Blackpool or Deadpool
En route to Wembley, Carlisle United face a sliding doors moment with promotion on the line
It tends to be that once a season I end up writing something about my “local” (as in, where I grew up) club in Carlisle United. Over the past decade, these have generally been in phases of increasing depression as a club whose size and reach is naturally a League One club have flirted with both promotion and relegation and embraced a BFF relationship with frustration since dropping into English football’s fourth tier in 2014. The club has been on sale for multiple years with money owed to repay the bets made to try to support previous managers with Carlisle essentially sensible by default, because no other way of running the club would keep it going.
This, for much of the time in League Two, has meant the club have been on the sort of managed decline that has kept ambitions in check and been entirely reliant upon there being at least two other clubs worse than them to fill the relegation spots. Any improvement upon that was a bonus and, in the club’s defence, the nature of League Two means that ever season has a club or two whose troubles become the story that defines the season. There have been flashes - Keith Curle managing to get to the playoffs before going a bit weird and taking bricks to press conferences, Chris Beech leading the side to the top of the league with his shot-happy style before postponements and fixture congestion ground the squad down - and there have been worries - Hi, Keith Millen! - but, in the main, the strategy of making up the numbers did enough.
But, much like 20 years ago, it took one thing to lead Carlisle out of the doldrums - Paul Simpson. In the early 2000s, he had to suffer relegation at a financially wrecked club that had spent the prior five seasons not finishing higher than 17th in the bottom tier. He would follow that disappointment with two successive promotions to get the club into League One.
In the early 2020s, he saved the club from what looked like relegation and then into this wonderful yet inexplicable season that sees Carlisle United taking a trip to Wembley for the first time since beating Brentford in the final of the then Johnstone’s Paint Trophy in 2011 (with the goal then scored by Peter Murphy - someone who has already has his own playoff promotion this season with Annan).
Inexplicable is probably a fair word to describe how the season has gone. In a negative sense, it’s only Carlisle’s two wins in the last ten league games that sent them into the playoffs in the first place - had Carlisle simply scored three more goals across those ten games at the right time, then they would have been automatically promoted such is the slender nature of things at the sharp end of the league.
However, in a more positive sense, this season has been inexplicable because, quite simply, no-one really expected the side to be anywhere near the playoffs. When one bears in mind that this was a squad that only just avoided relegation last season, the amount of work done to it over the summer was fairly minimal. A lot of players left, which was understandable given the dross that Simpson inherited, but it’s fair to add that only 7 came in permanently compared to 15 departures with a further 8 loans in across the season (3 of which left in January).
What Simpson brought in was a mix of promise and quality. Owen Moxon, it’s fair to say, has been the signing of the season in the entire league and up there as the best midfielder in League Two - coming from part-time football at Annan, he’s exceeded every expectation one could have reasonably given him. Paul Huntington stepped down from the Championship to ensure he could play for his local club and, at 35, organises the defence excellently. But what Simpson has done isn’t just bring a new squad in (and he’d have had justification to do that after last term), he has gotten a squad that was bad to buy into his vision and become good.
That’s a mightily simplistic way of looking at things but squads do sometimes just need a new broom and Carlisle certainly did need that. The 21/22 season saw Simpson come in as the third manager of the season after Chris Beech and Keith Millen and had seen the side expand over the season as both of those managers tried to bring in the quality to keep the side up. From that sense, Simpson had the numbers at the start to choose what he wanted to do and then be selective with his squad as to who was best to execute that plan.
That plan is, quite simply, to be as annoying to play against as possible and that was on full effect in the playoff semi-final against Bradford. At Valley Parade, it perhaps didn’t work to its fullest. At Brunton Park, it most certainly did.
The Carlisle gameplan looks fairly simple - play direct, press the ball high and make opponents uncomfortable. What this meant against Bradford was that a Bradford side who wanted possession and wanted to build patiently from the back were essentially reduced to playing back four tiki-taka because their passing channels were occupied. A Mark Hughes side essentially mono-coached didn’t know what to do in the face of it and so their attacking momentum just broke down time and time again as no individual had the guile to make a way through them and, as a result, Bradford ended up lacking intensity. Andy Cook, who scored at a prodigious rate all season, was reduced to going wide to try to get the ball at any point and, from Carlisle’s defensive perspective, if you’re forcing the opposition’s goal threat to go into safe areas just to get a sniff of the ball, you’re going to be doing your job well.
From an attacking perspective, as noted, the side is built around winning the ball high up the park and the difference between the two legs was perhaps the performances of Callum Guy in helping all that happen. At Valley Parade, he was the most noticeably sloppy in some of his passing which meant that recycling the ball became the sole job of Owen Moxon, who ended up getting dragged deeper than he needed to be to impact the game. Guy’s performance in the second leg allowed Moxon to play higher - Guy got a fantastic goal as his reward, Moxon assisted the winner for his reward with the sort of searching ball he was delivering from less dangerous areas in the first leg.
Moxon is the obvious star of the side and stuck out like a sore thumb in the first leg. In what was the sort of helter-skelter logic void one expects from a League Two playoff game, Moxon was the one player on the pitch who looked like he had an extra half-second on the ball every time he was on it. If you’re a player with that speed of thought advantage over your opponent, then you’re clearly capable of playing a level higher than the one you’re at. Add to that Moxon’s wide passing range and excellent set piece delivery and it’s clear that having this sort of comparative precognition over your opponent maxes him simply unfair at this level in spite of his unfashionably unorthodox development journey to this point. When it comes to potential game changers at Wembley - look no further.
Carlisle’s record against their Final opponents Stockport this season is not positive this season but Wembley Stadium is a far cry from Edgeley Park or Brunton Park and there has to be the tendency to decide that form should be thrown out of the window and that chaos should be embraced.
It is worth noting that the EFL have absolutely dropped the ball for multiple reasons with the game. Firstly, the game kicks off at 1:30 to ensure it is finished before the start of the final day of the Premier League season. The knock on impact of that is that, on a Sunday, not a single train from Carlisle would arrive before the scheduled kick off time. By coach, it’s normally close to a 7 hour drive and that’s assuming there are no issues with traffic. The result is that, given both the demand and that Stockport fans got a bit of a head-start on getting things booked, it’s either the case of making a full weekend of it for Carlisle fans or a case of leaving the Border City before 6 in the morning to make absolutely sure that you’re at Wembley for kick off time.
Given every side in the playoffs was in the North and that the EFL must surely have been aware that bank holidays tend to have engineering works, etc on rail and road, switching from Wembley for somewhere more sensible and also empty on 28 May (which the Etihad Stadium is) would have been far fairer to fans in a cost of living crisis and far more likely to get a decent crowd. In similar circumstances last season, Mansfield and Port Vale took only 37k total to Wembley (with a more traveller friendly KO time and sides closer to the capital). It’s difficult to feel that that number will be beaten in 2023 and that is a great shame when a bit of common sense would have made life better for fans of both clubs. For my own part, living south of Manchester, transport is already prohibitively expensive - to make the trip with my kids would mean spending well over £250 with food, tube, tickets to the match and transport as well as six hours of being on public transport (and that is a short hop compared to those going from Carlisle). In future, the EFL need to recognise their part in ensuring supporting a club should not be prohibitively illogical as a time commitment and prohibitively expensive as a monetary one as it is hard to escape the feeling these moans would all have been avoidable with a bit of flexibility.
While one would expect form still benefits Stockport, it is hard to resist the story of Paul Simpson and not to feel the consistent overperformance he has brought from his squad will demand one more extension, one more performance and one more level to reach. And, for both sides, this is a far more important playoff final than most.
As no-one will have failed to have noticed, Wrexham are coming up with their handsomely funded and publicised side. While many people will justifiably be irked by their purchasing of talent that could play a couple of tiers higher than Wrexham and their funding of it by recognising their most saleable talent is not on the pitch but is, instead, Blake Lively’s husband, the reality is that their sugar daddies do at least get what it means to be custodians of a football club and get what their responsibilities are to their community. They come up and will, correctly, expect to be contending for the title immediately. Notts County come up having shown their quality in the National League and will, rightly, expect to be contending for the title straight away. I would perhaps go as far as saying that you can pencil those sides in the top five already. On top of that, you have the four sides coming down, all of whom will expect to do well. You have Bradford whose expectation was promotion this year and whose demand will be it next.
In short, fail at Wembley and you won’t be in a position to expect another chance next time around because League Two will be a much more challenging thing to get out of next season. And while you would never for a second write off Paul Simpson from producing a magnificent season yet again, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that this is the moment that decides not just promotion, but also whether the next few years of your football club are as a decent League Two outfit or a League One mainstay. Whether your derby game is against Barrow or, well, Derby. Whether, quite literally, you play games against the side from Blackpool or the side owned by Deadpool.
This annual look at Carlisle United therefore pauses on a crossroads. Promotion means an extra £400k at least per season in income (before a ticket is sold), that the club is on a more solid footing and, arguably, more saleable to potentially end that saga.
A loss at Wembley means likely another two seasons at least in League Two. It’s for Carlisle’s greatest modern manager to make sure that doesn’t need to be thought about.