All sorts of things will be tested in this new season which is about to break out of summer's slumber, each helping provide an answer to the biggest question of all: what sort of shape are Carlisle United really in?

A football team is only a representation of all that goes on behind the stage. How the Blues begin against Swindon and go from here will give the surest health-check on the club that draws a few thousand addicts back to Brunton Park today.

Carlisle start 2017/18 with seven new players and one of the EFL's longest-serving managers. Keith Curle, yet to hit the three-year mark, has been in post for a greater time than 62 of his fellow bosses below the Premier League.

That marks him as a survivor in a crazy industry. It also means his principles and methods have had time to spread. Ideally, the ground ought to be fertile for the first promotion of his managerial career, and United's first since 2006.

It cannot be as simple as that, though. Carlisle United do not do routine and anyone banking on things to go smoothly from game one to 46 have probably got the wrong club.

Last season's play-off heartbreak at Exeter was a typically melodramatic end to United's best season, points-wise, for nine years. This season's tasks where the manager and his staff are concerned are to avoid the erratic pattern of form seen in the last two campaigns, which have produced much better first than second halves of term.

Sorting out a defensive record which has not been up to scratch for some time must also be high on the list.

A late glut of arrivals - Richie Bennett, Sam Cosgrove and Shamal George - have thickened Curle's squad, which was looking worryingly light as July went on. There is still a lack of depth in certain areas, like full-back, but at least United now have options in attack, which had been decimated by the departures of Jabo Ibehre and Jamie Proctor in the summer and Charlie Wyke in January.

Shaun Miller, one of pre-season's stars, looks in the mood to be a second-season hit. Likewise his former Morecambe accomplice Jamie Devitt in a creating role. Of the new boys, Hallam Hope will run out to play for a manager who admitted he chased him harder than his "ex-wife and current girlfriend".

If that ardour doesn't bring the best out of the former Everton man, nothing will. Bennett, who United eventually bought from Barrow, will put his non-league goalscoring pedigree to the test while Cosgrove, a successful trialist, is a young target-man Curle feels is ripe for developing.

At a glance it seems United can field an XI that can be the measure of most in League Two. Their lack of numbers compared with some others may explain why pundits are placing them in the play-offs, not higher. Injuries ate into the squad last season and similar events would put them at risk again.

They open up already with a few hurt bodies. Jason Kennedy, John O'Sullivan, Kelvin Etuhu and Samir Nabi are ruled out this afternoon, and it is understandable that some fans live in fear of the next injury bulletin, considering what happened to results when Mike Jones and Danny Grainger went down at Luton last December.

Jones' return for the start of 2017/18 is not to be underestimated. He is one of a core of players with the ability to lift United from the average. Nicky Adams, who recently swerved rumours of a move to Blackpool, is an obvious other. Etuhu, who moved from Bury with Hope, has pedigree that his pre-season did not particularly show. Let us hope the real business brings the best out of the sizeable central midfielder, once fully fit.

At the back, Tom Parkes' left foot offers balance, probably alongside Gary Liddle to begin with. Shaun Brisley's Carlisle career was not a great success and he is now at Notts County. Mark Ellis' struggle to regain favour will attract more scrutiny if the Blues start leaking again. Behind whatever defensive arrangement Curle goes for this time - and many believe there should be room for extra bodies here - Jack Bonham looks likely to get the early nod in goal, challenged by his fellow loanee, Liverpool's George.

Bonham, who succeeds the long-serving Mark Gillespie (now at Walsall) has looked reassuring in pre-season, not that United's target has been peppered with shots. His distribution ought to become an improved feature of their play.

Expect the mainstays - Danny Grainger, Luke Joyce - to tot up the appearances again. Reggie Lambe will also get opportunities to shine. A system that gets the best out of the Bermudan in harmony with Adams and Devitt (with Nabi an intriguing wild card) could outfox some of the best in League Two.

If Curle can nail such a formula - and fit a new bolt to that back door - then more progress is realistic. Whether Carlisle are financially equipped to go up against Mansfield, Luton and the division's other top spenders for the duration is another matter.

This is the first season in three that has not started under the cloud of the mystery foreign "billionaire" (Yahya Kirdi, whose sights have since lowered to Morpeth Town). Praise be for that. Yet the big picture is still hazy in places.

Edinburgh Woollen Mill's logo is on the shirt, while Philip Day's firm are in theory a cashmere safety net for the times when United's money runs dry. Yet neither Day nor his firm have spoken openly about the "loan facility" they made available to Carlisle in March, or any longer-term implications.

Cumbria's richest man does not, according to Frank Beattie of the Carlisle United Official Supporters' Club, like the regular criticism some fans aim at the club and its owners. That second-hand warning is unlikely to be heeded if the Blues stumble through 2017/18.

More overdraft than warchest, the loan arrangement has not exactly seen United launch themselves from their front foot this summer. Things are tighter, it appears, than they have been, the effect (in part) of Carlisle's lucrative player bonuses failing to be matched by emphatic crowd numbers in 2016/17. While Brad Potts' sale from Blackpool to Barnsley could bring timely sell-on cash to his first club, a proper explanation why a tax bill got as far as a winding-up petition from HM Revenue & Customs, despite United supposedly being able to draw on EWM's money, would also be useful.

Certain pieces of the picture have been spruced up. With Project Blue Yonder off the drawing board, the Sunset Suite has had a welcome facelift. There is a spacious new press box in the Pioneer Stand, the club website has been refreshed, while one barely needs to ask whether the brilliant David Mitchell and his team have prepared another outstanding pitch.

Away from first-team business, expect United's community work to remain one of its best features this campaign. Hopefully their Ladies team, county cup winners last spring, continue to grow. Politically, CUOSC are further inside the tent than ever, increasingly a branch of the club rather than the rebellious voice some would prefer them to be. Nigel Clibbens, the chief executive, has done more than anyone to guide them over that particular bridge.

Reuniting fanbase and owners will, one senses, remain a tougher game. Even in a generally good season there were some signs of protest against the regime last spring. Andrew Jenkins, John Nixon and Steven Pattison, who will reach a decade of "custodian" ownership next summer, must know a good campaign is needed to keep those sentiments at bay.

The idea that EWM would steam in and blow the old guard away proved fanciful. Their long-game, if they have one, is a good distance from becoming clear. So, therefore, is the sort of bright, modern and ambitious future for the Blues that many yearn for.

Instead, 2017/18 seems to be like many of the others: a case of making the most of what they have, patching up the flaws and hoping for a break. This time 10 years ago Carlisle started a campaign that almost ended in the Championship. Escaping the basement division at the fourth attempt is now their reduced but essential goal.