How twin towers made best case for Blues defence
Last updated 09:19, Saturday, 12 April 2008
NO state secrets are being disclosed, no vows of silence broken when we name the two men most likely to vacuum up the end-of-season awards at Carlisle United’s May 4 prizegiving.
The cyberspace electorate might not be ultra-reliable, but a peek at the latest voting on this paper’s player-of-the-year poll suggests that Keiren Westwood and Danny Livesey are out in front by several furlongs in the minds of the Cumbrian public.
Giving the lie to the idea that football supporters can’t see beyond goals and glory, United’s fans are about to anoint two masters of negation as their heroes for 2007/8.
It’s appropriate that Carlisle’s joint talismans have shot to the ceiling of civic esteem in unison, and not just for the symmetry that reveals both to be 23, from Greater Manchester, and close friends.
A personal conviction has been growing this season that we are bang in the middle of a golden age of defending at Brunton Park. The challenge is on for anyone to name a Carlisle back five over the last 20 years that looked so relentlessly tight.
The statistics currently attaching themselves to Westwood confirm the suspicion. Carlisle’s goalkeeper has just reached 18 clean sheets for the second year running.
Another at Elland Road this afternoon will equal the club record posted by Dave McKellar in 1983/4. And a 20th before the campaign is through will allow Westwood to set the most satisfying of personal landmarks.
Too respectful to speak of overhauling McKellar’s tally, Westwood would only talk of emulating his predecessor of 24 years this week. “He’s a bit of a legend at this club and it would be nice to equal him,” said United’s current custodian.
“If I can get to 19, hopefully I can be held in the same esteem as him.” Anecdotal evidence suggests he is mighty close, if not already there.
How hard it is now to conceive that Westwood was so close to slipping from professional football’s grip completely four years ago.
He was plodding frustratedly towards the police force until his talents were salvaged by a hunch and a phonecall from Paul Simpson. A nightmare debut at Stevenage, an injury, and then some weeks of idle foot-tapping on the subs’ bench all had to be ticked off fate’s inventory before he could get back into favour.
In the charge to praise United’s gifted goalkeeper, however, there is a danger that the significance of Livesey gets pushed down the page. Unfairly so.
Like Westwood, the centre-half is an ever-present this season. Every Westwood clean-sheet is also a Livesey clean-sheet. For every stupefying Westwood save, there has been a block or a stomping tackle by Carlisle’s classic no 5.
Neither has Livesey’s course run smoothly. Remember those distant days in the Conference when certain supporters took one look at United’s ungainly new signing and wished hard for Simon Grand’s reinstatement?
May hindsight’s hammer whack them over the head.
And how perplexing does Neil McDonald’s decision to exclude Livesey from several squads of 16 last season now look? Tainted by the allegation he was a “slow starter”, Livesey had to grind his way through hours of reserve games before poking his way back into the first team at right-back. When McDonald finally restored him to centre-half, United made a late bolt for the play-offs (too late, it turned out).
Another column entirely is needed to do full justice to Livesey’s disciplinary record (five bookings and one sending-off in four seasons with Carlisle – remarkable figures for a centre-half). Kevin Gray, Livesey’s mentor during three years with United, was at Tuesday’s goalless draw with Swansea and will have nodded happily at another exhibition of some quite familiar defensive principles: hard but honest; firm but fair.
The brain draws a blank when assigned to provide an example of a dirty Gray challenge whilst the man was wearing a Carlisle shirt. The same goes for Livesey, even on intense nights like Tuesday when the fur truly flies. The dangerous lunge appears absent from his repertoire (and Peter Murphy’s, it needs to be said).
Feel free to torch this column if we get a 4-0 walloping at Leeds after all this. But even then, you’d need an army of thousands to bring Carlisle’s two Mancunian giants down from the pantheon.
