The BELEAGUERED Carlisle Utd Thread

[hellogregory]

Dominated the game today, Harrogate were crap but we still couldn’t win and in the end could have lost.

Honestly I think we’re down. We’re failing to win the games we’re dominating which is a massive red flag. Then the games we don’t dominate we get absolutely steam rolled in. Another massive red flag.

Hope to god I’m wrong and we can turn it round but I’m seeing no signs unfortunately.

We’re going to need a ruthless clear out and rebuild for the National League next season.

 

[Moonie]

How the hell are we not winning that?

We look much better with Guy and Charters, and I do feel there are some promising signs. But our failure to capitalise on a glut of possession and goalscoring opportunities - coupled with a defence which looks likely to capitulate at any given moment - simply has to change.

Good to see Armstrong score today.

 

[hellogregory]

How the hell are we not winning that?

We look much better with Guy and Charters, and I do feel there are some promising signs. But our failure to capitalise on a glut of possession and goalscoring opportunities - coupled with a defence which looks likely to capitulate at any given moment - simply has to change.

Good to see Armstrong score today.

I’d hope Hayden being back will help us defend our box better. I’d like a right back in as well so we can play Thomas alongside Hayden. Don’t trust Mellish or Lavelle, both are dreadful footballers and bang average defenders.

It really was a catastrophic fuck up from Simpson and Abbott not strengthening the full back positions. Davies is crap and injured, Harper looks decent but if anything happens to him we have Robinson and no one else until Williams is back.

 

[Carver]

I’d hope Hayden being back will help us defend our box better. I’d like a right back in as well so we can play Thomas alongside Hayden. Don’t trust Mellish or Lavelle, both are dreadful footballers and bang average defenders.

It really was a catastrophic fuck up from Simpson and Abbott not strengthening the full back positions. Davies is crap and injured, Harper looks decent but if anything happens to him we have Robinson and no one else until Williams is back.

We should have won today, but if we can keep consistently picking up points then there's some hope at least as the players returning from injury do have us playing better and as long as we're not cut adrift by then there's still the January window to come and this time it needs to be a damn good one and not like last January where the attitude was "Let's sign players who we think will be good in the league below because that's where we're heading and we accept it".

 

[JJ1990]

Problem you've got though Carver is, one you've got a full squad and clearing out the deadweight will be difficult. And two, bringing in players who'll be up for a L2 relegation fight is notoriously difficult. You'll have to pay through the nose and hope to get more than mercenaries looking for a quick pay day. You'll need to hope you can drag yourselves out of danger before the window opens, as it'll give you more options.

 

[hellogregory]

When I say we’re going down, that’s not me throwing in the towel. Obviously I hope and prey that it can be turned round.

But there’s been nothing to suggest we can stay up. Everything points to relegation. A quarter of the way through the season, and despite changing manager there’s been no improvement in defence or goal scoring, no improvement in the teams mentality, and most importantly no improvement in points return.

If you had a tick list of all the traits of a team heading out of the football league, we’d have a big beside every single one.

How one club can get it so badly wrong on the pitch so often never ceases to amaze me. No matter who the owners are, who the manager is, who the players are, what the budget it is, we still manage to consistently recruit and put together the worst teams in the football league.

 

[Carver]

When I say we’re going down, that’s not me throwing in the towel. Obviously I hope and prey that it can be turned round.

But there’s been nothing to suggest we can stay up. Everything points to relegation. A quarter of the way through the season, and despite changing manager there’s been no improvement in defence or goal scoring, no improvement in the teams mentality, and most importantly no improvement in points return.

If you had a tick list of all the traits of a team heading out of the football league, we’d have a big beside every single one.

How one club can get it so badly wrong on the pitch so often never ceases to amaze me. No matter who the owners are, who the manager is, who the players are, what the budget it is, we still manage to consistently recruit and put together the worst teams in the football league.

After Walsall we have three massive games coming up against sides in the bottom half of the table. If we can get a lot of points out of those three matches then we will have a chance of staying up.

Most of the points we've collected this season have been against lower teams whereas the ones we've lost have mostly come against the better sides in the league and most of our games so far have been against the top half teams so those three games coming up are crucial.

 

[BigDaveCUFC]

Things change, surely as a Carlisle fan you’ve been through relegation battles, I’ve seen much worse than this survive, we somehow survived on 38 points, we also have before finished bottom and were worst in league and somehow survived as Aldershot went bust.

I do worry at the lack of fight but it can genuinely just need 1-2 players to suddenly turn it around some of these players are just badly underperforming……which is our one main difference to say Morecambe who are struggling because they cannot afford much better than they have.

On the negative to that they will show might fight and battle than us, but on the flip side if we can find that 1-2 players get better balance and settle down maybe we may gain another 6-7 players who suddenly improve.

Defence needs someone badly to organise it, then a creative player……not easy to find but least we have a budget to look.

And positives from Saturday is it was at least one of the first games this season we seemed on the front foot, trying to win, dominating spells of the game…….most weeks its us making calamity mistakes and trying to keep score down by playing everyone in defence

 

[valefan16]

I think Carlisle will survive as they'll have some spending power in January, at the moment it still looks a big ask for Morecambe and I think Bromley just look like they dont quite have enough at this level, especially if someone comes in for their lad up front who's scored most of their goals.

Probably do need to battle it out though which is where Williamson may not have been ideal.

 

[Carver]

We have been decimated with injuries to key players especially in our midfield which has had a negative impact but with most of our creative midfielders now back from injury there's some hope, but our defensive issues need hugely addressed in January.

If we had no injury troubles then apart from our defence you'd look at our squad and think there's no way we should be struggling down at the bottom.

So our best hope is by having less bad luck with injuries and sorting our defence out.

 

[BigDaveCUFC]

You cannot guarantee the injury front.

We must have had a good 50-60% of players injured in the last 15 months a ridiculous run of bad injuries…… could well continue as clearly something isn’t right there medical and training side of things

 

[THE LAST WALTZ]

Weren’t Donny bottom, or near bottom at around this time last season, and they made the play offs.
Chin up chaps.

 

[DearneValleyRover]

Weren’t Donny bottom, or near bottom at around this time last season, and they made the play offs.
Chin up chaps.

We were in the bottom four until the end of January

 

[THE LAST WALTZ]

We were in the bottom four until the end of January

That was some run you went on.
Gives us all hope.

 

[hellogregory]

I doubt many if any teams have started with 8 points from 12 games and stayed up.

That’s a horrendous start. It makes our start to last season look respectable and we all know what happened then!

I know in the season we were relegated from the EFL 20 years ago, we didn’t reach 8 points till middle of December. But even then it took near playoff form for the remainder of the season just to take it to the last couple of games. Still wasn’t enough.
All I’m saying is if this goes on much longer we could end up in the same boat. Some people are burying their heads in the sand thinking it will all be ok because we’ll buy new players in January, but we really can’t be banking on that, it’s too far down the line. If we haven’t picked up by then the damage will be irreparable. It’s so vital that we turn the tide now, but unfortunately with this squad as it is I can’t see it. The situation is dire however you want to look at it.

 

[valefan16]

I doubt many if any teams have started with 8 points from 12 games and stayed up.

That’s a horrendous start. It makes our start to last season look respectable and we all know what happened then!

I know in the season we were relegated from the EFL 20 years ago, we didn’t reach 8 points till middle of December. But even then it took near playoff form for the remainder of the season just to take it to the last couple of games. Still wasn’t enough.
All I’m saying is if this goes on much longer we could end up in the same boat. Some people are burying their heads in the sand thinking it will all be ok because we’ll buy new players in January, but we really can’t be banking on that, it’s too far down the line. If we haven’t picked up by then the damage will be irreparable. It’s so vital that we turn the tide now, but unfortunately with this squad as it is I can’t see it. The situation is dire however you want to look at it.

We had 5 points from 12 games in 2017/18 and stayed up by a point.

 

[hellogregory]

That’s got to be a total one off that. I’d be amazed if it’s happened many more times.

My point still stands, we cannot wait till January. There has to be an upturn now if we are to stand a chance.

 

[Carver]

That’s got to be a total one off that. I’d be amazed if it’s happened many more times.

My point still stands, we cannot wait till January. There has to be an upturn now if we are to stand a chance.

Just got to accept we'll be playing Braintree and Solihull next season mate.

Forest Green are high up this season so there's some hope there that we'll have a chance of coming straight back up.

 

[hellogregory]

Just got to accept we'll be playing Braintree and Solihull next season mate.

Forest Green are high up this season so there's some hope there that we'll have a chance of coming straight back up.

As long as we learn from the mistakes. Remember the club were targeting an immediate return to league 1 after relegation and look what’s happened.

We kept too much of the crap from last season, gave Simpson another transfer window, neglected key positions and didn’t add the attributes that we were crying out for.

The sporting director position is hugely important. Someone to oversee the whole football side and make the necessary and correct decisions as and when. The Piataks can chuck all the money they want at it but they need someone with expertise to make the football decisions.

 

[GTFCfish]

We had 5 points from 12 games in 2017/18 and stayed up by a point.

That same season halfway through it we went 20 games without a win (D6 L14), then straight after those 20 games we somehow picked up 13 points from our last 5 games (W4 D1) to stay up.
Mental.

Oh and one of those draws in that awful run was against Vale where you missed a pen at 1-0 up and should've been about 5 or 6 goals up after battering us all game before we equalised in injury time and it all kicked off after the game outside.

 

[Carver]

As long as we learn from the mistakes. Remember the club were targeting an immediate return to league 1 after relegation and look what’s happened.

We kept too much of the crap from last season, gave Simpson another transfer window, neglected key positions and didn’t add the attributes that we were crying out for.

The sporting director position is hugely important. Someone to oversee the whole football side and make the necessary and correct decisions as and when. The Piataks can chuck all the money they want at it but they need someone with expertise to make the football decisions.

It's astonishing how two transfer windows have passed since the budget increased and yet our defence still hasn't been completely overhauled when it's been blatantly clear it was the area that needed sorted out most.

We're proper missing a type of centre back who's a rock at the back that brings confidence and composure to the defence like Huntington did and of course we're very light in full backs.

Teams are supposed to be built from the back first to make themselves harder to beat.

 

[BigDaveCUFC]

I don’t blame the owners for holding Simpson too long he is a record suggesting keep the guy.

Reminded me of Micky Adam’s and trannere and at the time Adam’s had one of them perfect L2 reputatations, where ever he seemed to go turned to gold and tranmere will no doubt surge up to L1

And if I remember he just signed a load of rubbish and got them relegated or at least almost relegated which was very surprising at the time because held done well at so many other clubs.

Sadly we just made our ghastly mistake but you can argue this realistically is their first attempt at their own manager and approach……they may have to accept relegation with him to allow him time to build his own side

 

[valefan16]

That same season halfway through it we went 20 games without a win (D6 L14), then straight after those 20 games we somehow picked up 13 points from our last 5 games (W4 D1) to stay up.
Mental.

Oh and one of those draws in that awful run was against Vale where you missed a pen at 1-0 up and should've been about 5 or 6 goals up after battering us all game before we equalised in injury time and it all kicked off after the game outside.

The Mental thing about that season was we picked up 5 points from our first 12 and also went on a run where we didn't win from December 30th and Good Friday March 30th so 3 Months!

We did pick up from match day 13-25 - 26 points though and drew a few in the winless run, notably the game you mention! Micheal Tonge

Sure FGR stayed up with a similar bad start to us though, Barnet dropped and Chesterfield who had a bad start (but beat us in their only win) went down.

If Carlisle want to follow our path that season they need to win 3 in a row now though!

 

[valefan16]

I don’t blame the owners for holding Simpson too long he is a record suggesting keep the guy.

Reminded me of Micky Adam’s and trannere and at the time Adam’s had one of them perfect L2 reputatations, where ever he seemed to go turned to gold and tranmere will no doubt surge up to L1

And if I remember he just signed a load of rubbish and got them relegated or at least almost relegated which was very surprising at the time because held done well at so many other clubs.

Sadly we just made our ghastly mistake but you can argue this realistically is their first attempt at their own manager and approach……they may have to accept relegation with him to allow him time to build his own side

Micky Adams... the Messiah! Players wouldn't last five minutes under his pre season's now!

 

[hellogregory]

The Mental thing about that season was we picked up 5 points from our first 12 and also went on a run where we didn't win from December 30th and Good Friday March 30th so 3 Months!

We did pick up from match day 13-25 - 26 points though and drew a few in the winless run, notably the game you mention! Micheal Tonge

Sure FGR stayed up with a similar bad start to us though, Barnet dropped and Chesterfield who had a bad start (but beat us in their only win) went down.

If Carlisle want to follow our path that season they need to win 3 in a row now though!

I’d settle for winning 2 in a row to be honest!

Actually winning 1 in a row would be progress.

 

[Kauto Star]

Some very early 'throwing in the towel'from our Carlisle friends on here.

Surely there are at least 2 worse clubs in this league.

 

[hellogregory]

Hmm I’m yet to see any evidence of that

 

[hellogregory]

This is the most ineffective football team I’ve ever seen. Awful at both ends of the pitch.

100% going down. Baffles me how anyone can think otherwise.

 

[BarraMatt]

This is the most ineffective football team I’ve ever seen. Awful at both ends of the pitch.

100% going down. Baffles me how anyone can think otherwise.

It's a masterclass of ownership from the Americans. They'll sack Williamson before the weekend, appoint Paul Simpson for a rescue job and he will have you in League One in 18 months.

 

[Moonie]

Absolutely furious with this now. And yes, we are most certainly going down. Characterless, leaderless, talentless, and absolutely hopeless.