Carlisle United are proof that shortcuts rarely exist

Doing the 92 is Daniel Storey’s odyssey to every English football league club in a single season. This is club 86/92. The best way to follow his journey and read all of the previous pieces is by subscribing here

On the long red-brick wall of Brunton Park’s Main Stand are several banners that flutter in the wind. All are adorned with a message that became the calling card of the Piatak family when they took over Carlisle United in 2023: “Own the north”.

It was tongue-in-cheek, of course. The American owners never expected Carlisle to outgrow or outperform Newcastle United, Liverpool or Manchester City – this was merely an attempt to generate pride and inflame an identity. But still, there the banners are, slightly faded by the weather. Perhaps that is a better metaphor. Unless they meant the National League North.

Twenty feet below the banners, Carlisle supporters file out of the final home game of the season. Over the previous two hours, they have been louder and prouder than this campaign deserves. Now there is a solemn hush, as if reality has punched each of them square in the jaw as they walk through the metal stadium gates.

There is a supposition – and it applies to England’s lower leagues in particular – that money is everything. Want to move forward? Spend. Want to correct errors? Spend. Want to follow the Wrexham path? It is simply a case of spending, because that is all they did anyway.

Carlisle United 2-2 Salford City (Saturday 3 May)

• Game no: 90/92
• Miles: 408
• Cumulative miles: 17,641
• Total goals seen: 235
• The one thing I’ll remember in May: The defiance of Carlisle United supporters, turning up in their droves to sing loud and proud in the Football League one more time.

Spend a little time in Carlisle and see if it is really that simple. This city used to have a football club that bobbed along, a glass ceiling imposed by a lack of disposable income but with a floor reinforced by care and attention. New money brought ambition and promise, a period of intense spending and now a gaping hole.

The Piatak family spoke of the Championship being the club’s “right spot”, despite them not having played second-tier football since 1986. “If we can get three to five years from now and get mid-table in the Championship, that would be a tremendous success,” Tom Piatak told The Athletic at the time of the takeover in November 2023. It has been a slow start, you would have to say.

The first match of the new regime was a 1-1 draw against Charlton Athletic, who are now ready to navigate the League One play-offs. Next season, Carlisle will be playing Brackley Town and Truro City. This was all supposed to herald the start of a new era. Instead it is the sorry death of a proud one.

I came to Carlisle in March and spent two days in the city, speaking to supporters who had begun to accept the worst news. There was still hope, with current head coach Mark Hughes causing a jolt in results, but most fans believed that their club had left themselves too much to do and they were proved right.

Most supporters praised the owners for improving the matchday experience, and pointed out that attendances over the last two seasons have been the highest since 2008. Even that came laced with negative connotations. Across all seasons for which accurate data is available, Carlisle have the highest average attendance for any club relegated from the Football League.

Good intentions and grand words are silenced by the creep of incompetence. Carlisle were the kings of the great escape, but even the folklore of Jimmy Glass could not save them here. Tranmere Rovers and Harrogate Town improved too much. Accrington Stanley did just enough. The wins came too late and the accumulated damage was too great.

It is two hours before the final match of the season and the fan zone at Brunton Park is brimming with locals enjoying lunch and a beer – it is one of the best facilities in the bottom two tiers of the Football League. Families congregate in the shade; groups of young men drink pints in the sun in groups that may not meet again until August because the nucleus of their friendship dynamic is Carlisle.

I expected a little more glumness here, perhaps even a funeral atmosphere. But, as one season ticket-holder explains, the last two years have taught them not to let the result get in the way of the experience.

Call it emotional self-preservation or wilful blindness, but this is the final day of their Football League existence until who knows when and they don’t intend to spend it moping. Over the fan zone, a flock of seagulls circles and squawks as if they are chanting fans too. With apologies to Eric Cantona, perhaps they follow the trauma.

Relegation from League One in 2023-24 was not a cause for shame. The takeover occurred with Carlisle in 22nd place and promotion at the end of the 2022-23 campaign had come as something of a wonderful surprise anyway.

Relegation from League Two, however, is a calamity. Make no mistake: Carlisle United got what they deserved. The league table is a meritocracy. That mindset must pervade into next season. If Carlisle believe that they are better than the National League, they will fail there too. If there is one moral of this story, it is that shortcuts rarely exist.

Mostly, this is a tale of wanton overspending and attempts to atone for mistakes that results in inadvertently doubling down on them. In the first January transfer window of the Piatak era, they signed six players on permanent deals, including goalkeeper Harry Lewis, who was dropped midway through this season, and striker Luke Armstrong – signed for a club-record fee – who scored six goals in 41 league appearances before being loaned to Motherwell.

Following relegation to League Two, another 14 new signings were made, with reports suggesting that Carlisle were offering generous wages to players in an attempt to get straight back into the third tier. Last week, the payments to agents made by EFL clubs this season were revealed: Carlisle had the fourth-highest figure in League Two. We wait for news of the wages midway through 2025-26, but it won’t make for good reading.

Then desperation took over. With Carlisle languishing second-from-bottom of the Football League as they entered the January transfer window, there needed to be an acceptance that the strategy of adding more players to the pile in the hope of landing the right answer wasn’t working. Carlisle needed stability on the pitch because uncertainty had crippled their hopes of progress.

So what happened? Carlisle signed another 12 players, including Paul Dummett, who has made just three appearances since joining the club, all from the bench. And Josh Williams from Birmingham City, who has only played six matches. And Cedwyn Scott from Notts County, who has started five league games.

The details within this squad, as it enters non-league, are eye-watering (even putting the finances to one side). Carlisle used 42 players in the league alone this season, the most of any club. Seventeen different players started between three and 14 league games. Only five started more than half of their games and nobody played in more than 80 per cent of them.

Yet somehow, this wasn’t Carlisle’s gravest error. That came in the bizarre sense of mistiming they engineered around their transfer business. And that’s what is really taking Carlisle down to the National League.

Let me explain: Carlisle lost 17 of their last 21 matches in League One in 2023-24 under Paul Simpson, understandably putting the manager under a great deal of pressure. The club chose not to replace him – entirely fair, if they believed it was the right call – and then embarked on a busy window. Simpson was promptly sacked on 31 August, the day after the transfer window closed.

His replacement was Mike Williamson, whose style of play – possession-based, passing out from the back, looking for gaps to appear and then quick movement in the final third – had been established at Gateshead and MK Dons. Williamson tried exactly the same with Simpson’s players and, to be blunt, it didn’t work. He won his first league game and then only one of the next 14.

Entering the January transfer window, Carlisle thus faced the same decision as in the summer. They chose to back Williamson as they had Simpson, recruiting players accordingly to try and fit that plan. Williamson was promptly sacked on 3 February – the day the transfer window closed.

You can point out that getting Hughes in constitutes a coup and that there is a non-zero chance of him staying on. You can praise the Piatak family for their post-relegation statement that doesn’t attempt to downplay the severity of the misguided decisions that caused it or absolve themselves of any blame for them. But when you sack managers after buying a crop of new players, you invite the circus to town.

As an outsider, there is comfort to be found in the mood at Brunton Park on the final day. There is no mutiny, no storming of the directors’ box. Carlisle hold on for a draw against Salford City and display some fight. During the last 15 minutes, Hughes’ name is sung and “United, United, United” is uttered on repeat as a cry of defiance.

Negativity breaks through as dark humour. When the stadium announcer reminds supporters to stay off the pitch at full-time for the players to do a “lap of appreciation”, a young lad next to the press box shouts out, to the amusement of those around him: “You’re joking aren’t you? It’s not like we’ve won the league.” He is probably 10 years old and has already seen enough to steel him for the next 70 years of supporting a football club.

“Appreciation” was probably the wrong word, on balance. Carlisle’s players and staff trudge around three sides of Brunton Park as a broken unit, like forlorn troops traipsing home from battle. There is applause, for those who have managed to rise above the calamity to offer some respite and for everyone in general for merely being a cog in the broken machine.

This is a sorry tale with no winners. Carlisle is a magnificent small city that already feels a long way from anywhere. Relegation impacts this place – an impact that will be multiplied for each year they spend outside the Football League. As the determination to enjoy the last post and one more business-as-usual Saturday 3pm dissipates, a long hangover will set in.

The Piatak family do not deserve abuse. They have not stopped caring – this is not the result of deliberate sabotage. But this summer, that won’t make anyone feel much better. Everything that has happened this season is the result of poor judgement, poor planning or poor timing. It is a tragedy for a club that, two years ago, were celebrating promotion to their own personal promised land.

If I had one piece of advice, it would be to remove those banners from the Main Stand. For now they simply write their own punchline at the expense of each of those filing below them, punch-drunk and pained. Carlisle United owning the north? They need to sort out their own mess first.

Daniel Storey has set himself the goal of visiting all 92 grounds across the Premier League and EFL this season. You can follow his progress via our interactive map and find every article (so far) here