Carlisle United 0-1 Cheltenham Town: Big match verdict

The result: a 1-0 home defeat to Cheltenham Town, more misery, more angst, two points from 21, four adrift in the drop zone, and nine games into a head coach’s reign the point at which an increasing number of supporters are urging the club to change, to do it all again.

Make no mistake (that’s the team’s job, after all), this is a side entirely shaped for relegation. It does not have the creative confidence, the defensive security, the selection stability, the core or the quality or the consistency or the aggression – or, and disprove this if you can, Blues, the character – to make you believe otherwise.

It is one bad day or night after another, far too many things in the deficit column, far too few in the other. In the recent history of desolate low points, the 3-0 defeat to Swindon Town in February 2022 always felt like it would take some surpassing.

Well, we are there now, unless a solution leaps out of the box suddenly, one that’s so far been very well concealed, which can get positivity and progress out of a collection of players who failed under one method and are now failing with another.

United can't believe it as the ball spins into the net for Cheltenham's goal (Image: Ben Holmes)

Right now the likelihood is of National League football, of non-league football. Let’s repeat that: likelihood. We are far past the point where early-season talk of a relegation battle could be dismissed by the deluded. United are in it up to their necks. If this is what they produce at home, against Cheltenham Town, where is the hope to be found?

Where is the League Two team capable of losing to this sorry, splintered, struggling group? And where is the set of answers that will reunite things from this increasingly bitter position? A few minutes after full-time on Saturday, a cluster of fans stayed in the Paddock to give Mike Williamson the benefit of their views. Fingers were wagged, gestures made, ripe comments offered.

Before that, there had been some annoyed-looking exchanges between players and supporters, coaches and supporters. This was a club, a team, a terrace-pitch collective turning in on itself. It’s a miracle, really, that United are not further off the pace in the division than they are.

At the back of the Andrew Jenkins Stand, as the stadium cleared, the Piatak family stood on the balcony of one of the new executive boxes. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Off the field, United has been and is being modernised, invested in, dragged forward, polished, enhanced.

Yet still, on the pitch, a gaping and widening hole. The United owners’ first major managerial call is already looking precarious. So what next? And what are the other calls that need to be made to correct the consequences of the recruitment that has led to this pass?

They shall have to be incredibly good. Otherwise, say goodnight. On this warm autumn day, Williamson made four changes, gave Ethan Robson his full debut, Carlisle made a hesitant start, conjured a little spell of purpose – in which Dominic Sadi, from right wing-back, rifled wide on the break – and then conceded quite abysmally.

Rival bosses Mike Flynn, left, and Mike Williamson, centre (Image: Ben Holmes)

United are never far from a wholly brittle moment and this one brought the weight of criticism back to Harry Lewis, after a few weeks where the keeper has been out of the immediate line of supporters’ fire. Cheltenham kept an attack alive down the left, Ethon Archer found room to shoot, his effort was parried by Lewis but the ball spun away from the Carlisle No1's hands, creeping inside the left-hand post, the keeper failing to react to its fatal direction in time.

Williamson, in the technical area, raised his hands to his face. The noise around Brunton Park was a sometimes quiet, sometimes grumpy despair. From this point, the team lost all confidence, all sense of control. Jordan Thomas spun a couple of Cheltenham shots off target, the visiting press proved too aggressive for United’s misshapen ideas. An unconvincing Lewis punch was followed by the visitors hitting the outside of the post.

In response, Callum Guy bobbled a shot wide. In response, Cheltenham should have scored again, Sam Stubbs clearing the bar with the goal vacant. Lewis then saved from Archer, whose work on the left was generally too much for Sadi and Ben Barclay.

Then the second half, a different exhibition of frustration and pain. Thomas casually put over another fine Cheltenham chance before Luke Young slid into Charlie Wyke’s ankle and the substitute striker was stretchered off, bound for hospital. A particularly sad sight in a season of them.

Charlie Wyke is stretchered off (Image: Ben Holmes)

Williamson made changes, Cheltenham sat in, referee Scott Jackson played his own part in the exasperations, the visitors operated cannily in the shadows. Young, already booked, should have walked for fouling Guy, while from United’s one platinum chance, Harrison Biggins failed to keep Cameron Harper’s cross under the bar.

If that wasn’t going in then, let’s face it, nothing was. Tyler Burey, a right-footer on the right – imagine that – provided what late purpose Carlisle had, the recent signing producing some pace and a couple of fizzing crosses that deserved better connection.

Otherwise, it was the same dish with different seasoning: passes astray, effort without smart control, a couple of shots and skirmishes, 11 minutes of added time, a final corner, Sadi finding the Warwick Road End with his shot, the sound of 6,000 people throwing their hands up at the pointlessness of it.

Then the finish, the anger, some of Williamson’s post-match interviews not an easy spectacle either, and the verdicts of the many saying that this supposed new start is only leading United further down a dark tunnel indeed. Whoever can find the torch to guide them out of it needs to do so, and quickly.