Paul Simpson and Carlisle United: a relationship to cherish

Maybe the answer will be provided by StatsBomb itself, the analysis package Carlisle have just invested in. Instead of Expected Goals (xG) there will be Expected Tactics (xT), Expected Substitutions (xS), Expected Anger Towards Officials (xATO) and Expected Arm Gestures (xAG).

Put them all together, tot up the figures and United’s leader post-Paul Simpson will materialise without anyone needing to think too much about it.

Or maybe it won’t. The future, though, is still now the present at Brunton Park given the increasing leaning towards data. The more that can be measured, the less you’re relying on eye and hunch.

It’s the only way to be in modern football, and when you’ve just been taken over by a family with a background in the NFL and which includes a professional analyst (Nick DeMasi), this is even less likely to be an area you’re going to ignore.

Only individuals in football with a profile to promote, too much time on their hands or a hackneyed combination of the two are going the other way these days (“impostors who’ve swallowed laptops,” roared Dean Saunders on TalkSport in March, eight years and counting since his most recent managerial gig).

The game, all in all, is smarter for these advancements. Yet as long as football remains a matter of the heart as well as the mind, it can’t function this way in every last area. Sometimes how things feel must also have their day.

Carlisle, as everyone knows, have had a challenging start to life back in League One. They have won three of their 20 games so far, lost 11 of them, failed to score in ten of them and occupy 22nd position out of 24.

Of the bottom seven clubs, four have already changed managers in 2023/24 and at least one other might be feeling a little heat. On stats alone, someone’s finger might, in all this, be pointing at Paul Simpson – as it resolutely shouldn’t be.

Which everyone, on some, instinctive level, seems to know. Or at least nearly everyone. The aftermath of Blackpool last weekend, when Simpson said he’d been abused by a cluster of travelling fans, has been predictable but no less reassuring for it.

United’s manager, apparently treated to gestures and words unrepeatable here, posted a statement two days after the 3-0 defeat to acknowledge the huge number of supportive messages he’d gone on to receive. Simpson, since then, has been at pains to stress that the offending parties were of “a small minority”, and that everyone else in the fanbase is providing outstanding support, same as ever.

Simpson said some fans at Blackpool abused him, but the vast majority have rallied around the manager (Image: Richard Parkes)

Online, the backing for Simpson this week has been emphatic. At Brunton Park today, it will doubtless be the same. Not every manager can call on this in testing times, but at Carlisle not every manager is Paul Simpson.

And this needs to be heeded, continually, by anyone assessing United’s predicament, particularly those in positions of power. Even now, waking up and knowing Paul Simpson is manager of Carlisle United slows the heartrate, settles anxiety, gives you a feeling of calm.

This is partly down to the facts – the promotions, the turnarounds – but also because of feel. Simpson’s feel for Carlisle, our feel for him. What he says, how he says it, how he carries himself, how he demonstrates a very deep touch for what this football club needs, what it can be and the limitations it desperately needs to smash through.

Simpson is also so proficient at the forefront of Carlisle United that he was capable of being their spokesman for a takeover which went almost totally uncommented on by those doing the actual selling. He is their standard-bearer when it comes to knowing about training-ground requirements, academy improvements, team improvements…everything-else improvements, should you sit down with him long enough.

Again – most know this, most appreciate it, and most therefore shared in some of his upset last Saturday. In similar circumstances, other managers making such a post-match speech could have been pulled up for trying to deflect from a shabby performance, but this was not the case with Simpson for two reasons.

One: he’s not exactly pretended Carlisle’s struggles, whether at Blackpool and elsewhere, are not real. Two: I was close enough to see his eyes at Bloomfield Road and they were somewhere between pained, furious and just this side (though not by much) of distraught.

No manager out there can push the buttons Simpson can with Carlisle (Image: Richard Parkes)

If it needs underlining, and it rarely does with Simpson at Carlisle, let us ask the question of where United, right now, would find someone else with the various buttons he can push at this particular place? There certainly isn’t another Cumbrian out there with his managerial and coaching status and if there are others operating with good potential, or outsiders with undoubted proficiency, nobody is capable of making the connections Simpson has at United for a generation at least.

Some day, they'll have to accept this in the finding of a successor. Until then, the Blues and indeed all of us must reinforce the idea of doing this differently: of knowing what we've got and cherishing it as long as we have it. This doesn’t mean bad performance and poor results go unchecked, but it does mean accepting the fitness of the man for the longer run here, in the way John Coleman’s head remains above most choppy waters at Accrington Stanley, for example.

That latter situation feels right, always has, and so does this one. It is not one that should be at the mercy of football’s usual chop-and-change. A powerful relationship suffered a nasty bruise seven days ago, but hopefully there won’t be many more – for whatever numbers United tot up as time unfolds, we’ll not have this feeling again for a long time, once it’s gone.