For a number of years it seemed that owning strikers who scored goals was simply too complicated an idea for Carlisle United to take on board.

While other clubs roared along in the league with prolific marksmen, the Blues plodded away with ‘finishers’ whose strengths, we were repeatedly told, lay in other areas.

We had strikers who were good target-men, strikers who would run the channels, strikers who were good foils for others, and strikers who just needed to add goals to their game, and then they’d be the full package. Honest.

Those who actually followed the job description – not so many. United’s supporters saw a glut of false nines long before that term was redefined by modern tactics.

It all makes the rewarding of Charlie Wyke with a new contract – in a season also blessed by Jabo Ibehre’s goalscoring – a welcome throwback. Strikers who strike: this is what United finally have at their disposal, according to the stats. How complicated does it need to be?

Wyke, in scoring against Accrington Stanley, made it nine for the season and 15 from 37 United appearances overall, since he joined from Middlesbrough last January.

That extremely tidy strike-rate, coupled with his age (23) and potential, make his contract extension until 2018 one of the most sensible pieces of business United have carried out this campaign.

Take Ibehre, too. There were few rave reviews for the 33-year-old’s workmanlike performance against Accrington, but consider United’s two goals, taken by Wyke and Alex Gilliead.

Both of the moves had Ibehre at their core: the first a blocked shot which rebounded to Wyke, the second a rapid move from the left which saw Ibehre receive a throw, before enabling Wyke to set up loanee Gilliead.

This is what the ‘Islington Assassin’ was supposed to be when he signed: a useful presence, a magnet for defenders, a big distraction that would enable other people to find the net.

It is only because of his remarkable early-season glut that our perceptions have changed. Ibehre scored 14 in his first 20 games and remains on that total after 26. It is already the best season of his career for hitting the onion bag.

There is no reason not to challenge the Londoner to increase that total significantly (he will have to, if United are serious about the play-offs) but even if it is a trickle from here, Ibehre has still reintroduced some old-fashioned qualities to the front of Carlisle’s team.

It has indeed been some time since United have boasted strikers whose figures give the opposition something serious to worry about. It says something when the current goals-to-game averages of Wyke (0.41) and Ibehre (0.54) are better than any other Blues strikers of the past 20 years.

Whether this will be the case by the summer, with a lot more demanding games under their belts, remains to be seen. It can be argued that neither has yet clocked up enough fixtures to know whether they are long-term prolific in a Carlisle shirt.

But still – those stats hint at good things at this stage, and also give encouragement that United will not be short of penalty-box threat when 2015/16 heads into its defining weeks.

If either Wyke or Ibehre can reach 20 for the season (Derek Asamoah is next with seven this term) it will only be the second time a Carlisle forward has done so in the last two decades.

Karl Hawley’s 26 in 2005/6 is a beacon, and also an accusing number against all those who have tried and failed since. David Reeves, in 1994/5, was the previous player to break 20.

Those two boast enviable strike-rates from many more games than Wyke or Ibehre have so far played. Hawley’s 51 goals from 137 games came at 0.37 goals per game, and Reeves’ 63 in 168 fractionally better at 0.38.

Between Reeves’ 1990s heyday and now, the most reliable goalscorer on Carlisle’s books in this respect has been Joe Garner, whose three spells yielded 27 goals from 71 games (0.38). Vincent Pericard’s six from a brief 16-game spell brought the same average.

Naturally it is harder to maintain these ratios the longer you play, and respect is due to Michael Bridges (0.35), Lee Miller (0.33), Danny Graham (0.35) and Ian Stevens (0.33) for their own reliability in front of goal over decent periods.

Further back, the likes of Pop Robson, David Kemp and Billy Rafferty shone in previous eras, while it should be no surprise to learn that the most consistent finishing in Carlisle’s entire history came from their most illustrious names.

Jimmy McConnell, assassin of the 1920s and 1930s, generally tops these lists and this one is no different. Carlisle’s record scorer hit 126 goals in 160 games at a remarkable average of 0.83 goals a game. That gives the Scot comfortably the best strike-rate in Brunton Park history, though others have also guaranteed more or less a goal every two games: Alf Ackerman, Jimmy Whitehouse, Joe Livingstone, Joe Mantle, Bill Slinger.

Hugh McIlmoyle? 90 goals in 189 appearances, a mighty return on its own merit from the man widely regarded as Carlisle’s greatest player.

These numbers only tell a certain story, of course. They do not differentiate depending on how high a division one plays in, while they also offer little credit to the creators and the flair men who were influential in Carlisle’s best attacking play down the years.

You will not see any United goalscoring charts topped by the likes of Francois Zoko, Matt Jansen or David Currie, for instance, but they all helped others tick. And some, like Jansen, were not around long enough to become prolific for Carlisle before bigger clubs came swooping down.

The latter’s 24 goals for Blackburn in 2000/1 demonstrated how deadly he could become when he was emerging for his home-city club a few years earlier. And who knows how many goals other young talents, such as Gary Madine, would have totted up in Cumbria had they not jumped up divisions at a young age?

The hope in attaching Wyke to new terms is that, unlike some of those rising stars, his best goalscoring days will be played out here. If he exceeds his current potential, and higher clubs like what they see, the new deal at least ought to ensure that United are adequately compensated.

Until such a time, there is every reason to think him capable of continuing to score at a decent lick: a predator worth investing in, at last.