Carlisle United 0 Tranmere Rovers 1: The buzz ain't back/We're not excited/Finish 22nd and we’ll all be delighted. Maybe Michael Knighton can rap that for us.

On a surreal but also greyly familiar day at Brunton Park, Carlisle United continued their journey into the depths of League Two as one of the most controversial figures from their past watched from on high.

An astonishing sight, all told: the grey-bearded Knighton perched close to current club officials, back here for the first time in two decades as this highly limited modern version of his old team came up goalless and pointless for the fourth successive game.

Knighton rapped on a single as the mid-90s United cruised to promotions and Wembley appearances. A few years later and he was gone after some deeply troubled times. Imagine being told in 2002 that, come 2021, he’d be back in those seats, even just for one afternoon. Football. Bloody hell.

Also: United. Bloody hell. This current plight is more than likely going to get worse before it gets better. The idea Carlisle are just a manager short of a successful operation is a laughable delusion. That is not far off being the least of their issues.

Gavin Skelton, the caretaker, and Eric Kinder, his assistant, did their best to get a losing team into some sort of shape for the first game of the post-Chris Beech era. The team appeared, for this encounter with Tranmere, at least to be clear in their organisation and plan.

For 48 minutes they kept an accomplished but not especially potent travelling Tranmere at reasonable bay. Then Rod McDonald’s own-goal fizzed into Mark Howard’s net and United’s limitations were back in neon.

They couldn’t score. They can’t score. Six hours now without a goal or a point, four games spent travelling from lower mid-table into the relegation zone. David Holdsworth, the director of football, said last Thursday that he didn’t want to contemplate that r-word. Brave. Or something else.

Let’s be clear. United do not just need a new boss but half a team, or at least a little cluster of players who can add emphasis at both ends and, for pity’s sake, find the net. Without the short-term help of a free agent, should one be out there, this looks highly likely to be a case of trying to stay in touch with third-bottom until January, at which point the latest salvation job can begin.

What a bleak outlook. What a sorry way to think. What a wholly realistic way of assessing what is in front of us. Even ownership “succession” – still on the table, chairman Andrew Jenkins insisted on Saturday – might well come too late to avert things in 2021/22.

News and Star: United show their disappointment after Tranmere strike (photo: Barbara Abbott)United show their disappointment after Tranmere strike (photo: Barbara Abbott)

With the picture so gloomy, the detail feels inevitable, even in the moments when United threaten to do something better. Skelton sent them out in a 4-4-1-1 and, other than a Sam Foley offside goal, Carlisle to begin with kept Tranmere where they could handle them: tricky in wide areas, toothless in the box.

Some early enterprise cut Zach Clough loose for a United shot which Ross Doohan saved. Jordan Gibson put a sighter wide, Corey Whelan, at right-back, showed a measure of attacking intent and United tried a couple of new things from set-pieces.

Tranmere identified Callum McManaman’s ability to hurt United’s left defensive side as an area of potential, and when Josh Dacres-Cogley overlapped in support – not always tracked – this seemed a likely avenue. United, though, cleared lines safely and kept Howard, the experienced goalkeeping debutant, well enough protected.

The Blues played determinedly, though certain of their attackers were ineffective again, and their plan to contain and break seemed sensible. Nil-nil at half-time was at least a basis for something after the concessions of previous weeks. Yet Tranmere hit them early in the second half, darting at a deep defence, Kieron Morris and Sam Foley putting them in arrears and the latter’s cross diverted in by McDonald for Rovers’ first away goal of term.

United had put such balls into Tranmere’s box without such a break, or the decisive thrust of a No9. Plus ca change. After Gibson failed to put a Jack Armer cross past Doohan from highly tempting range, Josh Hawkes glided through two blue shirts and was felled by Jon Mellish, only for Howard to save Morris’s penalty.

A reprieve. A chance. A team with more about them might have taken it. United, instead, did nothing from here to suggest they had the map to goal.

Mellish went close from 20 yards. Brennan Dickenson was denied a hopeful penalty shout. Substitutions were made. Howard denied the countering Foley. Tranmere’s centre-halves Tom Davies and Peter Clarke were predictably resolute. A couple of scrambles failed to benefit the Blues. The near 900-strong visiting support thumped their drum at full-time, and Knighton slipped away: United’s turbulent past and troubling present married on one strange autumn afternoon.