Joe Garner interview: 'Carlisle United is a special club...'

“Football was a very different game back then,” says Garner, who has rejoined the Blues at 34. “I remember Kevin Gray taking me to the Beehive across the road on day two...

“I can’t see JK Gordon going across the road any time soon. The game’s changed, we live in a different world now and it is what it is, you have to adapt to it.”

Was it an orange juice session with cap’n Kev, or something a little more potent? “Erm…I don’t want to put him under the bus,” smiles Garner. “I’ll leave that to you.”

Whatever was supped in the Beehive, it had the desired effect at Carlisle in 2007, who were then a rising League One force – and Garner, a loanee from Blackburn Rovers who became a record signing, was a teenage striker with an exciting future.

Garner was with United from 2007-8, then 2012-13, before his latest move (Image: Louise Porter)

Now he is back for a fourth time at the latter stage of his career, hoping to help Paul Simpson’s Carlisle back to the levels of 2007/8, and 2012/13 (his most recent United spell, also in League One). It is clear that the sentiments associated with Garner’s United past remain.

“It’s nice to be wanted. I think that helps anywhere you go,” he says of the way fans have greeted his return. “But it’s a special football club. The fans buy into it, the whole place buys into it, I think the club is a League One club and that’s what we’re trying to get it back to.”

Carlisle, Garner says, set the ball rolling for this move in early January, when he spoke to Greg Abbott, his former Blues coach and manager who is now head of recruitment. “It was something, as soon as I spoke to him, that I wanted to do,” he says. “I just had to get a few things sorted out [at Fleetwood] and tied up. I just needed a couple of weeks. I’m here now, happy to be here.”

Garner had interest from other clubs – both here and overseas, it’s understood – yet he maintains Carlisle was always top of his list. “It was pretty straightforward to be honest,” he said of his transfer window decision-making.

“I started here, and if I finish in 18 months I’ll be more than happy to finish here.

“I had great times here before and we’re looking for promotion. It’s a tough job, there are some big budgets in this league at teams making transfers in January. But we can only concentrate on ourselves and that’s what we’ll be doing.”

Garner made his Football League debut for Carlisle in 2007 and, the following year, was part of a squad that came agonisingly close to reaching the Championship. John Ward’s team faltered at the last and lost in the play-offs to Leeds United. Garner, who suffered a serious knee injury that February, was unable to fire them over the line.

Garner was a star of United's doomed League One promotion push in 2007/8 (Image: PA)

Even 15 years on, is there a feeling of unfinished business? “I think it does stick with me. I think we had the squad…well, maybe not the squad, but a team that I thought could get promotion to the Championship that year,” he says.

“Anyone who came here that year knew they were in for a tough, tough game. You could say unfinished business maybe, but the past is the past. We are where we are now and need to concentrate on our own jobs.”

Garner says his lack of game time at Fleetwood in League One as frustrating, but adds that he does not have a bad word to say about the club or their manager, Scott Brown.

READ MORE: Joe Garner's career in pictures

“I could have stayed there to the end of the season if I wanted to, but once I heard about this opportunity to come here it was all I wanted to do,” he says. “I made that clear. It just needed a couple of weeks to sort it out.”

Garner returns with an ample CV thanks to spells at clubs such as Preston North End, Rangers, Ipswich Town, Wigan Athletic, Nottingham Forest and Watford. Even as he edges closer to the end, does he have the same appetite of old?

“For sure. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think I could help. I wouldn’t have taken the opportunity up. It would have been easier to stay where I was but I didn’t want to do that – I’m happy to be here and hopefully the fans can turn up and get us over the line in the second half of the season.

Garner returns to Carlisle after spells with clubs such as Rangers (pictured), Preston, Ipswich and Fleetwood (Image: PA)

“The club has struggled in the last couple of years but the manager [Paul Simpson] has done a great job since he came back in. He’s just asked me to be myself, play my own game, help the young lads, help the lads however I can, on and off the pitch.

“That’s what I’ll do – I think it’s what I’ve always done – and give my all for the team.”

Simpson wants United to benefit from Garner’s know-how, his ability to bother defenders, as well as his goalscoring. He also feels the striker can be a “leader” in a young squad, and Garner says: “Off the field is important as well, what the young lads do up here – do they travel, are they staying up, small things that can help them as players and as people.”

Carlisle is familiar to Garner, as is one team-mate in particular – ex-Preston team-mate Huntington, who the striker spoke to before confirming the move, and someone he describes as “one of the most professional people I’ve come across.”

Experience at both ends of the pitch will hopefully be telling over the last three-and-a-bit months of 2022/23.

“I know quite a few of the players, and I’ve watched a few of the games,” Garner says. “I know we’ve been playing 3-5-2, 3-4-3, different systems – whatever the gaffer thinks can get us over the line on a Saturday, that’s what we’ll work through during the week.

“He knows what he’s doing, he’s been here before, the boys have got to trust him and I’m sure they do. Fingers crossed with a bit of luck we can stay up there.”

Postponement at Bradford City cost Garner the chance to make that fourth debut. He now prepares for Brunton Park tomorrow night, against Hartlepool United. It will be 16 years and four days since his first Blues appearance, and comes in a season when the support for Simpson’s team has been strong – reviving certain memories of old.

“I’ve seen this place bouncing,” Garner says. “I’ve seen it at home to Swansea, home to Leeds, Bournemouth, and look where those clubs have kicked right on to.

Garner, left, has played at Brunton Park this season with Fleetwood - but will be back in the blue shirt tomorrow (Image: Barbara Abbott)

“We’ve gone toe-to-toe with them, and I think that’s where the club should be.

“It’s been a long process but it’s going in the right direction now. There’s a great manager in charge, some great staff, and fingers crossed we get a bit of luck and stay up there.

“It’s one of the reasons I wanted to come back. I left the club at the top end of League One. If I can leave here in 18 months back up in the top of League One I’ll have done my job. That’s what I want to see.”

Garner, over the coming weeks and months, will aim to defy one of football’s oldest sayings with an aggression and line-leading intent that could not be more familiar to Carlisle.

“They do say don’t go back,” he smiles. “Well, once you’ve done it three times you might as well make it four.

“I’ll enjoy myself here, as I do everywhere I go, and hopefully we can pick up a few points along the way.”