Paul Simpson at Carlisle United: the man, the manager, the catalyst

It was a time Keith Millen was still the Blues’ manager, and so the question was asked, and received, at a respectful distance when I met Simmo in Derbyshire for an interview predominantly about his recovery from cancer.

Would, I asked late in the conversation, another shot at United appeal one day? As ever, there was a thoughtful answer, accompanied by what seemed a clear enough conclusion.

“I don’t know. It’s really hard to say,” Simpson said. “The club was in a different position when I went in [in 2003]. Initially I wasn’t even thinking about management; Roddy Collins asked me to come up and be a player, and I really fancied finishing my career having one year playing for my home team. I then had the enjoyable chaos of John Courtenay [the owner who made Simpson manager].

“But the turning point for me at Carlisle was Fred Story [Courtenay's successor]. He was absolutely fantastic for me. Without a Fred Story-type person, Carlisle’s gonna be a really difficult job.  

“As much as I love Carlisle United, because it’s my home team and a team I supported when I was a kid, I’m probably only gonna get one chance at a management job again. I don’t know the politics that are going on there, but Carlisle isn’t in a position where I would be the right person for it, in my opinion.”

Simpson, pictured with chairman Andrew Jenkins last February, was attracted by the challenge of saving and then rebuilding United (Image: Amy Nixon / CUFC)

Those words were spoken just over two months before United and Simpson agreed that he was very much the right person for it after all - the hard reality of being asked to steward the Blues more appealing than the vague idea of it, in the end.

A club, a fanbase, a city, a community can be glad that the notion attracted him when push came to shove. The challenge of returning to rescue Carlisle United cut through any misgivings that might have been drifting loosely around Simpson’s mind that winter.

No matter the emotional pull, it was first and foremost a professional task, and Simpson is above all a professional – meticulous in approach, serious in intention, committed in everything he sets himself to in the volatile game of association football.

No wonder the chance to apply that diligence, plus decades of varied and valuable experience, to the matter of sorting out the Blues floated his boat. Simpson had operated at high levels in the interim - England's Under-20s, the Premier League and Championship - but this was his first club management job for more than a decade.

Ninety-two such roles exist in the top four tiers - not many, given the clamour for them. Here was one on a plate: one for which he was heavily qualified, both on paper and in terms of the kind of intrinsic trust many managers cannot expect in a new job. The fit was ideal.

The improvement, since February 23 last year, has been so dramatic, so steep, that it is always worth reflecting again on how bad Carlisle were before then. Anyone who witnessed the disgrace of the 3-0 defeat to Swindon Town the weekend before knew the Blues were heading for a potentially devastating reckoning.

Only a heady optimist could see a way out. Or someone as methodical as Simpson. At the time of his return, a media colleague confided his confident opinion that he would make short work of the task.

I still had my pessimistic hat on, after the way Swindon had exposed every last thing about a failed regime. I questioned how survival would be possible even for someone as adept as Simmo.

I was wrong. He was right. In my years watching Carlisle, since the late 1980s, I can’t think of another occasion when things have turned so quickly, so stunningly, prompted by one man.

The effect was instant. However lucky we reporting types are to follow Carlisle every week from the press box, there are many times when you wish you could swap your notepad and laptop for a seat in the crowd.

The response from fans to Simpson's appointment, in his first game at Leyton Orient last year, set the scene for a huge resurgence in support (Image: Richard Parkes)

Leyton Orient, that first Saturday under Simmo last year, was one. It seemed, from the lofty media vantage point at Brisbane Road, the most remarkable resurgence not just of support but mood. There was a vibrant defiance, and colour, in the away section that almost took the breath away.

Carlisle won that game as they did their most recent – an early goal, followed by reams of gutsy defending – and you knew their path had in some way changed. There were miles still to cover but something had plainly come back all of a sudden.

Belief, initially. And then: hope. There are no two commodities more important in football and the following of it.

The run-in to survival went on to produce moments of extraordinary character and drama: Morgan Feeney at Oldham, Jordan Gibson against Northampton, Tobi Sho-Silva at Tranmere, Kristian Dennis at Barrow, then Omari Patrick - the most inspired figure on the pitch in that period - finally taking the Blues over the line against Mansfield with games to spare.

Simpson was then given the keys for another three years; the minimum of what he needed and warranted, having explained in depth how he wanted not just to patch some holes in a team, but renovate the entire club from a footballing point of view.

The results of that work are already bearing ample fruit. United are promotion candidates, with a revitalised support base, the best feature of which has been the swell of young fans who have not just attached themselves to Simmo’s Carlisle, but made it their business to help grow it.

That is true legacy. So, if he gets his way, will be a lasting difference in areas such as training facilities, the subject of a public appeal he made recently. So will be what he’s already done, in areas such as recruitment, and more broadly in reconnecting the club to its area: making the appearances he does, writing to the young fans that he does, enticing the businesses back that he does – and saying, in our ever-hungry media circles, all the things that he does.

It hardly needs mentioning that Simpson is the best spokesman Carlisle could wish for. He has always had an instinctive respect for his role and responsibility as the Blues' public face. I first worked with him on a press footing in the 2005/6 season and can’t think of an occasion when he didn’t return a call or clear time – often at short notice – for me to visit his office to gain regular news and insight.

Audiences in Simpson's office were the norm for the press in his early years at Carlisle. These days it is press conferences, yet he remains as giving of his time as ever (Image: Jonathan Becker)

It was in the days before press conferences were the norm, and allowed for a more direct sort of interaction. Without fail he gave of his time, even when - as is par for the course in covering a club - you knew you’d written something that annoyed him.

This turned out to be much rarer than I was entitled to expect, but I’ll never forget, for instance, three games in to my United job when Simmo took me to task about the critical nature of my match report following a 2-0 defeat at Chester. He had the offending words in front of him on his desk, and gave it to me straight.

I did my best to stand my ground but left Brunton Park a flutter of nerves. A nervous, shy novice of a reporter needed to steel himself to that sort of open disagreement if he wanted to get far in football. The truth was that being told face-to-face was always the best and most educational way to air those things. 

Despite that report being far from the last pile of nonsense he’ll have read from this and many other sources, Simpson remained as welcoming that day as he was throughout; someone who, if he knew there was a particular angle you might be going at on a given day, would prepare and research for it; happy to help.

He remains that today – patient with everything you throw at him, perhaps a shade calmer in the most testing of times, yet still content to leave a mark when he wants to. A small rebuke to BBC Radio Cumbria, for suggesting United struggled to beat League Two’s top teams, was heard earlier this campaign, while he did not shy from calling out "sly" comments from the Paddock after the recent Mansfield defeat, however touched and delighted he has been with the support he's had in general.

In post-match interviews his stance is particularly refreshing. Invariably he takes you to the answer before you’ve been able to ask. There is seldom the defensiveness or deflection you get from other managers who are less sure of their footing.

Simpson is not someone an interviewer needs to put on the rack. In football’s age of BS, amplified beyond reason by social media, his Q&As, whether with the club’s official channels or we on the independent reporting side, tend to leave you reassured, rather than the opposite as experienced in certain previous eras.

He certainly does not crave laurels or the sort of lavish praise he has received from fans across these last 12 months. Yet he is deserving of it. To my mind nobody has had this sort of dramatic, one-person effect on all areas of Carlisle United for a generation, probably more.

Fans salute Simpson after United's recent thrashing of Barrow - a game which encapsulated how he has turned United around (Image: Ben Holmes)

There is always a note of realism introduced when you find yourself getting too fulsome in Simpson’s presence. He will remind you of the number of matches remaining, and the crucial importance of "being right" for each one. 'Each Game As It Comes', the working title of his book which, written with the Blues' Andy Hall, we'll hopefully get to read one day, is apt.

He will, in these sensible bulletins, still leave you with enough to recognise the grounded young manager who, even in that storming 2005/6 season when it seemed the city was his, refused to write fixtures in his diary beyond the next six weeks.

Football remains as hasty and fickle as it was then. Simpson’s presence at Brunton Park today shouldn’t con us that calm waters are necessarily here forever. But we would be fools not to enjoy how he’s making us all feel right now – or, at this 12-month point of gratitude – not to allow our excitement to bed in just a little deeper.