What happened to the "unique" and "distinct" Carlisle United playing style we were promised?

Reading it felt like staring at a time-capsule from a distant era, not still-pristine white sheets of paper from only three years ago.

The covering statement to the attached accounts showed a club with a confident plan, the succulent fruits of which we ought to be eating now.

The eighth paragraph, in comments attributed to chairman Andrew Jenkins, referred to Carlisle’s “fresh footballing approach” adopted in the recent past. This involved the appointment of a new management team and director of football.

These, Jenkins said, would help the Blues move away from simply spending more to improve the team, “and instead, think strategically, make targeted signings and focus on developing a winning style of play that is distinctly Carlisle United.”

Andrew Jenkins, back right, and David Holdsworth, centre, have spoken in the past about wanting a "distinct" and "unique" playing style - but where is the evidence of that plan being put into action? (photo: Barbara Abbott)

Now, it’s true that nobody really talks like that. Mr Jenkins is unlikely to have dictated those exact words to the person typing them up. This, of course, is far from uncommon when an organisation is looking to put out a polished press release.

All the same, there was the sense of something higher at work here, not least because a similar line had already been promoted a few months earlier, upon the confirmation of David Holdsworth as the Blues’ DoF.

Holdsworth himself was this time quoted as desiring “an exciting brand of football that is uniquely United.”

So there you go. The mission statement was in place. The Blues were focused on fashioning a football method that was “unique” to them. Now, how has that gone?

Unique: being without a like or equal. Distinctively characteristic. Unusual. The only one. So says the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. What it doesn’t add is a picture of 11 men in blue shirts executing an inimitable form of association football.

That may be because, with a few honourable exceptions, that sort of phrase is usually…guff. Assertively stated, neatly crafted, skyscraperingly meaningless guff.

The notion that you could have taken Carlisle’s players, put them in different kit, whisked them to a neutral ground, covered part of their faces and led the crowd blindfolded to their seats, and the moment their vision was restored they’d have known they were watching the Blues…where to start with that?

John Sheridan worked on a certain way of playing at United - then his successors did things very differently (photo: Richard Parkes)

Identity is an interesting notion in football. Good teams certainly have one, bad ones often don't, and gaining one requires a series of successful steps.

Here is how United set about their high aim of honing a “unique” style from the time of those statements. They hired John Sheridan, a managerial journeyman who delivered short-term success based on the nippy frontrunning of some decent loan strikers.

Then he bogged off, and in came Steven Pressley, who practised a “false nine” system because United’s actual No9s were either unfit or absent, and a subsequent footballing approach for which the available players, particularly the defenders they signed, were plainly ill-suited.

The team declined badly and he was sacked, and the Blues turned to Chris Beech, who first stiffened the team’s spine and then moulded a quite different style: one based on muscularity, aerial strength and a busy press. This excelled for half a season then went the opposite way for the other half.

Keith Millen is now the man charged with promoting a style that can keep Carlisle in League Two (photo: Barbara Abbott)

Come last October, and a summer window where the attacking signings seemed at odds with Beech’s style up to this point, he was also dispatched. The latest scramble is now being undertaken by Keith Millen who, with limited raw materials, briefly made the best of things with a hard-working and organised game during the middle of winter, but has since seen more expansive attempts founder.

And so, two or three years on from those pledges, what do Carlisle United look like? Their financial route since 2018 has been apparent, but what is their playing identity? Where are the common threads linking the team Millen puts out today and the one fielded by Sheridan?

Where is the evidence that the Blues have built along the same consistent and calculated lines, rather than simply hiring different managers and going with what they wanted or felt able to do in the circumstances?

Could it be that supporters, needing to be won over to a new way of operating, were fed a degree of unnecessary drivel to make it sound like higher aims were in place?

Could it be that it was assumed folk would read those words, watch the various meanderings since, and be reassured that, hey, we might not be very good all the time, but at least we still have a “distinct” way?

United are aiming to improve their survival chances against Swinidon today (photo: Barbara Abbott)

It would be nice to know who’s accountable for this; who can explain the big sell now it’s turned out to be as authentic as Peckham Spring. Alas, United could have just 77 days left as a Football League club and the people with the big say at Brunton Park remain, by and large, quiet.

Chief executive Nigel Clibbens will no doubt have another detailed update on the way soon. Supporters’ groups will get their monthly chance next week. Millen is regularly in front of the media.

Is that enough, with so much presently at stake? Where are the owners? The director of football (who spoke on the club's website yesterday, but hasn't been available to the media since October)? What about Purepay Retail Limited, or other associates of Philip Day and Edinburgh Woollen Mill who’ve had a hand in United’s affairs along this bumpy journey?

Not yet out there in the full public eye, available to tackle on a situation which, should results not soon tick up, could lead Carlisle United to a very serious reckoning.

The truth is that the Blues’ “unique” style, here in February 2022, extends to figuring out how to get something out of Swindon Town after seven winless games, and then we’ll think about the next game after that.

It’s an undeniably fraught state of affairs which can go one of two ways; hopefully the right one. Nothing we see right now, though, can be confused with the product of design. So what happened?