Carlisle United 0 Crewe Alexandra 0: The ball is played forward by Carlisle. A player in blue gives optimistic chase. Across comes Rod McDonald, who intercepts the danger for Crewe, drops a shoulder, comes away with it…
Yeah. About 90 minutes of that. At the beginning, a few United fans decided to boo the returning centre-half. By the end, nobody was bothering.
It was that sort of day – back and forth, no spice or seasoning, wind but no bluster, scant vibrancy or imagination, nobody with the stamina to torment or hate for very long; a good afternoon, all in all, if you’re a defender back at an old haunt, or indeed a defender in general.
Credit to McDonald, who had a very good game. Yet not once did the Blues threaten to extend or unsettle him. At the other end, Crewe didn’t come up with anything you could describe as a near miss either. Paul Huntington was United’s man of the match without much ground for argument.
Like McDonald, he did his defensive routines efficiently. Like McDonald, he was able to dominate without being dragged into uncomfortable places. Nil-nil was such an accurate representation of events that few more words are needed, really.
However, we’ll give it a go, if only because I’ll get a call from the editor if the report stops here.
This looked, at first glance, a rather tired United display, if not physically then certainly mentally. The recent miles in the legs looked like they were still there. The recent exertions by a squad heavily hobbled by injuries appeared on display.
The sunniest reading, all in all, is that Carlisle were not defeated for the seventh straight game: the best such sequence in the league for four-and-a-half years. There is no losing habit at Brunton Park right now. It’s a good while since we’ve been able to say that.
The cloudier outlook gets into the frustrating detail of the performance. United failed to spark, didn’t produce any of the invention or opportunism they’d found at Grimsby four days previously.
A strong wind made precision and sharpness extra crucial. Instead Carlisle were rather leaden of thought and deed. Again – these irritations come from a good place, since this evolving United remain close to the play-off places with a decent body of work behind them.
The road to even higher things simply demands better work than was witnessed on Saturday, when the sense was that the Blues were perhaps short of one or two of those injured options who might have allowed Paul Simpson to give things a more dramatic tactical spin in the second half.
By then, 45 nearly minutes had passed. Owen Moxon had a shot deflected wide in the eighth, but that was as close as United got to an attempt on goal until the half’s fading embers.
Carlisle occasionally worked the ball well into wide areas, Callum Guy distributing it cleanly enough, but were blunt in their use of it from there. The offside flag cut short a bonus chance for Kristian Dennis via a ricochet, while Crewe’s best spell, via some bright passing and an energetic front three, also led to unconvincing work at the business end.
Tariq Uwakwe was a persistent runner, but met the impeccable timing of Huntington with one foray, while Tomas Holy’s big torso dealt with a Bassala Sambou attempt after Lachlan Brook’s flick. Conor Thomas, in front of the visiting defence, helped Crewe’s ball-retention and cost Carlisle any dominance, while McDonald was serene in his work at the very back.
Carlisle’s efforts late in the half were the equivalent of a passing shower. Dennis met a Fin Back cross but his headed finish went wide and beyond Jon Mellish’s reach. Another delivery from one of Jordan Gibson's rare moments of zip just eluded Corey Whelan.
After that…really not much. A moment early in the second half appeared telling, when a gusty bout of head tennis ended with Thomas getting his eyes over the ball and caressing a pass into the left corner, where not a single soul, red or blue, was waiting for it.
Gibson then tested keeper Arthur Okonkwo’s alertness from 30 yards, before Simpson turned to Omari Patrick in place of Jack Stretton. The sub, back from injury, was keen for the ball, eager to dribble, but little resulted. United didn’t win enough challenges or territory to establish a foothold, while Crewe’s mobile forwards only got a couple of glimmers, Sambou shooting wide after turning against Huntington, Dan Agyei later finishing waywardly.
Simpson tried some of the remaining options available – Mellish into midfield, Jayden Harris on the right, but only a late shot by a limping Guy (who soon went off for Taylor Charters) was worth writing about before referee Ross Joyce called an end to things: nil-nil, another point, move on.
And that releases you from the need to read any more about it. If you’ve reached this far, sincere gratitude. You’ve really earned that cuppa.
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