again, a telling loss of conviction. Artell made a double change and Grimsby came on with extra muscle. Cameron Gardner forced a fine stop from Lewis but Cass then headed home the next cross. They could have scored again, a minute later, United now living on their nerves.
The Blues changes then came, Jon Mellish and Terell Thomas on, but things had for too long been allowed to dwell in Carlisle’s half. Grimsby were alert to work another short corner, and United let it happen. Rodgers rose, the ball sank into the net, W became D became L, and so the story of a bright new start eroding, to reveal a few of the old and lingering problems, was duly complete.
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