Historic low point from which Carlisle United have to rise

Anyway. Upon promoting the article on X, I was asked by @tallstew if there was a more optimistic finding. “How many teams that survived started the season this badly?” he wanted to know.

Now there’s a question, one that had the potential to lead us to more sunny and optimistic uplands. Let us skip through the pages of history and feast on the many stories of the Blues acting as Lazarus, pulling themselves up after initially bleak events.

Erm…

The answer to @tallstew’s question, as we sit here today, is: none. After 14 games, this is statistically the third worst start to a league campaign in United’s Football League history.

The only two teams who reached this stage with fewer points were toast by the end. In 2003/04, United had five points from 14 game and, despite the mid-season turnaround engineered by Paul Simpson, it was not enough to keep Carlisle from fourth-tier relegation.

The only other time they’ve endured a worse start than this was in 1985/86. In Division Two, Bob Stokoe’s side limped along with just six points from their first 14 matches. Eventually – Jim Tolmie and all that – they went down.

Only in 2003/04 and 1985/86 (pictured) have Carlisle started a league season in worse shape (Image: News & Star)

Cheery stuff then. It is bracing indeed to think that, of United’s 94 seasons since joining the Football League in 1928 (93 in the League, one in the Conference), 90 of them delivered a better output at this juncture.

That is quite some reckoning when you consider some of those seasons in particular. The 1991/92 toil, when a broke Blues finished bottom of the Football League? They had three more points by this stage.

Roddy Collins’ chaos theory boys of 2002/03? Also three more points. Harry Gregg’s goal-shy men of 1986/87? Double the points Mike Williamson’s side currently has. The campaign of 1998/99, when Carlisle needed a goalkeeper to score to keep them up? Nineteen points from the first 14, not a measly eight.

The wretched campaign of 1934/35, another that ended with United at the foot of the league? Twice as many wins, twice as many draws, four fewer defeats. And on it goes. Relegation teams of (deep breath) 1962/63, 1974/75, 1976/77, 1986/87, 1995/96, 1997/98, 2013/14 and 2023/24 all got off to better starts than the 2024/25 vintage.

So what is the worst Carlisle side, in terms of starts, to have survived? Well, there may be a grain of hope, and indeed a certain message, in the knowledge that it is the team of 2000/01, who were on nine points by this stage in the basement division.

There were considerable mitigating factors then and quite a different set of circumstances bearing in mind that, in the summer of 2000, Carlisle in their mid-Knighton crisis period were left with a hollowed out squad and a requirement on new manager Ian Atkins to cobble something together at short order so that the Blues could be half competitive.

Small wonder, really, that United’s record after game 14 was  as modest as won two, drew three, lost nine. There was certainly none of the spending that preceded this season, few of the expectations either, and little, to put it kindly, of the assumed talent.

Yet there was a nurtured spirit of defiance which, in the end, pulled them through. Atkins’ team found grit because it was one thing that was available for free. The manager himself attracted affection and loyalty as he battled against the backdrop of an ownership drifting into ever more remote and lurid times (Stephen Brown, anyone?)

You knew all along that if United were to get anywhere it would be by railing against pretty much everything in their path. They also, along the way, recognised which characters would form a hard-worn bedrock.

These were players like Steve Soley, who dragged goals and standards from midfield; defenders such as Stuart Whitehead who offered levels of reliability; strikers such as Ian Stevens who knew course and distance, rising young strivers such as Scott Dobie, and hardened individuals they picked up along the way: Mick Galloway, Matty Glennon, Lee Maddison.

The other emblem of this side was Carl Heggs, an itinerant lower-league striker who formed part of that pre-season influx and, if not the silkiest centre-forward, offered a rumbustious style which, every so often, would barge a point or a win from a game if the other side were not quite up to the competitive mark. It was his goal – a memorably deft volley in the penultimate game at Lincoln City – that ensured survival.

There is no need to romanticise such seasons. 2000/01 was a distressing experience for the large part, based on the off-field climate. Yet some of the toughness, the fight? We’re going to need some of that, and anyone wishing to be sniffy about a superficially limited side such as that of Atkins must also acknowledge that, along the way, they mustered a six-game unbeaten run (imagine that just now), a later spell of five wins in nine and limited, in the FA Cup, the Arsenal of Bergkamp and Vieira and Wiltord and Cole to a single goal: sorcery in itself, truly.

Whatever happens in the FA Cup today, the seriousness of Carlisle's league position will be by far the most pressing issue (Image: Ben Holmes)

Other sides to have started badly and stayed up include United’s 1980/81 team, who had the equivalent (it was two points for a win then) of two points more than this side by the 14-game mark, and stayed up thanks to a late-season Pop Robson-inspired flurry.

And that’s another way to crack it: make an inspired signing or two. That, one senses, is going to be a serious requirement over and above this week’s reinforced messages about style of play, long-term vision and belief in a head coach.

The cold reality is this. No United side has started this badly and kept from the jaws of relegation, because very few have started this badly at all. Whatever happens in the FA Cup today – a welcome boost, or more of the same – the chronic nature of the task ahead will remain, clearer than ever.