WHEN Nigel Pearson sat slumped in the chaos of his office 17 months ago, sipped warm champagne from a plastic cup and said: “If only I could write scripts like that,” he could scarcely have imagined that there would be two sequels, each slightly less dramatic than the first, the twists of the plot becoming yawningly familiar. Just when you thought it was safe to return to Brunton Park, along comes Carlisle United Part III (this time they mean business) for your viewing horror. But where once there was a shudder of anticipation to be had from the club’s repeated dalliance with the Nationwide Conference, the box office has now been bled dry.
Before the match at home to Cardiff City last night, they had lost seven consecutive games, their worst sequence of results for 14 years. “It’s patently obvious that we’re not good enough,” Ian Atkins, the manager, said. “If we’re not careful, we’re going to be stuck in something nasty again. In the last two years, the club has struggled and been lucky to get away with it. It won’t get away with it a third time. There is no Chester City in the league this year.”
Atkins, of course, would know all about that. The successor to Martin Wilkinson, who in turn replaced Pearson, Atkins is a trusted fighter of footballing blazes, but even his regenerative powers are being tested to the limit. He is appealing against a 28-day touchline ban and a fine of £1,000 imposed by the FA for comments that he is alleged to have made to a referee.
His frustration is palpable. For the past two seasons, the status of Cumbria’s last remaining league club has been assured only on the final day. In May 1999, when Jimmy Glass jogged upfield from his goal and scored from a corner in the final seconds, it was fraught but romantic. Last spring brought another improbable act of escapology and another potential springboard to long-term security that has subsequently snapped.
“Other teams at the bottom will spend money,” Atkins said. “There are no also-rans this season. It’s an uphill battle. I try to organise as much as I can, but you have to look at the desire of the players. They work extremely hard, but you can see that, when you ask for that little bit more, it’s not there. If that is through fear, we have to replace them very quickly. You can’t get blood out of a stone.”
Which is the equivalent of what a series of managers have attempted to prise from Michael Knighton, no longer the saviour, no longer the ball-juggler, no longer the Carlisle chairman, but still their majority shareholder. Reluctantly, it seems. “I don’t hang around when people feel someone else can come in and do a better job,” Knighton, who was disqualified last month as a company director for more than five years after a Department of Trade and Industry investigation into a business in Huddersfield, said.
With losses mounting, gates at Brunton Park falling to around 2,500, Knighton’s presence lingering — provoking a boycott — and a team staffed by players on monthly contracts, Carlisle’s position is anything but healthy. Like the boy who cried wolf, their pleas for attention risk falling on deaf ears.
| RIOA Index |
The Club | Email the webmaster |