Big match verdict: Carlisle United 0-4 Mansfield Town

Seriously, where on earth did this come from – this Carlisle United display from the rank worst of the pre-Paul Simpson days? This meek and mild surrender to a sharp, purposeful and much more promotion-scented Mansfield Town?

The sort of annihilation that threatens, if the Blues do not take great care, to leave some deep scars all of a sudden? 

United – who are still third in League Two, somehow – have not been thumped like this on home turf for some time. As an outright undressing it bore comparison with the Swindon defeat almost a year ago which prompted so much urgent change at Brunton Park.

That one brought a period of dire happenings to a disgraceful head. This one came after 11-and-a-bit months of almost entirely positive work since then. No-one need jump off a cliff in terms of belief because of one heavy beating.

What it does, though, is say new and potentially uncomfortable things about Carlisle’s capability in a promotion race, unless they are confronted quickly.

Jordan Gibson looks on as Mansfield celebrate their fourth (Image: Ben Holmes)

How, after all, do you step on the pitch with the same sense of certainty again, in the wake of such a demolition? How do you maintain the spell?

United can only answer that with actions now. Saturday, against Colchester, poses questions nobody imagined they would be asking before kick-off last night. 

As such, the Blues need support as well as scrutiny. This is the first meander off the road in 2022/23. These players have ample credit in the bank as, it hardly needs saying, does Simpson.

So let us now see how adversity tests them, what it reveals about them (and us). We don’t know yet. We soon will. 

These 90 minutes, as far as performance goes, can otherwise be consigned to the trashcan. The first half was so far below this season’s general standard as to be almost invisible – so far from the kind of hard and even contest expected that, by the end of it, you could only laugh, bitterly. 

United bent the knee to Mansfield in every respect, be that in failing to defend their crosses, failing to prevent them in the first place, failing to disrupt their hungry play, failing to do the usual Carlisle-in-2022/23 things in the visitors’ half.

Jon Mellish battles with Ollie Clarke (Image: Ben Holmes)

Daft as it feels to recall now, but the Blues actually made a front foot start to this game. It proved tantamount to a con trick given what eventually unfolded.

They looked for the recalled JK Gordon’s pace on the left, and some combinations with Jack Armer, forcing Mansfield to defend early on. 

Soon, though, it became clear that the physical and intelligent line-leading of Mansfield’s Lucas Akins was going to set United much greater problems.

Yet the platform he built was still too commanding, found too little objection. 

As Mansfield stepped onto second balls and spun it forward, Akins won muscular territory against Simpson’s defence and allowed his yellow-and-blue shirted colleagues to buzz around menacingly. Davis Keillor-Dunn forced a sliding block from Paul Huntington, and then Akins carried the ball against a hesitant defence, forcing Tomas Holy to save.

Carlisle looked rather shaken by the Stags’ focus and venom even before the opening goal. That came in the 14th minute when Jordan Bowery fed Stephen Quinn, who found Ollie Clarke between defenders with a pinpoint cross. 

Mansfield celebrate their second goal (Image: Ben Holmes)

United, in the making and taking, had failed to get close enough to Mansfield. It became the first half’s dominant theme. Quinn put another good chance into the Warwick and, as confidence dribbled out of Carlisle, on came Nigel Clough’s raiders.

A second almost came when Riley Harbottle nearly caught Holy out from deep. One did from the resulting corner – Keillor-Dunn’s delivery headed commandingly home by Alfie Kilgour, nobody in blue (or green) taking proactive responsibility at the set-piece.

Ok, lads. Inhale, regroup, #goagain. Nope. Four minutes later, a Mansfield penalty, Morgan Feeney’s over-zealous aerial challenge on Keillor-Dunn not to ref Ben Toner’s liking as a looping cross came in. Akins put it away with cold blood. It did not flatter the Stags, who looked the only top-end contenders on show here.

Owen Moxon tries to evade Davis Keillor-Dunn (Image: Ben Holmes)

At 0-3, Brunton Park felt and sounded bewildered by events. Going forward, United offered nothing that risked giving Mansfield a paper cut, let alone a proper laceration. Passing moves faded tamely, sometimes without even the basics of individual urgency. Then back the visitors came for a fourth, Elliott Hewitt cruising the ball into the top corner from the right of the box. 

It was the first time since October 2014 that United had shipped four in the first half at home. Again – it is difficult to overstate how far adrift they were, how many fathoms below their normal, promotion-chasing level this was. 

Even when they forced the chance of a token reply, in first-half added time, they couldn’t take it, Jon Mellish sweeping onto a Kristian Dennis pass but shooting against Christy Pym’s legs. Other paltry adventures attracted growing disgruntlement from supporters, and Simpson’s triple change at the break (Omari Patrick, Joe Garner and Jayden Harris coming on) was merely a case of throwing different things at a problem he probably knew was too large to address.

Any attacking Carlisle did from here was token, in the circumstances, however willing it may have seemed. Mansfield had little incentive to remain as bloodthirsty as they had been, and it was no longer a meaningful contest.

Joe Garner wins a header in Mansfield territory to no avail (Image: Ben Holmes)

Harris fired into the Warwick, Owen Moxon tested Pym from a free-kick, the visitors tested United’s rearguard…yet all tension had gone. United, in other ways, continued to buckle, their nerves as shot as they've seemed since the Simmo rebuild began. Mellish, under the slightest pressure, passed the ball behind for a Mansfield corner in the 72nd minute, summing up their state. A while later, Dennis failed to set up Patrick and many of the 4,645 crowd howled, for want of anything better to do. 

Some fans had left long before then. Others made their way out as the second half drifted pointlessly on. Simpson gave a substitute debut to Jack Robinson – hardly one for the loanee’s scrapbook – and it was mainly a case of wanting full-time to come, but it not coming quickly enough.

The post prevented Mansfield sub Will Swan from digging the knife in a few inches deeper – the smallest of mercies, as the clock ticked slowly down.

Perhaps, if we try hard enough, we can simply pretend none of it actually happened. That may, all things considered, be United’s best hope of moving on from it, as fast as their legs can carry them.