Carlisle United: Here's who should win player of the year

A knees-up and the normal glut of trophies wouldn't be right this time. It may still be fair to recognise those uninvolved with 2023/24’s path to the bottom of League One – youth team players, community stars, United's Ladies team, for instance – but there's no case for a host of first-team POTYs.

In bad campaigns there is sometimes merit in isolating the individuals who’ve raged against things the most, shown the greatest character or ability in spite of hard circumstances. Yet such have been United’s results this term, it’s difficult even to go there.

You could make a case for Jon Mellish, perhaps, given the man’s sheer engine and willingness to give 101 per cent of himself every week. You could possibly lean to Jordan Gibson for his superb autumn. Even then – player of the season? It all feels a reach. Better, then, and much less contentious, to keep most of the trophies at the engravers for another 12 months. The optics of a prizegiving after failure would be poor and so would its reality. Who, after all, wants a trinket from a season like this?

There certainly won’t be one given out by the News & Star on our readers’ behalf this season, thus breaking a consistent run since we relaunched our annual poll back in 2008. Again, let’s hope the glassware feels justified again in 2025.

If we were to preside over any formal recognition of the last nine-and-a-bit months, if pushed to praise someone at the end of this hollow road, the candidate would in fact be easy to select. It wouldn’t be one person but thousands of them.

Carlisle’s supporters.

Now, it’s of course the easiest thing in the world to try and flatter the watching public. Whether it be the player tweeting “fans class” when what they’re really saying is, “Talk some more about my goal,” or whether it be the club giving "The Green/Red/Blue/Yellow Army" an official squad number on the back of the programme, paying some solid lip service to the people in the stands is something that ranges from the entirely sincere to the tactically twee.

“Happy to get a goal, fans average,” is an Instagram caption you’ll never read. However, sometimes it is absolutely essential to speak up for supporters and speak up hard, especially when it's backed up by hard facts.

A couple come to mind, and the fact they’re intertwined today blows the mind somewhat. No matter what happens against Wycombe Wanderers this afternoon, Carlisle will at about 4.50pm sign off statistically their worst ever home season in the Football League.

A Brunton Park tally of either 15, 16 or 18 points will fall short of the next worst: 20, offered up by the team of 2002/03. Even some of the crashing failures of yesteryear (2013/14, 1991/92, 1934/35, say) have been more fruitful at Carlisle’s home ground. And even with two points for a win, the basement boys of 34/35 ended up with more (20) than this United will.

Carlisle are on course to record their highest average home gate since 1975/76 (Image: News & Star)

Now the connected stat. If Carlisle attract an attendance of 4,425 or more this afternoon, they will record their highest average home league crowd for 48 years. Should they bring 6,541 through the gates today, that average will hit 8,000 for the first time since 1975/76 too.

Both ought to be possible, even given the recent patterns, when Carlisle’s results on home soil have been largely vertical. It is true that there have been some solid away followings in the ground of late, and 12th-placed Wycombe, with nothing to play for, might not bring the biggest.

But still. We are on for the best season of support in United’s ground since the season after they had come down from the First Division, almost five decades ago. If that’s not worthy of accolade, worthy of the most respectful nod today, what is?

Consider the campaigns this one is set to beat for numbers on seats and terraces. The deckchair army carnival of 1994/95 (average crowd 7,422). The Simmo-led League Two title march of 2005/06 (7,218). The near miss at another top-flight promotion in 1983/84 (5,611). The third-tier play-off season of 2007/08 (7,835). Mervyn Day’s 1996/97 success. Last season’s resurgent play-off glory (6,659).

In some of those times, it is often said that United’s support was re-energised, sparked off again. And that’s indeed how it was, how it felt. Carlisle’s successes were community occasions, catalysts for joy.

And they’re all being knocked out of the park by a campaign which will probably set a record for the most league defeats overall (one more will do it) and which, at home so far, has delivered 15 points from a possible 66.

It has been astonishing yet also believable, bearing in mind the recent journey and what it tapped into: crucially, a new swell of young support, for whom Wembley ’23 was their first promotion, for whom the Simmo 2.0 bandwagon was something new and credible and magnetising. They have actively participated in it all, not just observed it.

Young fans have re-energised Brunton Park - even in this season of struggle (Image: Ben Holmes)

It is, for sure, something that also resonates from the prospect and then delivery of change that comes with real potential: new owners, with wealth and ideas and plans and motivations, and some of the historical hindrances gone. It also shows how something can continue to ripple if enough good things are thought to remain, both now and in the future, despite how bad things are directly in front of your eyes, week to week.

One of the best things you can give supporters is hope; likewise it’s one of the worst things to remove. It would be foolish to think United will be packing 8,000 in next season if there is not a sharp improvement in performance. Equally, it would be wrong not to recognise this for what it is: a great and heartening season when folk backed the Blues, stayed the course, put up with struggle, kept coming back, clung on faithfully to a bigger idea...and did so at levels not seen for a long time.

Well, those people sound like players of the year to me. They’ve kept the place alive, kept it buzzing, even when the team hasn’t. No praise, truly, is too high.