Carlisle’s previous deadline days under Paul Simpson have been so blissfully uneventful they could have soothed babies to sleep. This one was different and, even with its successful conclusion with Joshua Kayode’s return, was not the way the famously calm and meticulous manager prefers to do business.
As much as anything it reflects the step up, the steepness of that climb, when someone as proactive as Simpson has to join the last-minute rush, switch the panpipe music for racing drums and clashing cymbals.
The perfectionist in him will have hated that. The League One realist will have accepted the outright necessity of it.
In United’s position, the ends justify whatever means you have to take. If their long-needed target-man talisman turns out to have been signed in the final minutes of the window, rather than on a comfortable mid-August day, then so be it.
Forty-one games will be the judge of that, nothing more or less.
Deadline day intensifies emotions, wrings us all out, puts a false sheen on just about everything that happens in its forced confines.
The only conclusion worth taking from it all, as things now settle again, is that United exit September 1 stronger than they entered it. Or at least they hopefully do.
Kayode first. He brings height, pace and a good degree of familiarity to the blue shirt. He also, you’d like to think, will have some lost time and goals to make up for after an injury-hit recent past.
At League One level he remains largely untested in terms of a real, consistent run, only one start and five sub appearances coming in a disrupted loan at MK Dons last season, and just six league starts in all his time at Rotherham, who have bounced between Championship and Carlisle's division in that period.
This should dissuade us from imagining the 23-year-old is turning up with cape and wand. He should, though, know enough about first-team football by now to let us think he can offer United a bit of what they sorely need.
His parent club have long invested in his ability (and still do, with a contract extension signed off just before this third Blues move). Republic of Ireland's Under-21s know it too. Kayode’s willingness to do the hard yards, and the demanding aerial stuff at such a fledgling target-man age, was plain in the Brunton Park era of Beech-ball, which will hopefully translate to Simpson's style.
He is also known to be a young pro of good character, good nature, the kind you instinctively want to see do well. If he and United can recapture the best of his 2020 days, they could certainly be onto something.
Ideally, too, he will allow others to flourish, at least a little more than they’ve so far managed. Carlisle’s attack so far in 2023/24 has looked like a group of prospects in need of a shield.
Kayode, to some extent, can provide that, in stature if not long experience, and the Blues will hope that a further run of games, of further tuning-up, can then bring goals out of those operating around him: Sean Maguire, Luke Plange, Dan Butterworth and others longer on the patch.
Overall, this window has offered something akin to quicksand when United have been trying to take their first steps in the third tier for the best part of a decade.
The Blues’ increased but still relatively small budget, coupled with their financial responsibility these days, has led them down some narrow corridors and towards dead ends when it has come to strikers. United are not accustomed to this level, in this era - not equipped for it in some respects - and the disparity has shown.
It was always the case that Carlisle had to think and act creatively against bigger spenders. Sometimes in their previous League One run (2006-14) they did this superbly, other times they were exposed. The gap seems bigger and more stretched now, but the same broad truth holds: that they must use what strengths they have – namely Simpson, and as tight a bond as squad and supporters can form – to upset expectations.
Their run between now and the next window, in January, is purely about showing they can stand up to the demands of the division, and look like they can stay in it. There is no other man you’d entrust with steering that ship than Simpson. For one of the club's greatest managers it is now a matter of establishing United’s most favourable tactics and working out how a squad can be, all in all, greater than the sum of its parts and able to unsettle sides of higher technique, longer League One pedigree.
The best summer business by far is keeping Owen Moxon in a Carlisle shirt. His quality alone gives them a chance in any given game. The ongoing contract situation remains a far from easy situation but at least the Blues have a premium midfielder for this next, testing spell.
He is the best of their known quantities, among others such as Callum Guy, Paul Huntington, Jon Mellish and Jack Armer. At the other end are those at the beginning of the acclimatisation period, such as Terry Ablade, Luke Plange, Maguire, Butterworth and so forth.
League One does not offer a long bedding-in period. It will be a ruthless judge of anyone remotely unready or exposed. If United are adrift come January, Simpson will surely also be ruthless. Those who step up, those who offer the most rounded character for the challenge, whether new signings or old, will stay the course.
This will not be a serene season. Already we have had a change of goalkeeper, different formations, different frustrations – to an extent, part of the package when you’re adjusting up a level. They remain problems that pretenders and snipers in League Two would love to have.
Yet a method and a consistency of performance will also have to set in for the Blues to have a chance. A number of signings who helped them in the fourth tier need to prove adept in the third. Without that, the return ticket will be all too readily stamped.
Keeping them honest in League One through to next May might be the fight of Simpson’s managerial life. History, though, tells you he’s not so bad at this sort of thing. Even as they look up at this steep September hill, with a new-old striker back in their colours, it's the quality of their Sherpa that keeps hope alive.
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