Mike Drop
The End of the Williamson Era at Carlisle United
I began January at a regular haunt - about 6 miles away from home at The Alexandra Stadium, home of Crewe Alex. As the local club, I take my kids to Crewe a few times a season given my reasoning that, if you’re going to try to get kids into watching football live, there should be an ethical requirement to do that by doing it at a smaller club with more of a sense of community. However, on this occasion we spent the afternoon in the away end because my fan attachment to visitors Carlisle United trumps routine.
Carlisle’s festive season had been challenging to say the least but a combination of coming off a win vs Accrington and the ever reliable fact that taking my daughter to see Crewe live curses them (record prior to NYD P6 L6 F0 A17) had given something approaching optimism to me. At 2-1 up entering second half injury time, optimism was belief and then, in the space of seven minutes, Lee Bell’s Alex performed the footballing equivalent of murdering Santa Claus, ripping the belief of the Carlisle away support with two late, late goals that, ultimately, felt inevitable at least in the sense that Crewe’s equaliser felt it would collapse belief enough to be immediately be followed by a winner.
And so it was.
It was as close to a perfect few minutes of an encapsulation of the Mike Williamson era as you could get. You entered with hope, you were even thrown an event or two that justified that hope and then that hope was ripped away from you ruthlessly. Williamson’s final game vs Swindon opened with arguably Carlisle’s most accomplished 20 mins of the season to open the game before losing 5-1 to a Swindon side whose manager Ian Holloway is as antithetical in playstyle to Williamson as it’s possible to be, short of actually being Williamson’s predecessor, Paul Simpson.
We’ll get onto stats shortly as this sort of event rightly demands research to back things up but the crucial aspect for Williamson - that he had lost the fans - does not require statistical analysis. We do not need the metric of xBoo to know things went wrong there. The loss to Swindon was hardly the first time a game had ended with fans calling for Williamson to go. I was writing here that Williamson was not Mr Right Now three months ago. As noted on the fan pod Brunton Bugle, few managers are able to turn around ending the game with fans calling for your head more than once and Swindon was at least the fourth time that had happened. Williamson had lost the crowd to an extent that it could not be ignored by the club ownership.
People will have different interpretations of the “why” of things went wrong but there are four aspects that demand our attention - the man, the style, the squad and the decision making.
The Man
I’m not going to pile on Mike Williamson. I don’t think anyone ever got the impression that he wasn’t putting his all into the role. I don’t think anyone ever got the impression that he doesn’t know his stuff. Perhaps more importantly than all of this, the past few months will have gone some way to likely torpedoing Williamson’s career as a manager at EFL level and it’s fair to say that on a personal level, you have to feel for him. He took a risky role on the back of a situation at MK Dons where he was jumping before he was pushed - this was already his last chance saloon and he’s found last orders called on his reputation far earlier than he would have liked.
That said…
There are two personal aspects of Mike Williamson that made him probably not suited for the Carlisle role, both of which are pretty interlinked with each other and can be broadly put under one category - for a modern coach, Williamson wasn’t a modern communicator.
Aspect one of that, and it’s something Williamson has admitted himself, is that he dislikes post-match interviews. Having watched the fans' forum a few weeks back, when given the space and opportunity to expand and justify his ideas, Williamson is a compelling talker. I know I’ve used some of his words when talking about updating playstyles because he articulated what I was thinking very well.
Watch a post-match interview with Williamson and you’d hear “the lads are hurting” within about 30 seconds. He was monotone, cliche and uncomfortable and, to be clear, that simply isn’t how he actually is when communicating outside of the artificial confines of what a post-match interview is - five minutes of soundbites before getting on a coach and driving a few hours north with no points when all you’ve got to look forward to is Tebay services. Some people (again, that man Holloway) are a natural in that format, Williamson isn’t but, after a punishing loss, when it’s what fans are tuning into and reacting to, platitudes and discomfort are difficult to accept. When that’s in a relegation pressure cooker, that lack of acceptance is ramped up. Fans don’t get the benefit of regular back-and-forth communication and if all they hear is cliche and a lack of anger (and I have a LOT of respect for Williamson for not throwing players under the bus), they will confuse it for a lack of ideas and a lack of fight.
Aspect two of that, as a follow on - under Williamson, Carlisle earned two points total from losing positions (Harrogate and Bromley, if you’re wondering). On top of that, Carlisle are one of only three sides to have not earned a single point when losing at half time - having been behind at half time three more times than either of those sides. To add one more cherry on top of that one - Carlisle have won the second half in a game twice this season. Another? The lowest amount of goals scored by subs in the division.
Whatever the reasoning, if you were coming away with the idea that Williamson had equal trouble in communicating his ideas at half time and during the game itself, you’d have fuel for that fire. It hides that Carlisle’s goals for/against by half are actually more or less identical - the second half goals they do score don’t seem to impact things, the ones their opponents do do. Many fans believe Williamson wasn’t vocal enough - that’s an opinion, but it seems fair to say that, vocal or not, Williamson did have issues getting the messages across that he needed to get across, whether it’s that they weren’t heeded, weren’t understood fully or not the right messages. That impression, in itself, probably becomes a self-fulfilling one
I’m personally of the belief that a manager needs time between roles to be able to clear their heads and review their time. I expect Williamson will probably be entering that sort of self-reflection period now and I suspect that it will be these elements he will probably seek to develop himself on - how can he adapt his communication style to an EFL level of fan and media scrutiny, to an EFL style of snippets and short quotes and, unlike his time at Gateshead (and to a lesser extent, MK Dons), to a squad that he himself didn’t put together and whom he has to get buy in from. I expect he will probably wish he’d had the space to do such an exercise prior to Carlisle and I expect everyone would have benefitted had he had that opportunity. He will, for sure, land on his feet somewhere.
The Style
So, what was that soundbite of Williamson’s that I alluded to earlier which I’ve used?
In that fans forum, Williamson’s commitment to playing style was question and he responded by stating that while the technical ability was in the squad already to carry out his preferred possession based style and that, on the training pitches, instructions were being followed, the true coaching challenge was that, in pressured match scenarios, players had to be conditioned to keep to those instructions and play the right way rather than fall on old habits and just hoof the thing. It was measured, it was insightful and, crucially, it explained struggles. Williamson was talking not about players making conscious decisions to do things against what was being coached, but the very natural subconscious reactions players have having played football for years on end. It was less a coaching style and more one about rewiring players’ heads and, when you’re talking about a side that did have a pretty major change in philosophies from one coach to the net, no small task.
The very basic reality is that, in addition to being bottom of the table on points, Carlisle’s underperformance on xGD is the worst in the division, a frankly wild 21 goals worse off all in all than it should be. When it comes to translating that into xPTS, Carlisle sit on 35.65pts meaning they should have 14.65 points more than they actually have. No other side is anywhere close to that level of underperformance and, as a result, Carlisle’s prediction with Opta is that they will finish bottom with an almost 70% chance of relegation.
As a not-very-fun fact, it should be noted that the wildest recent underperformance I remember is Forest Green who were relegated from League One with a GD around 30 worse than they should have had. Carlisle are well on course to exceed that.
We’ll start by looking at a few general stats. Firstly, Carlisle’s shot conversion rate is the second worst in the division, beaten only by Tranmere, who shoot more often. This covers a problem - while Carlisle and Tranmere do track each other, digging into how those chances are created reveal the problem Carlisle have. Carlisle’s chances are more set piece based. Any criticism of Carlisle’s attack needs to note the fact that the issues are with creation in open play, reflected by the fact that their volume of shots originating from a counter attack is the third lowest in the division.
Defensively, Carlisle’s percentage of shots against becoming goals is the third worst in the league yet the location of those shots and goals is mid-table when it comes to them being in the box (ie whatever Carlisle concede, it is particularly exaggerated by low xG outside the box chances). Without going too deep into other stats in this section, Carlisle’s closest defensive style twins are Doncaster, who are second - what that’s suggesting is that Carlisle are defending in the volumes of a top two side while conceding that of a bottom two one which, I hate to say, suggests the words “work rate” are going to have to be used at some point.
When it comes to passing, the clear issue is that of accuracy which, I believe, we can state is caused by that mental block Williamson alluded to in his coaching - Carlisle pass with the volume of the likes of Notts County, but with a far lower success rate. Where County average 85% success rate, Carlisle’s is 10% lower. In the grand scheme of things, a 75% success rate isn’t too shoddy but the where those passes happen is startling.
The top three passers in volume in League Two are Notts County, MK Dons and Chesterfield while Carlisle are fourth.
The top three passers into and within the final third in League Two are Notts County, MK Dons and Chesterfield while Carlisle are twentieth. Closely related is the third worst cross success rate in the division.
Williamson’s stylistic issues are therefore reasonably clear to see as to the reason and exonerate him somewhat. It is clear that a heavily possession based style was in place. It is clear that that possession based style wasn’t actually executed all that well and it is clear that Williamson had gone a long way to getting things right - as an example, Wyscout’s “smart passes” metric saw Carlisle as the worst in the league under Paul Simpson. They’re now fifth. Agree with the philosophy or not, that does indicate Williamson was getting his message across. There’s other metrics that will tell you the same.
Duel success rate (in other words, when you go for the ball with another player) was, under Simpson this season, in the “I didn’t realise it was possible to be this bad” range. It is now league average. Hell, Swindon may have stuck five past Carlisle at home, but the xG difference was 0.12 - the sort of hammering that’d make you rage quit your Football Manager save and try the game again. Away against Notts County a week ago, Carlisle went toe to toe with them - the game itself wasn’t exactly entertaining, but you wouldn’t come from watching it thinking that Carlisle weren’t of a comparable standard to promotion chasers.
I have therefore fallen into what may be a bit of an odd camp in that Williamson’s plan A was broadly right and broadly working. Four things could therefore be the case - either Mike Williamson just isn’t very good at managing a team during a game and adjusting on the fly, Mike Williamson wasn’t willing to make adjustments during a game because of that subconscious factor mentioned earlier and needed players to stick to Plan A to be able to execute it better, Mike Williamson didn’t have the support of the players or the players themselves just aren’t performing as they should be. As such, let’s look at the squad.
The Squad
Having sacked Paul Simpson the day after the transfer window closed, the club sacked Williamson officially the day of the closure of the winter window. Whoever is next will not just be the third manager of the season, they’ll be the second manager to take over a squad built entirely by their predecessor. They take over not just the players but the lingering issues within it of which we’ll focus on a couple now.
Previously, one would generally just use the words “Harry Lewis” as an explanation for defensive issues. Williamson has shifted to Gabe Breeze as first choice keeper now. It’s fair to state that Breeze has been under considerably less pressure than Lewis, facing around 0.3 fewer xG per 90 than Lewis did. Yes, Breeze is better but Breeze has also worked under better circumstances than Lewis did. There are other underperformers to look at.
Jordan Jones, in particular. Jones came in as a sort-of marquee signing. Certainly, in long-term reputation, Jones would represent a coup. In terms of how he’s played… not so much.
xG/90
Shots/90
xG per shot
Ball Carries/90
Jordan Jones
0.08
1.38
0.06
20.6
Dom Sadi
0.15
2.08
0.07
12.6
Kadeem Harris
0.27
2.08
0.13
16.1
One of these was arguably the big signing of the summer. One of these was a kid having his first senior loan spell. One joined having been clubless for four months.
Each of these have played broadly similar roles during the season, especially as Carlisle have been reasonably consistent in sticking with wing-backs, but it’s impossible to say that Jones’ production is anything like the others (but his positional heat map is). Jones, as arguably the one consistent pick all season for a creative role, has simply not been good enough and there’s not really another way to put it.
As a result, Carlisle’s strikers feed on scraps. Luke Armstrong can score, as he’s shown at Motherwell already, but he can’t do anything if he’s not got service. Having now left the club, it’s important to note that he was the top xG provider for the club this season, coming in outside the top 50 in League Two for xG so far this season. To put it another way, Armstrong’s xG per 90 this season was 0.24 - his overall xG per 90 for his time in League Two, much of which was as part of a Harrogate squad far poorer on paper than his colleagues at Carlisle is 0.34 - a not inconsiderable leap given the sample size.
These are a couple of examples and, to be fair, it’s hard to pick out some underperformers because of the incredible squad rotation - Carlisle’s use of 41 players so far this season is three more than any other side in the division and 8 more than any side not called Chesterfield. It’s already the most used in the last three seasons and, if you extrapolate that to the last five, the only three sides higher were Scunthorpe (relegated and in shambles behind the scenes), Southend (Ditto) and Grimsby in 20/21 (Ditto). Realistically, you’re going back to 15/16 and Stevenage for a season where an outwardly sane club has decided to deploy a similar cast of thousands. By the by, Carlisle are in the bottom half of League Two clubs for the amount of subs made this season - this ensemble cast have almost all started games rather than being kids coming off the bench here and there.
It is hard to deny that underperformance from certain elements of the team on the spreadsheet alongside this immense squad upheaval hasn’t helped. To the eye, I’d also note Aaron Hayden has, to me, not had a good season, albeit centre backs are rather harder to quantify easily than other roles. Throw in Charlie Wyke’s severe injury alongside extended periods of absence for *deep breath!* Terell Thomas, the aforementioned Hayden, Georgie Kelly, the now departed Ben Williams, Callum Guy, Ethan Robson, Georgie Kelly, Taylor Charters, Jordan Jones, Georgie Kelly, Daniel Adu-Adjei, Dylan McGeouch, Josh Vela and did I mention Georgie Kelly? All in all, is it any wonder players have struggled for form in such circumstances?
As with any side in Carlisle’s situation, lots of players hold various amounts of blame and, for a side that were fancied by many at the start of this season, the amount of blame to be shared around is rather larger than usual. No-one started this season thinking this was a bad squad so, therefore, either everyone was wrong or this is a badly underperforming one.
And, honestly, as I’ve no other place to put this - Jon Mellish. I get that he was a bit of a cult hero to many fans and, due to injuries and other factors, probably had to play, but who honestly thinks that you could play how Williamson wanted to play while also having Jon Mellish starting every game. Mellish isn’t that sort of player, never would be that sort of player and never wanted to be that sort of player. It’s hard not to think that, all in all, he was probably of detriment to getting Williamson’s style embedded.
Carlisle’s squad building has been peculiar and that hasn’t been forced upon them. The swing in playing styles was a choice, the swing to fix that was a choice. Which leaves our final area of focus.
The Decision Making
And here is perhaps the big one. The Piatak family have had, I think it’s fair to say, an unenviable 14 months running Carlisle United. They have sunk money into improving things behind the scenes, modernised the ancient and even brought the concept of proper toilets to some areas of Brunton Park. At the same time, they have overseen three transfer windows that could be summed up as a very panicky January 2024 (which didn’t go well), a comparatively big spending Summer 2024 (which didn’t go well) and the January 2025 window which is tbc at best.
If they get this managerial appointment wrong, Carlisle United will be playing in the National League next season. No ifs, no buts.
If they get this managerial appointment right, Carlisle United might still be playing in the National League next season because they’re five points from safety and, if Tranmere hit form then it’s an eight point gap to 21st. The fact cannot be avoided that unless Carlisle hit upon 18 games of playoff form, they’re likely to enter the final day hosting Salford needing something.
While few people were blaming the Piataks for Paul Simpson, the failure of Mike Williamson in spite of the confidence vested in him does have to lay at their feet. On top of that, much as with Simpson, the feeling that this could and perhaps should have happened sooner is unavoidable. For a start, had Williamson gone after Crewe or, more realistically given the performance, Tranmere, a new manager would have had time in the door to bring in players they wanted. It may have looked similar to the squad Carlisle have now, but there would have been ownership taken on the manager’s part in their own future.
Many people would also note that it would have been sensible for the owners to have locked in a sporting director (Rob Clarkson was appointed in the Autumn) before locking in Mike Williamson and, while I don’t necessarily agree with that point, it does lend credence to the idea that the Piataks essentially worked without a strategy for things. Paul Simpson said as much in a deadline day interview:
“I spend a club’s money as if it’s my own. I’ve been in a situation in the last two windows where I’ve got an ownership group saying, ‘No – just give him it’. “I’m like, ‘No, that’s not the right thing to do’. That doesn't give the right impression to the rest of the dressing room.”
That makes the recruitment seem panicky. It makes the strategy looks like it was just about getting nice players in and then the team would win. That’s not how it works.
Turning over a squad doesn’t take a summer window. It certainly doesn’t happen just in a January. It takes 3-4 windows of methodical and consistent work to complete while also accepting that there will be wastage in some of the deals you make in that time. Greg Abbott should have been in their ear saying that. Nigel Clibbens should have been in their ear saying that.
But I suspect that, and this is applicable to many people at the club, that a decade of working under a tight financial budget where only the right deal for the right price would have been accepted may have blinded to how things should have been running. After all, if you’re scrambling to pay the electric bill and then you get an inheritance from a dead relative, your first thought is rarely “Right, OK, how can I turn this into a long term success”, it’s booking a holiday to Disneyland only Mickey Mouse is Jordan Jones.
The Rob Clarkson question isn’t a question that should have been asked as to why he wasn’t in post prior to Williamson, it’s a why he wasn’t in post prior to the end of the 23/24 season. Why, when the ownership group needed someone in the club and in their ear to tell them what was needed, was that person not in place? Because, when your experienced manager is stating that the feeling on a deadline day is “panic”, all was clearly not well. If your manager is saying “we shouldn’t be breaking the wage structure for this person”, then that’s an opinion to listen to and, if it’s an opinion you choose to overrule, you’d better hope that it pans out for the best.
It’s become increasingly clear that the Piataks haven’t had the people in place they needed at the start. Mike Williamson, as most people accept, could probably have done a good job had he had a full summer to run at the job and at recruitment. As we’ve seen, Mike Williamson didn’t have the skill set for the task at hand but while his plan A was embedding and working, it was undercut by player unavailability, squad rotation and, bluntly, squad performance issues.
So what now?
Each and every single player in the changing room has to look at themselves and ask one question - if this side goes down, will I be at an EFL club next season? If this side goes down, will I have to alter my lifestyle?
In many cases, the answer is yes. In many cases, their earning potential will be significantly compromised. What Carlisle need is someone who can combine the Plan A of Mike Williamson with getting the message as to what the ramifications of relegation will be to the club, the city and to themselves as individuals across.
Mike Williamson’s flaws are, in his defence, flaws that are unlikely really to have made any change to the decision to hire him. There was no expectation to be in the situation he found himself in and, therefore, no reason to think that he’d have proven ill-suited to it. Williamson’s reputation, as hinted at, will need some considerable amount of rehabilitation but he was probably closer than many people thought to actually getting it right. Things would just have never ever made that extra 1% of progress to fulfilment.
The reality of being bottom of the EFL is that not only do things not go right but everything doesn’t go right all at the same time. Williamson’s flaws were starker, the supply lines to the forward drier, his application of tactics that bit more difficult, the injuries that bit more damaging and the momentum inevitably ebbing away.
With Opta saying relegation is now a 70% chance, Carlisle’s grip on EFL football is ebbing away too.
They don’t just need the right appointment. They need the Piataks streak of seeing things go spectacularly awry karmically reverse into an appointment that goes spectacularly right - that’s perhaps the only way the club stay up.
And, if nothing else, it’ll mean I do fewer of these unfeasibly long analyses.