It already, with the greatest respect to the player, feels like a footnote, a detail, something that happened because it had to happen and was always going to happen. News in brief.
Carlisle United’s summer of 2022 may be remembered for many things. Hopefully we will look back on it wistfully for all sorts of good reasons.
Remember the time they signed the prolific Ryan Edmondson? How on earth did we nick Sonny Hilton? Can’t believe we got Tomas Holy and Ben Barclay at the same time. As for Owen Moxon…nice work, Simmo.
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The departure of Tristan Abrahams? Chances are it won’t feature on many nostalgia trips. Yet in its own way, that modest deal also says something important.
It draws a line in ever-so-slightly thicker ink under the most flawed close-season in recent memory. The one, you will recall, that we were encouraged to believe had made Carlisle, if anything, stronger than the year before. Haha.
Abrahams to Eastleigh is one of the last bricks pulled out of that crumbly wall, just about the final act in dismantling bad work. It was not a signing that ever threatened to ignite much at Brunton Park and was, as we know, of a piece with much else United attempted in the sunny months of 2021.
Again, this is less about the player – good luck to Abrahams, who wanted to return south yet has still opted for first-team football in the National League rather than sit on a (presumably) better wage for the last year of his Carlisle deal – than the systems, or lack of them, that put United together 12 months ago.
It is telling, with this in mind, to think that all the forward players United pinned their hopes on are now gone. Zach Clough was a good idea in the wrong circumstances, a brittle maverick unsuited for Carlisle’s style or struggle.
Manasse Mampala was a trialist hunch who seldom looked set to leave that status behind. Brad Young, a teenage loan signing, flickered at times but never with the emphasis that could have shot United up the league.
And that, plus Abrahams, was pretty much how Carlisle, aside from a couple of existing players, staffed their forward line. It was such a roaring success that, a couple of months into the season, head coach Chris Beech had lost his job and, come December, his short-lived successor Keith Millen was resorting to a defender/midfielder (Jon Mellish) up front along with a scarcely-tried teenager (Sam Fishburn).
The point here is not to go over who was responsible for what. Beech has gone, Millen too, and the director of football overseeing such deals, David Holdsworth, also headed for the hills in February.
It is simply to underscore what Paul Simpson means when he says Carlisle United in 2022 is not a quick fix, a one-window job, the Blues evidently trying to come from a fair few places back on the grid here.
A good window (United’s last decent summer was in 2020) can set you up reasonably well, provided you’re equipped to keep building (Carlisle, one way or another, weren’t). A bad one can set the trajectory in place for longer than is comfortable.
The Blues’ new head of recruitment could tell them all about that. Greg Abbott had good and bad windows, as would any manager in post in the lower leagues for the best part of five years.
The best of times, trading-wise, were when Abbott brought in such as Francois Zoko and James Chester in 2010, and Carlisle’s arrow pointed up League One. The worst, all in all, was probably 2012, when the Blues followed a play-off push by investing in the unconvincing merits of Mike Edwards, Danny Cadamarteri and Alessio Bugno.
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United picked up better players along the way in 2012/13 but it was from a lowly position. They survived, but the direction was set. A scramble turned into a nosedive, and by 2013/14 Carlisle were nothing like a competitive third-tier team.
And here they still are, shaping up for a ninth League Two campaign since that relegation, a stretch which has only seen one promotion near-miss (2016/17) amongst other false dawns, grim struggles and some drastically different financial approaches and off-field influences.
United’s most recent window, in January, has kitted them out a little better, and this, it’s only fair to say, was executed by the same set-up (other than Beech) responsible for the previous dire one.
Omari Patrick has been an obvious hit. Kristian Dennis and Tobi Sho-Silva gave Carlisle better options, whether starting or from the bench. Jamie Devitt, although prematurely injured, certainly did his bit from midfield. Owen Windsor, up front or wide, less so.
It was, though, still a rather desperate deadline day and it took Simpson, who arrived weeks later, to make the most of it all. That work from February to May is among the host of reasons why he gets maximum faith to move things forward now.
It’s also why the patience he talks about is advisable despite such a sentiment typically going against some supporters’ instincts. Managers describing transitional stages are often trying to buy time but if anyone has the right to set the scene here it is Simpson.
He is Carlisle’s best managerial idea for an era and will also know quite keenly that the best deals aren’t always wrapped up by now, either. United know this via the returns of late-August arrival Jordan Gibson last season. Abbott’s best striker signing, Lee Miller, was another who joined in 2011 with the campaign a few games under way.
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“The most important part of management is how you recruit,” said Joe Royle, a man who knows, in Simon Hughes’ book On The Brink. Hence Simpson’s move to prioritise this area, appointing Abbott and briefing him to oversee a cadre of scouts, filling a void that was inexplicably there; trying to play catch-up in one of the most crucial aspects of constructing a football team.
It will, more than likely, take the instalments he mentions, and that’s the only sensible way to look at it. Evolution, though, can still come in big and clear steps. And this week’s business felt like another definite and vital break from a bad time.
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