Carlisle United were knocked out of the FA Cup by a 3-1 defeat to Leyton Orient – but what did we learn from the game? Let’s take a closer look…
1 LEAD WEIGHT
A season like this one tends to offer some unfriendly stats.
And while numbers do not mean everything, here’s a particularly troubling one to try for size.
Saturday’s game at Orient was Carlisle’s 20th in all competitions so far in 2023/24.
A measly 94 minutes. Only in five of those games have they held the lead for any period of time, and never longer than 33 minutes.
So, in all the competitive football Paul Simpson’s side have played since promotion, they’ve had the advantage in 5.2 per cent of it.
Small wonder they have largely lost the aura that they carried for much of 2022/23. Either holding or chasing games has become the norm – understandable to a degree after stepping up a level – yet United often appear uncomfortable with the idea of putting their foot down.
Joe Garner’s leveller at Brisbane Road gave them parity for 15 minutes, while Carlisle never looked like kicking on, never looked like leading. Then they buckled too quickly. The road back to more confident, convincing times is not going to be easy.
2 THE ‘FINE MARGINS’ MYTH
It can often be advanced in a team’s defence that they are agonisingly close to turning things around.
It’s “fine margins”, we tell ourselves. Yet Paul Simpson neatly put a line through that imagined mitigation in post-match interviews.
Football, he pointed out, is in fact a game of fine margins, and not getting on the right side of them isn’t the forgivable matter we sometimes think.
Joe Garner’s leveller at Brisbane Road gave them parity for 15 minutes, while Carlisle never looked like kicking on, never looked like leading. Then they buckled too quickly. The road back to more confident, convincing times is not going to be easy.
It’s rare, against sides at your level, that victories and defeats are massively emphatic, that one side’s superiority is blatant to the point that the other lot are chasing shadows for 90 minutes.
More often it comes down to split seconds, or ‘marginal gains’ in a game situation.
As such, Aaron Drinan beat Corey Whelan to a cross by a margin in terms of time, but that’s what strikers train to do.
Orient, in their better spells were fractionally quicker and smarter than Carlisle. Not by gaping margins, but that doesn’t mean their win and their play wasn’t emphatic.
Lower-league football often sees a rump of players who appear to be divided by very little. Carlisle have been “in” games throughout this season, many agree, losing lots of them marginally.
Yet if you’re losing a lot by a margin, the cumulative effect paints a picture. And it’s less marginal than you can be deceived into thinking.
3 GOOD ENOUGH?
The more Paul Simpson adjusts, readjusts, tries different varieties with little improvement in consistency, the most uncomfortable question pushes further to the surface.
Are Carlisle’s players good enough?
In some cases, yes. But in too many – no, so far.
Thirteen goals from 20 games is a paltry return, three wins in that time the same. It is also now four defeats from five in all competitions and that suggests a certain snowball effect of low confidence and performance.
Collectively and individually, Carlisle are not getting enough from the chosen ones. Joe Garner is among the exceptions – he scored impressively on Saturday, and has generally kept his end up in attack of late.
Those around him, though, are offering little in terms of numbers. Sean Maguire’s one goal to date isn’t an acceptable return, Dan Butterworth’s impact has only been recent and qualified, while other attackers, such as Terry Ablade, Luke Plange and Ryan Edmondson give you little faith indeed when you see them coming off the bench.
Harsh? Maybe. But only actions can dispute this sort of conclusion.
United have five goals from Jordan Gibson, one of their better players this season, four from Garner, a couple from Owen Moxon, one from Plange and Maguire apiece, and none from anybody else, whether that be other midfielders, wing-backs or central defenders.
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