Jon Colman reports from Brunton Park

Last updated at 15:08, Monday, 01 September 2008

Carlisle Utd 4 Crewe Alexandra 2: The hope is that Carlisle United’s supporters gulped down all the technicolour treats they were offered on Saturday and savoured the feeling.

Because you can bet the main upshot from this banquet of attacking football is that most visiting teams will now land in Cumbria with the specific intention of wiping entertainment right off the menu.

Squeeze, stifle, subdue: none of these words were among Steve Holland’s instructions to his Crewe team before kick-off. The result was a dizzying six-goal carnival which offered early-season evidence that the Blues are capable of some ferocious attacking football, given the right encouragement, a fair wind and a smooth pitch.

It doesn’t downgrade United’s best work to point out that Crewe gave them a tactical leg-up in Brunton Park’s first fixture of the 2008/9 campaign. Some of Carlisle’s lightning raids would have ripped up tighter units than the red-shirted Railwaymen. It was a pleasing demonstration of the talents John Ward has long been promising to unchain and which will no doubt put several of League One’s high-rollers on amber alert.

However, as Simon Hackney was slicing through for Carlisle’s fourth goal, the dominant mental image was of scouts reporting back to managers on the perils of opening up at United’s forbidding home ground. “I don’t think too many teams will do that at Brunton Park,” acknowledged Ward. “Crewe left three men up when they were defending corners, left their wide players high up the pitch.

“Neil Baker, their assistant manager said to me after the game that it was open. “It’s your fault you’ve come and played like that,” I told him.”

Holland, Crewe’s head coach, had declared he was already “sick” of seeing his team near the base of the League One table after a single game. The manner in which he attempted to put this right (namely, heading up the M6 with his nose in Kevin Keegan’s Euro 2000 tactics manual) won’t have reduced his nausea. The ultra-positive approach demanded by Dario Gradi’s successor was exposed as suicidal once it became obvious that Carlisle - with fast, forward-thinkers like Hackney and Scott Dobie rampaging down respective wings - were the game’s superior force.

Having said all that, so much of modern football is so grinding and grid-based that you want to give thanks for a game that rattles along like this one, serving up drama in frequent dollops.

Also dishing out gratitude today will be Danny Graham, for the sort of service that allows him to be one of the division’s most lethal finishers. His two first-half goals here were dispatched first-time, in the penalty box, from crosses from the right.

And so ends the lesson on how to draw the best work from Carlisle’s number nine, who has now made his goal-free pre-season a happy irrelevance.

United had gone close three times - twice through Dobie, once through Graham with a squandered header - before last season’s top scorer cut through the frustration in the 15th minute. Carlisle first soaked up a Crewe free-kick before Marc Bridge-Wilkinson sent Dobie sprinting down the right. Graham arrowed his run to the near post, and his scoring volley left vapour trails.

Four minutes later, Carlisle laid down another simple demonstration of the goalscoring arts. Hackney’s corner from the right was eventually worked back to the winger, and his second cross was nodded clinically past Steve Collis by the rising Graham.

At no point did it seem that the day’s scoring was now over. Instantly, Crewe buzzed upfield and struck back. United cleared a corner, but when Byron Moore returned it into the box, Anthony Elding profited from excessive far-post space to tee up Chris McCready, who stooped to score from close-range.

More urgent Crewe raids required Peter Murphy to repel Joel Grant’s shot after the elusive winger had cut into the box, and Danny Carlton to clear Julien Baudet’s looping header off the line: two stand-out examples of Carlisle looking far from their most defensively tight.

Early in the second half, after Graham had fired a hat-trick opportunity just wide, United’s guests raised further alarm. Evan Horwood’s poor pass was intercepted by Moore who allowed Elding to set up Grant in the box, but the former Aldershot winger poked wastefully wide.

Reprieved, Carlisle then counter-attacked and took the goal that pushed the game beyond Holland’s men. Graham, with admirable skill down the right, fed the ball into the box and when it broke for Dobie, he slammed the chance into the attic of Collis’ net.

This was Ward’s cue to summon Michael Bridges from the bench to a boisterous welcome, to see if the former Premier League man could locate more holes in Crewe’s backline whilst they committed even more numbers to the attacking cause.

Happily, the illustrious loan man filled his half-hour with plenty of encouraging contributions.

First, there was a left-footed shot which curled fractionally wide after Carlton had blocked a clearance with an unorthodox backward stretch of his leg.

Then, as United hungrily attacked more vacant areas, Bridges slid through a perfect pass for Hackney to finish convincingly for number four, before Graham fluffed his final treble chance.

Tom Pope’s bundled consolation, and a few other wobbly moments from Ben Williams in the Blues goal, meant this was far from a faultless victory - as did the occasions when Crewe darted into dangerous territory too easily for Cumbrian tastes.

Horwood’s distribution also needs to rise a few notches before we can say the full-back is building properly on last season’s promise. But only the curmudgeon takes that home as his image of the day, instead of the stirring sight of blue shirts fanning out so often, so swiftly in pursuit of goals and thrills.

The heart says keep it coming, with bells on. The head says that’s probably an over-elaborate wish, given the scouting reports that will now be landing like threatening letters on tables in Yeovil and Southend (United’s next two opponents here).

All graft, no craft might be a crude way of describing future visitors to these parts, but it’s probably accurate. Still, what does that say about Carlisle and the colourful havoc they’re already starting to wreak?

First published at 11:48, Monday, 18 August 2008
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk