Bradford City 2 Carlisle United 0: Carlisle United started the final day of the season with the opportunity to finish anywhere between 14th and 20th. Appropriately, they finished 20th – the least flattering outcome possible, the total absence of fig leaf rather timely, if we are honest.
Fifth bottom of League Two, 88th in the Football League (with a record-equalling low mark of 39 goals from 46 games to boot)…yeah. Go nuts, Simmo. Don’t hang back when those meetings begin at 9.30am sharp on Monday. Do very much what you will.
Thank goodness this campaign, whose only recommending epitaph is ‘could have been worse’, is over. It threatened to be an historic misadventure for the Cumbrians and at least Paul Simpson ensured the ultimate calamity did not happen.
In the process, the manager regenerated the support base and gave us a glimmer of hope. United, as a result, go into the close-season with possibilities.
That’s a bargain that didn’t look likely from August until February. As such: let the man now peer at the next stage of the job with the coldest eye possible. Let us and him attach no sentiment to decisions on players which, no matter how ruthless, cannot be disputed with evidence of high or even moderate performance.
Nobody jettisoned by United now can argue injustice. This latest escapade has been sub-standard to the point where you can see how much it offends Simpson.
Carlisle, he knows, feels and says, need to be better. They just have to be. The road to sunnier times is unlikely to be straight from here but a frustrating last-day performance at Valley Parade was probably a helpful way by which to remember the write-off that was 2021/22.
It was a nearly game, a sort-of display, a hitting of a lowish bar. Simpson left the field raging about referee James Bell, but also realistic about his team’s shortcomings, especially in front of goal.
Carlisle, for their endeavour, did not have a midfield worth speaking of either. Their best player was a teenager making his second senior appearance – in Jack Ellis, there is a young defender we can look forward to watching next season, and hopefully beyond.
Beyond that: more of the same, and certainly nothing that is going to take United forward without serious and in some respects savage changes.
This, being realistic, we knew before this last dance: one which had its feisty moments, particularly when Mark Hughes clashed with Gavin Skelton in a touchline set-to, but which will have shifted nothing in terms of Simpson’s opinions on what happens next.
Before the game, in front of a Valley Parade fourth-tier record crowd which included 1,668 Cumbrians, we had one of those moments that make your heart and faith in basic decency fall through the floor. The minute’s silence in respect of the 56 victims of the 1985 fire was not complete when someone in the away section piped up.
Ignorance at best, crass disrespect at worst. Bradford’s fans rightly howled their disgust, and many in the United contingent also called out the dreadful interruption. Sixty seconds of shush. Was it really too much to ask?
With heads shaking all around the stadium, the match got under way. Ellis, on this big stage, started impressively, timing interceptions well and showing confidence on the right of United’s defence.
Bradford, though, were zippier in midfield: a key area in establishing the balance of power. Early chances came Jamie Walker’s way, and then the home side scored. The ball was still in play, the officials reckoned, despite Carlisle’s insistence it had gone out, and then came a shot from Charles Vernam and a poacher’s run from Lee Angol to glance it home.
United, in response, struggled to attack the home side with real emphasis. Omari Patrick and Jordan Gibson, both roundly booed over their Bantams past, couldn’t get enough clarity in central or wide areas. Ellis popped up for a shot which just cleared the bar, but Bradford remained sharper.
Walker, with more precise finishing, could have helped himself to several goals. Angol was a sizeable nuisance up front. A block denied Vernam after Howard spilled a hanging cross, and Dion Pereira blew a great chance from a well-worked corner.
Bradford, also rebuilding under Hughes, were lower mid-table for a reason too. They were not the most ruthless of sides despite their superiority. United ended the half with a little flurry – Kristian Dennis somehow failing to reach a Jack Armer teaser – but the spicier stuff came after the half-time whistle.
It certainly did not appear a pointless dead rubber when, first Angol and Jon Mellish had a difference of opinion, and Skelton stepped in to move the Bradford man away. This ignited the old warrior in Hughes, as the 58-year-old home manager appeared by Skelton’s side with nostrils flaring, putting his shoulder into United’s assistant and jabbing a few annoyed gestures.
Something of nothing, Simpson later said. His opinion on the referee, meanwhile, was barely repeatable. After the first stage of the second half, when Armer was denied by the sliding Alex Gilliead, the key moment came when Carlisle opened Bradford up via Gibson's through-ball for Dennis in, but the challenge which sent the striker down in the box was deemed legal by Bell.
As United’s heads spun with a sense of injustice, they failed to stay tight on Walker, who finally got free at the other end to pummel the ball past Howard a few moments later. And those were the maddening last rites on this season, since nothing that happened next stirred the blood, other than another bit of argy-bargy after Callum Cooke had left one on Gibson in a challenge.
It had the sense, by the end, of a squabble over nothing, and a few minutes after full-time the strong sense was of relief in Simpson that this phase of the task was now over, and the real quiz could begin.
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