In some respects, a first game in charge is a free hit for a new manager. He hasn’t had long with the players and has had limited time to put his ideas in place.

I remember, though, talking to Alex Neil when he got the Norwich job. He had a watching brief at Bournemouth but at half-time he went downstairs and got involved.

The Canaries came from behind to win 2-1. Later he was asked whether the result would be regarded as his. “Too right it will,” was the response.

Any manager wants to win his first game and in most cases they don’t like sitting by and watching. Steven Pressley took charge of things at Carlisle immediately and got off to a positive start.

He couldn’t stand by and watch because he had a couple of changes forced on him straight away. Gary Liddle’s injury was one issue and then there was how best to resolve Carlisle’s lack of forward players.

He didn’t reinvent the wheel. He made a like-for-like change at right-back, with Gary Miller replacing Liddle, and I thought Miller did well enough. It’s always hard, mentally, for someone who has been out of the team for a while and been told they can move on, but Miller has always struck me as a good pro. You are not in the game for as long as he has been without having a good attitude.

One tweak made by Pressley, along with Tommy Wright and Paul Murray, was Hallam Hope moving back to the left and Jamie Devitt going down the middle in a bit of a Spanish-style “false nine” position. That might well be something to look at again.

Other little things caught the eye. Keeper Adam Collin looked as though he had been instructed to get the ball out as quickly as possible, and it was also obvious that United’s new manager used to be a defender, because he was desperate for that clean sheet.

He kept marshalling the back four, making sure they concentrated. No, Cheltenham weren’t the greatest opposition but you wouldn’t say Carlisle were at their absolute best either. These are the games you have to win if you want to challenge and it was a good 2-0 victory to grind out.

Now Carlisle have a tough game at Port Vale. You never know what you are going to get from them but they are a side capable of turning it on. With Crewe coming after that trip, United need to keep winning games, and four points from these two would be a decent return.

Expectation will now be to reach the play-offs at least, and why shouldn’t it be? We have heard the right noises from director of football David Holdsworth about signings, with Arthur Gnahoua coming in yesterday, and, over many years, we have always heard co-owner John Nixon talking about promotion and the club’s ambition eventually to reach the Championship.

Now it’s time to back that sort of talk up. There is a great opportunity to do something this season and if Carlisle don’t get fully behind it they will let down a lot of supporters, and the players as well.

Changing managers mid-season when you are in a good spell isn’t something you see all the time. In my time at Carlisle I suppose the best comparison is when Neil McDonald was sacked early in the 2007/8 season. Greg Abbott took temporary charge and it is always easy to think that giving the job to the caretaker is the way forward, given the relationship he has with the players and so on.

Some players are scared of change. They are wary of being found out or sussed out by a new manager. That paranoia is often there even if they seem outwardly confident.

Carlisle back then went for a new face too in John Ward and he started in much the same way as Pressley has. He didn’t make major changes to something that was ticking along nicely. Had he come with an ego, threatening to do this and do that, it would have risked unbalancing things.

Ward made his changes gradually and that seems to be Pressley’s approach. He knows the players are used to playing a certain way and know what’s getting them results. The good thing is that, when he did change something, like the system on Saturday, he had confidence in it even when it wasn’t working brilliantly early on, and it paid off in the end.

There might be some anxiety among fans about Devitt, who is in good form at the minute, even though Carlisle have said it would take a massive offer for them to consider letting him go.

Devitt is at a key stage in his career, at 28. He is the main man at Carlisle United, knows he’s going to play, fans love him, managers love him, he is big in the dressing room and his confidence is sky-high. If a team from the league above came in - one who wanted to progress, rather than just make up the numbers – Carlisle would probably struggle to keep him.

If other League Two clubs were circling, and there was any risk, then to me what you have to do is give him that two-year contract, make him the highest-paid player, and then surely you are halfway there.

He clearly loves it here – you don’t play as well as he is without loving life – and the only other reason he’d leave United is if he hasn’t been convinced about the ambition of the club.

I had options after getting promoted from the Conference with Carlisle. I could have gone to Gretna, or Darlington, or higher, but Paul Simpson and Fred Story pulled me in, spelled out who they were looking to bring in, and assured me of their positive plans.

If you are promised that, why would you move? Devitt is playing on a great surface every week, and if any decision came down to a £100-a-week increase, say, you’d probably write that off and stay.

Starting all over again at another club in a similar position to Carlisle just might not appeal. I just hope United do everything they can to make him feel there is a good and positive future here.

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Richie Bennett has now left Carlisle on loan and it’s a shame it hasn’t quite worked out for the striker at Brunton Park.

I’d always liked Richie and how he worked his way up from non-league, bettering himself along the way.

He had a big rise over a short space of time and came across as a good lad off the pitch as well.

He is the type of player you wanted to do well and I sensed many supporters felt that way too.

There were signs he might be getting into form when he scored a great goal on the opening day at Exeter and picked up a couple more soon after.

There were then a couple of bad games and, for John Sheridan’s attempts to get more out of him, it just didn’t happen.

Sometimes that’s just the way it goes and you have to hold your hands up and say a signing hasn’t worked.

You can’t say he didn’t lack for effort and for his sake I hope he proves a good addition for his new club, Morecambe, who looked a bit threadbare the last time I saw them.

Their manager, Jim Bentley, is good at getting the best out of players and hopefully he does that with Bennett.