By Jon Colman

Last updated at 11:53, Tuesday, 24 November 2009

England’s most notorious planned town is the place tonight where Greg Abbott must lay out a blueprint for the kind of sustained improvement which has eluded Carlisle United ever since this season clicked into life.

Greg Abbott: Needs to get back to winning ways

Milton Keynes, the unloved, grid-based venue which snaffled Wimbledon’s football identity five years ago, sees Abbott’s Blues square up to Paul Ince’s Dons with the credibility of the United manager’s reign back under scrutiny.

That was the effect of Saturday’s appalling performance against Swindon and a 1-0 defeat which seemed their likely destiny from the moment the Robins shot themselves into a third-minute lead.

An hour or so later, and chants for Abbott’s dismissal were climbing from the Paddock and Warwick Road End at Brunton Park.

That it was Carlisle’s second defeat in seven outings – far from the kind of calamitous run they have endured in the last 12 months – might ordinarily have made that outpouring of terrace frustration appear a touch hasty.

But then you study United’s futile search for consistent results to back up their manager’s preachings on improved performances, and those complaints become a shade more understandable.

That Carlisle have failed to lace together any more than two victories on Abbott’s year-long watch is among the most damning statistics, which has its roots in last season’s post-John Ward chaos but which has not been chased away more than 12 months after the former manager’s removal.

United’s progress in three cup competitions this campaign is duly noted. That is a clear and welcome development from the ashes of underachievement. But in the hard business of gathering league points, their current position of 19th after 17 games tells you how far down progress’s road they actually are.

Under Abbott, the Cumbrians have shown themselves capable of the occasional rousing performance – think Charlton and Leeds this season, Millwall last – but at no point have they managed to hold that level of style and success from one week to the next.

Consecutive league wins against Southend and Charlton this term, for instance, served up the chance of gaining mid-table comfort, only for United to skid to an entirely avoidable 3-2 defeat at Bristol Rovers and then the non-event when Swindon visited at the weekend.

It’s why the exasperation which found its public voice on Saturday was not a reflex outpouring on the back of one no-show. It was a vocal blast which echoed down the months of inconsistency.

Abbott, who has rarely looked so wracked in the aftermath of defeat, suddenly finds himself answering pointed questions about his ability to coax regular, positive results from his team, about his tactical tweak to a single centre-forward system which he insisted was not to blame for the Swindon debacle, about his side’s obligation to lift themselves into a position of relative safety before the turn of the year.

“I don’t think I could have done much different on Saturday,” claimed the manager. “We picked a team that had been largely successful over the previous six games and there was no great need to change too much.

“When players perform as poorly as that throughout the team, it’s the wrong time to start looking at whether it was the right or wrong system. We played some pretty stuff when we had the ball, but when we didn’t have the ball we were borderline very, very, very poor.

“Maybe my approach to the players in the build up to the MK Dons game might be a bit different, because I’m not accepting that. I am at the top of it all and it is not good enough.

“We get our progress back by winning again, by having a better approach to the game. I hope we get something out of it and kick on again from there. It’s always how you react to disappointment that is the important thing.”

Asked whether the solution to Saturday’s shocking shortcomings might lie in the loan market, before Thursday’s deadline passes, Abbott’s response was to recoil from making a “knee-jerk” plunge, adding that such a move would require “long and hard” thought with due consideration given to his team’s promising run of results that preceded the Bristol Rovers and Swindon disappointments.

Until then, there is the immediate hope that an evening on one of League One’s most daunting stages can inspire Carlisle to the kind of display they have summoned against the likes of Leeds and Charlton – and that it can subsequently lead to a pattern of results that will take them, and Abbott, off the condemned list.

“We can’t worry about where the next game is,” said the United boss. “We just have to improve on what we did on Saturday. To be honest, that won’t be too difficult.”

That Abbott is a manager with a fierce desire to succeed cannot be doubted. But passion and fire only gets you so far on the journey. Tonight he must also show he is a man with a plan.

First published at 11:22, Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk