Carlisle United 2 Stevenage 1: For a while, midway through an often torpid first half, it was necessary to have that conversation with yourself. You wanted this. Yes, you. This, in mid-February, is exactly the sort of meaningless, stress-free spectacle you dreamed of. Now eat it all up.
It was a game of no consequence, zero jeopardy and less excitement. Fantasy stuff, frankly, if we’d been offered it after the Swindon game.
Yet even with that clear in the mind, it was still a bit of a hard watch. But then something happened.
Can we call it the Simmo effect as well? It feels like that phrase has been an appropriate title for all the good things we’ve seen at Carlisle United over the last two-and-a-bit months.
All the same, even a sudden perking up in performance and intensity in a penultimate dead-rubber like this can in all probability be put down to the presence of the guy in the technical area too.
Would Paul Simpson have stood for another game meandering to an irrelevant conclusion so soon after that debacle at Harrogate? We can assume not. We can assume his players knew not too.
And so, in the second 45, Carlisle put the jump leads on. They started performing with life and purpose. Duly they scored two lovely goals, and made this a positive Brunton Park sign-off from a largely bad season: a day, come the end of it, that left you feeling slightly hopeful, rather than befuddled.
Beating Stevenage 2-1 with nothing at stake isn’t going to be remembered as any sort of giant launchpad. But still – better this as our last memory of United’s ground for three months than the alternative.
Better that the “lap of appreciation”, involving players, staff and the main man himself, was conducted in the wake of a victory. Better that a potentially era-defining week, which included that new Simpson contract, ended with an eighth win from 14 games; the arrow pointing upwards, the present smiling on the future.
Soon Simpson will get to work on player decisions and contract calls, and the side that went about things here will be broken up like a hammer smashing a bar of toffee. This underperforming 19th-placed squad will surely see shards flying everywhere.
It’s unlikely events against Steve Evans’ team will have transformed the manager’s thinking either way. After the game he said he was “99.9 per cent” there on those decisions. Other than Jack Ellis’s impressive debut, and a dynamic contribution from Joe Riley in central midfield, did anything new land on Simmo’s desk?
Probably not. The appetite for victory, though, was there, and is going to have to be there for Simpson to be satisfied as to progress from here. After an eventful start – Jordan Gibson skimming the bar with a cross, Stevenage’s Luke Prosser hitting a post – things became hard going, lots of patient but also pointless play, the game’s lack of real meaning stalking every touch.
Ellis, at right wing-back, was at least an intriguing presence. His early touches were understandably made with safety in mind, but the teenager still took up some positive positions down his side of the pitch. Gradually he grew into the game.
Infield, Carlisle toiled to find any brightness. Stevenage wasted a good Luke Norris opening, the striker swishing at fresh air after sneaking in to the right, and when Omari Patrick and Brennan Dickenson tried to apply some urgency to things for United, they struggled to get past a steady visiting defence.
Just about the slickest move of the half was in fact executed by Mark Howard, when he dropped the shoulder and dribbled away from Jamie Reid in his own box. Enjoyable stuff but…yeah. Shouldn’t take the keeper to provide the flair.
So anyway – the second half, and thankfully that uplift. One thing you can say about Riley is he always looks in a hurry to do something, as though he’s aware of a constant timer ticking down. His opening goal was a fine moment indeed: the ball shifted to the right, the shot clinically dispatched across Christy Pym.
Can he be part of Simmo’s future? Maybe. Can Howard? Maybe. The keeper has certainly done little wrong across 2021/22, and his save from a wastefully weak Ed Upson finish kept Carlisle in front.
Then, after a spate of substitutions, came that excellent second goal: the ball worked nimbly from right to left before Jack Armer’s cross was slid home by Lewis Alessandra: the sort of move Simpson, afterwards, said he had been itching to see his team produce.
By this stage, United had eased themselves into a position of comfort. Stevenage had lost whatever little mojo they’d come with, to the point that, when they scored – an 88th-minute Norris penalty after Corey Whelan had fouled Scott Cuthbert – it felt like only a mild intrusion.
There was, despite the halved lead, no trepidation about the outcome, nothing but largely satisfied feelings as Carlisle closed it out. Ellis, who had grown in composure and touch with every minute, got the ovation he deserved when substituted in the final moments. Simpson later said: “He hasn’t done himself any harm at all.”
Again: that little sentence means more than it normally would given the hard-eyed focus the manager is applying to the job of making United better. Ellis, then, is on board for the future; we’ll soon know who else Simmo feels is worth the same precious chance.
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