The last time Carlisle United went for “continuity” from a position of strength, it was not in the manager’s office, but the boardroom.

2008. Fred Story’s departure and the handing of control to the four “custodians”.

United were losing the owner who had delivered consecutive promotions and very nearly Championship football, but we were not to worry. The new regime would be following the same “business model” as before.

Keep on keeping on was the message. Nothing has changed. Except it had and did. It turned out that losing a highly successful figurehead was not a minor issue from which United could easily drive away.

The four new owners did not fight like ferrets in a sack, exactly, but it took little more than a year for one (David Allen) to resign, citing major differences. Since then, United’s path has been eventful but it would be a stretch, given the general direction, to describe it as prosperous.

Assuming the good work of before can continue unharmed when a major part of that good work goes is risky logic. If it was that straightforward, why was he there in the first place?

The same applies to United now, and the decision to appoint Steven Pressley less than two weeks after John Sheridan’s resignation.

There was a case for “continuity” with the caretaker leadership of Tommy Wright and Paul Murray. It was easily made bearing in mind their substantial contribution to Carlisle’s current play-off position, their coaching credibility and, in Murray’s case, root-level feeling for the fate of the Blues.

Sheridan plainly was not a one-man operation. Imagining it would be just as positive from here without a fresh appointment would, though, have been a bet no safer than hiring a completely fresh leader.

Being at the helm is naturally different from being in the ranks. Wright has had other caretaker spells and Murray a short stint in charge at a then shambolic Hartlepool but there is no great body of managerial work to judge.

It is true that any aspiring boss (and Murray certainly is one) needs an opportunity. Hopefully that one day comes.

Even, though, if the Blues had stuck with the caretakers on the basis they knew the players closely, as well as the club’s ways of working, it would not have been exactly the same as before. It rarely is.

There is no such thing as Sheridan-lite and the decision is surely better taken on account of what the next man (or men) will change and impose, as much as what they will leave alone.

United clearly feel Pressley right now is better placed to exert his own control, initially in a short, 18-match hit. The next four months will measure that decision, but while the Scot has pledged to be careful not to make “wholesale” changes, there is no point withholding his own stamp either.

There is a difference, too, in getting into a good position, and staying there. We will never know if Sheridan would have applied himself just as well to the task of consolidating Carlisle’s play-off status as he did to the task of achieving it.

He is, whatever flaws were there, a difficult act to follow, given the summer fears among many supporters of a relegation struggle. But the back nine is a new challenge, a new remit, and there is method in the idea of using this month’s predicament to put someone new in charge of it.

Carlisle may have thought it right to push the continuity button with previous appointments, but, again, was each route so much more predictable than it would have been under an outsider?

Greg Abbott, after all, could not have been more different from John Ward had the two arrived from different planets. This despite one operating in the senior coaching regime of the other.

Graham Kavanagh, too: a long-serving sidekick to Abbott, well versed in the nooks and crannies of United by the time he graduated to the top, yet once there, significantly different in approach again.

Paul Simpson, another caretaker, was (thankfully) a dramatic alternative to Roddy Collins, under whom he played. Dick Young, the greatest coach in United’s history, did not find management so snug a fit as his favoured training ground work when he succeeded Alan Ashman.

United have spoken this season of “stability” of “structure” and this would, in theory, have laid easier ground for giving Wright and Murray a more extended audition, given that some of a manager’s traditional tasks (transfers, contracts) are now in the hands of a director of football.

Yet David Holdsworth, that DOF, said this week that Pressley’s bearing as a “leader” had proved attractive. A varied managerial CV for a man of 45 is also there, not yet offering promotion credentials but, in the case of Coventry especially, an ability to pilot a club through precarious times.

United are not in the same state as the Sky Blues were: kicked out of their ground under ownership that has delivered controversial lows. They are, though, on a certain tightrope, with a sixth-placed squad in need of precise and decisive recruitment work, at a time others appear to have greater financial leeway.

Pressley has been asked to keep things going, yes, but talk of “continuity” even from the new boss need not conceal the real truth: that Carlisle will want him to manage his way, not just follow the old way, which – if leadership is to mean anything - is how it always is and should be.