Last updated 13:34, Monday, 06 October 2008

A couple of years ago, I journeyed to Bath to interview the former United manager Ivor Powell and the old man quickly set out the five principles which have held strong through a coaching career which he maintains today at the age of 92.

“Aggression... determination... will-to-win... work-rate... and consistency of performance,” he said, thumping the table. It’s number five which has lately been absent from Carlisle’s work, and this needs to be grasped by the men of influence at Brunton Park as they attempt to tackle the dry rot of recent defeats.

Leaping up from the manhole this week has been the veteran cliché which emerges any time a team is toiling for better results. First, from Michael Bridges: “It’s three defeats in a row, so we need to find a scrappy win somewhere.” And from John Ward: “I’d be happy to play not very well and win. Nobody pats you on the back for playing well and getting beat.”

Few complaints, granted, will rumble around United’s stadium this afternoon if Tranmere are impaled by a scrambled goal or a dose of outrageous fortune at the end of a dismal display.

But it has to be nothing less than pure mythology to suggest that a sequence of struggle can only be halted with something grinding and unappealing to the eye.

Instead of whistling rather hopefully in the dark, would it not be better to aspire, from the very start, towards a clean and coherent pattern of play and try to win attractively every week? One of the game’s oldest lessons is that you climb the table and retain a high position over the season by setting down a body of work which holds more or less from one match to the next.

Would it not, then, have been more encouraging this week to hear louder talk of jerking standards up from last Saturday’s mainly bereft outing at Walsall, rather than the automatic reaching out for a spin in fortune, a stroke of favourable luck?

Fact one: Ward now has at his disposal one of the broadest bases of talent seen at Brunton Park for some time. Fact two: drawing a consistent string of performances from this able collective has so far eluded the manager this season.

What United did in the early weeks of their campaign was deliver a brisk unbeaten run based on spirit, diligence and, occasionally, an impressive greed around their rivals’ penalty area. What they didn’t do – and it is starting to bite, just now – is lace together one persuasive display after another, and assemble the sort of run of reliable form which has carried such as Leicester, Oldham, Scunthorpe and Leeds into the platinum positions in League One as of today.

Not easy, it’s been said, when you consider a detectable improvement across a division which contains several wealthier units than Carlisle. And if United’s recent efforts have jarred to the extent that major selection changes are likely today, at least Ward has been setting out his teams with the admirable ethic of attacking at pace down the wings; not something that goes down as a regular feature of the entertainment at Brunton Park down the years.

A couple of suspicions linger, however. If such a daring 4-4-2 system has pinpointed some of Carlisle’s strengths, such as the lacerating pace of Simon Hackney, might it also have exposed some of their limitations (namely, finding a creative Plan B when opponents stifle their wing men, as Walsall did)?

And if such as Bridges and Jennison Myrie-Williams are to be whistled into the team for the first time this afternoon, with the additional possibility of strategical tinkering, does this not say – with respect – that we are starting more or less from scratch again in the first week of October?

Maybe it’s as simple as certain individuals dipping below previous standards, in which case Ward is perfectly entitled to reach for the toolkit and make the necessary alterations. But those alterations need to be made with a long and demanding campaign in mind, not as a way of jump-starting the vehicle in the hope it will rumble back into life for a few more miles until the process has to happen again.

Not yet this term have we been able to pause the screen and point to the display which defines Carlisle United in 2008/9. That alone hollers inconsistency. These thoughts need to be erased by mid-autumn if their season is to hold the promise of betterthings than last spring’s play-off decline.

The scrappiest of wins today might help, briefly. But it’s only by practising what Powell preaches that the dry rot can be removed from the building for good.