Carlisle United 2 Morecambe 2: Carlisle United concede avoidable goals. Carlisle United have the character to fight back. We knew this before Saturday, we know it now, and at some stage it would be really nice to learn a few new things.

Alas, it might not happen in what’s left of 2019/20. The pattern is set, safety is surely assured and the Blues, on these windy February days, are putting on a banquet of draws, with very few defeats or wins to steer the conversation very far in either direction.

The fact this is all occurring on a cushion of points – 14, now, above the drop zone – remains the context for any frustration. Their spell of one defeat in eight has inched them into this position; it is a simultaneous sequence of five games without a win that has not allowed them to move much further on.

Chris Beech, and those who employed him, will not complain too much that these final laps are becoming, well, a little samey. It was looking much more fearful than this in the autumn, after all, when United did not appear a side capable of coming from behind like this.

The fact they are doing so now warrants fair credit. The fact they are having to do it in the first place sets a certain limit to the praise.

The compliments, one has to hope, can flow next season, after the laying of these better competitive foundations. Until then, you know, on an average Saturday, that you may well see United do a few loose things at the back, and more often than not respond with gumption.

You also know that these recurring spectacles will be played in heavy wind. One day – this year, ideally – the gales will not blow so fiercely. In the meantime, these conditions, along with the rain, are throwing Carlisle’s pre-match preparations into a few different places and Beech said that deserved to be considered and respected along with the normal game analysis.

That it can be. But the gusts do not account for everything and do not explain Carlisle’s habit of digging themselves a hole. It was, against Morecambe, quite a hollow they excavated, allowing Cole Stockton to turn and score against his former club before Aaron Wildig dispatched a second from a further outbreak of questionable defending and goalkeeping.

Carlisle had the wind at this point but it was proving more enemy than friend. Only when Omari Patrick bent in a shot off the post did they make a proper step back, and then in a better second half Aaron Hayden rose, as he does, to head them level.

Bad things, good things. Slump, revival. Repeat. A side fifth bottom in the fourth tier, which has required managerial change in late November, is not going to be transformed into a winning machine three months later and Morecambe, another struggler, got into a decent clip from around the 15-minute mark, a phase of more focused movement bringing them two goals.

The first came after Carlisle, via Nick Anderson and Hayden, should have made more of a corner. At the other end, their defensive shape was then wobbled and Stockton got far too much room to receive Jordan Cranston’s pass and force his low shot through Adam Collin’s dive. The scorer cocked his ear at home fans as he celebrated, and it just had to be this way from a striker who failed to net at Brunton Park at all in a poor half-season spell here in 2018.

It then got worse when Collin struggled to punch clear a corner which, via more ricochets, eventually popped up for Wildig, who startled keeper and defence with a sweet volley from outside the box.

Carlisle’s best replies came via set-piece pressure rather than invention, given their difficulty in mastering the wind and their own movement. Nathan Thomas, their main avenue, almost sneaked a corner in and Hayden headed another wide, and it was painstaking at times – but at least persistent, and this was rewarded when, before the break, Byron Webster dropped a diagonal ball onto Patrick’s toe, and the January signing controlled it well before bending it home.

That was enough to force Morecambe, another side unaccustomed to winning, deeper within themselves and although Thomas limped off soon into the second half, United had more gusto about them. Patrick had a shot blocked, and then Webster and Gethin Jones combined to force a corner which Elliot Watt sent over and Hayden headed mightily home.

Better. But not the platform for victory. Carlisle sensed it but could not see it through; Jon Mellish, attacking more confidently from midfield, tried to drive into good places, while Christoffer Mafoumbi saved a Patrick header.

From Harry McKirdy, Thomas's replacement, there were darts and nudges, one bafflingly penalised by ref Peter Wright. From Anderton there was a shot that cannoned off Mellish. From Watt, some probing passes, and from Morecambe, in occasional response, a dribble but tame effort from John O’Sullivan and, more alarmingly, a shot Collin failed to hold but which Mellish diverted to safety, and a late Stockton dash, terminated by a Webster foul and concluded with a poor Adam Phillips free-kick: lots of bluster and effort, as usual, and a familiar plot and ending, also as usual.

United: Collin, G Jones, Anderton, Webster, Hayden, Mellish, M Jones (Bridge 77), Watt, Thomas (McKirdy 49), Alessandra, Patrick (Olomola 88). Not used: Gray, Iredale, Charters, Hunt.

Goals: Patrick 45, Hayden 65.

Booked: Watt, Anderton, Webster.

Morecambe: Mafoumbi, Cranston, Cooney, Old, Lavelle, Diagouraga, Phillips, Wildig, Mendes-Gomes (Kenyon 81), Slew (O'Sullivan 81), Stockton. Not used: Halstead, Leitch-Smith, Brewitt, Mbulu.

Goals: Stockton 18, Wildig 24.

Booked: Cranston.

Ref: Peter Wright.

Crowd: 4,679 (562 Morecambe fans).