Keith Millen threw extra numbers at Carlisle United’s defensive problems on Saturday but pretty soon the figuring-out will have to return to the other end.
Strange to turn attention to the attacking department when you’ve just scored two on the road? Only if you feel the problem-solving must be taken one job at a time.
United's predicament does not allow for selective improvement. Yes, the Blues at the back are in a degree of crisis right now, having conceded 12 goals in five games.
Carry on like that and you’ll only end up in one place. Millen’s solution at Colchester was to go to five in defence, the thinking being that if he could not increase Carlisle’s average age, he could at least tack on Mitchell Roberts’ 21 years to the other young players guarding the Blues’ goal.
United, he said, don’t have the individuals to operate a back four just now: a sign both of their injuries and the greenness of those left to do the work.
That, then, seems set as a strategy for the foreseeable. What, though, about attack?
Here’s a dispiriting question. When was the last time Carlisle scored three goals in a league game?
Yep, you need to think back a bit. You won’t find the answer this season.
You need, in fact, to reverse all the way to May 1, 2021, and the time of behind-closed-doors Covid football. Who would have believed that George Tanner’s last-minute goal at Leyton Orient, which snatched a 3-2 victory, would remain a line in the sand for so long?
At Brunton Park the wait is even longer: March 13, and the 3-1 victory over Bradford City. More than 11 months, then, since United hit three in a league match at home.
No wonder they are down among the ailing in League Two. By comparison, John Sheridan’s Oldham Athletic have gone three days since they last scored three.
They were denied an escape from the relegation zone by Newport County’s late comeback on Saturday. But Carlisle and their fellow strugglers must remain concerned by the Latics’ progress right now.
If you are capable of scoring three at the home of a promotion-chaser, you must be capable of imagining all sorts of possibilities.
Carlisle can’t imagine scoring three anywhere. This season, they couldn’t even muster that many against Horsham of the Isthmian League in the FA Cup.
Their solitary treble of 2021/22 came against Hartlepool United in the Papa John’s Trophy, an occasion officially witnessed by 1,360 people.
Maybe if folk knew it was going to be such a rarity, more might have turned up.
(Ok, probably not. It is the pizza cup after all)
The point, though, is plain: Carlisle need to win games, a good half dozen of their last 16, maybe more, if they are going to give themselves a solid chance of getting out of their present mess.
They came up with a couple of goals at Colchester – one superbly conjured by Omari Patrick, another well-worked and headed home by Tobi Sho-Silva – but little else in the performance in Essex made you think that goals were bursting to get out of Millen’s side.
Their first half was so limited in enterprise that Lord Sugar would have fired it after week one. United seldom entered Colchester’s half or even looked like they wanted to.
The Blues clearly wanted to protect their nil, as the saying goes, but their attempts at creative football were still abysmal. For the necessity of making them more stubborn amid a winless run, United will only survive if they learn how to endanger teams more too.
Somehow Millen has to come up with a plan that incorporates that extra defensive body and also unleashes players like Patrick to do more damage.
He also needs deadline-day signings Jamie Devitt and Kristian Dennis up to speed, pronto. And Jordan Gibson’s best contributions to this season are still recent enough to think he should have a part to play, too. He was an unused sub in Essex.
There are some huge fixtures ahead and the second lowest scorers in League Two (23 from 30 games) could do with freeing themselves up in the attacking third somehow.
Imagine if they went to places like Oldham, Rochdale and Walsall - as they do in March and April - knowing they have a serious goalscoring performance in them, rather than the nagging knowledge that it's something they need to chisel out rather desperately on a weekly basis?
Even Scunthorpe United have a three-goal return to their name in the recent past (Boxing Day, at Oldham). Not once, by contrast, have Carlisle ever been able to say in 2021/22 that they’ve been utterly out of sight in a match in a positive sense.
It is an equation Millen and his staff simply must solve. If you have players with the capabilities of Patrick and Gibson, and the pedigree of Devitt and Dennis, and can’t make a credible goalscoring threat out of them, then something on the hard drive isn’t right.
United’s recruitment is another matter – last summer’s, attacking wise, must go down as among their worst in recent history – but what they have now ought to be able to carry them forward a fair amount.
This, after all, is why you hire a manager, what all that training ground time is for. Millen’s experience must come to a head now, otherwise this Carlisle team will be remembered for an impotence that took them into non-league, and obscurity.
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