And that, it turns out, is how to dial down some of the “negativity”. Win a couple of games, play some brighter football, sign some useful players. Look like there might be things to be gained, rather than have it all to lose.

Let’s not leap too far ahead, but Tuesday night at Forest Green at last offered steps forward, not another greasy slide back. A Carlisle team provoked by new additions won handsomely.

It means, for the first time since the first month of 2019, that United are in sight of a third straight league victory. Things go well at Mansfield today, and Carlisle make the most of a game in hand, and they might end up closer in points to the play-offs than League Two’s relegation place.

Ludicrous, isn’t it, the fourth tier? Yet this is what people have been saying all along. Just win, now and then, and your outlook can change. Finally United have done so and for that Chris Beech and those involved in reshaping a struggling team can receive some credit.

There are, naturally, warnings from history against complacency. Carlisle, in February 2014, won against Coventry at Northampton to go six points clear of League One danger, and 11 from the bottom, but then fell steeply.

This version of the Blues has not progressed so far that another defeat will not come soon, but early signs are that their winter trading has been more positive and planned than before. Nick Anderton, Elliot Watt, Lewis Alessandra, Joshua Kayode – all ticks so far. Max Hunt, in two appearances, is also still to taste defeat. Omari Patrick, Callum Guy and Marcus Dewhurst now join this set and, if the short-term improvement of the last eight days has any legs at all then Carlisle ought to be fine.

In which case, the mid-season efforts to isolate United’s better qualities and make calls on which players to back (Aaron Hayden a good example) and who to sideline will gain approval. We might, all being well, encounter that rarest of beasts: a Blues campaign that gets better from January. Heavens, we might even, given the 18-month deals recently awarded, have a platform for more considered squad development this summer than last year’s churn.

That, again, would be “positivity”, not the n-word Andrew Jenkins flagged up in his programme notes last weekend. The chairman talked about rebuilding trust, meeting disgruntled fans, the need for everyone to “get behind the club”, that old phrase.

Beech, too, has come into Brunton Park conscious of the cloud. What head coach, entering his first top job, would not wish for a cleaner climate when it comes to the opinions that follows his club around?

Everyone has their parts to play in that, in tone and judgement. And action. If the first step to change is acceptance, the next is doing something about it, and where Carlisle United in 2020 is concerned those running the show must recognise that the past usually informs the present, and that people will always want evidence of improvement before they will properly believe in it.

Hence back-to-back wins finally generating thoughts that Carlisle may not, after all, be staggering towards non-league. Hence this month’s recruitment - which surely implies the freer use of available funds - offering sunnier glimpses. Hence supporters, next, hoping the backstairs talk of “succession” will eventually produce substance, after an era of false and at times farcical dawns.

With different influences now, notably Edinburgh Woollen Mill’s, there appears a greater likelihood of structural change. Those close to the core say it will be different this time; they may be right.

When, though, CUOSC’s briefing, with its hint at “a flurry of activity”, was shared last weekend, the response from many – “We’ll believe it when we see it” – should have caught no-one out. That cynicism has been fostered by debacles and drift.

Crowds have fallen this season because United have struggled, and also because it has been hard for many to “trust” the old set-up to make things better. Assessing the new hand of EWM has certainly been possible, by inspecting the changes within, but not entirely, given they have not yet taken a thorough mission statement to the fanbase.

In a football sense, Carlisle had, before Tuesday, got themselves in a position where they had not achieved back-to-back league victories for 12 months. If that is the picture, then, yes, there probably would be some “negativity”. When your next win is presumed to be your last for a while, it will be asked: what on earth is going on to make things so bad?

Due respect to Beech, then, for lifting that particular weight in the last few days, and for the apparent steps in the market. The hierarchy, now the transfer window has closed, could also go onto the front foot in other ways. They could explain their thinking, broadly, over the Jarrad Branthwaite windfall, for example. They can have more of the sort of conversations with everyone – not just representative groups, and not only in forums, or when asked – about direction, and detail, the kind which do owners like Accrington’s Andy Holt no harm.

Those of us whose job it is to transmit and challenge this can also do so with open minds. In the meantime, as 97 fans with jaded eyes returning from Gloucestershire on Wednesday morning would tell you, it’s amazing how cheerier the world feels when you suddenly have a team capable of winning 4-1 away.