Last updated 19:41, Monday, 27 October 2008

Colchester 5 Carlisle United 0: News just in: Carlisle United are to be nationalised in the public interest. It is the final remaining hope of salvation for the Blues in October 2008, which can now be recorded as the month they entered their own Great Depression.

Scott Dobie takes a tumble

The crash in mood and footballing competence which has hit United these past few weeks matches anything you’ve seen on the daily financial bulletins. Confidence has now gone through the floorboards and the wrecking-ball of defeatism is now swinging at John Ward and his players on a weekly basis.

Be in no doubt that this was an emphatic home victory from minute three, when David Perkins whacked Colchester into the lead. Goals two to five, including a moment of pure slapstick which put Paul Lambert’s side 3-0 up after half-an-hour, simply added to the carnage.

Time was when Carlisle would have rose up against an early setback and made a plausible fist of taking something from such a game. Now, their old resilience has gone the same way as the other qualities which carried them to the brink of the Championship last season. When experienced figures such as Graham Kavanagh are making their own personal contributions to the chaos (the loanee’s misdirected backpass led to that shocking third goal), you know the system is malfunctioning on a comprehensive scale.

To repeat: this team is unrecognisable from the collective that rose towards the peak of the division in the recent past. That background thud is the realisation that the days of plenty are over. Of all the questions that land like hailstones on Brunton Park today, one drops with particular force: have Carlisle plummeted so far on every level that the act of instigating a revival is now beyond the capabilities of Ward, the manager who faces a grotesque public trial down Warwick Road tomorrow night when Hartlepool come scampering into town?

Ward, after the greatest “embarrassment” of his reign (his choice of word), repeated his earlier insistence that he would not turn on his heel and sprint away from the crisis. Until Saturday, United’s directors had declared their confidence that the 57-year-old could author a recovery from the current bleak position.

That stance is shifting as you read these words. Wherever things come to rest, both parties must be aware that faith has collapsed so profoundly on the terraces that even victory in tomorrow’s derby will not dilute the hostility that is heading their way with water-cannon force.

This defeat may have triggered many things, and up at the top of the list should be a ban on any player or coach declaring that the Blues are “too good to go down”, that dread phrase which is currently being challenged by the weight of evidence on the grass.

No member of this under-performing group currently has the right to make any assumption on where this season may be heading. Nor can they try and divert their own sizeable helping of the blame onto their manager (and, to be scrupulously fair, men such as Danny Livesey, the stand-in captain, are being anything but evasive in conversation when it comes to assessing their own failings).

Seven defeats in eight league games is relegation form with a capital R. Worse, it suggests United have reached the point where they must be declared unfit for purpose in their current form. Ward, who has constantly tweaked and adjusted his team with no discernible improvement, is likely to make more alterations tomorrow, with Grant Smith a strong candidate to step from the shadows and into midfield. But can there be any confidence just now that the beleaguered manager can finally work the trick?

The usual deficiencies showed up again on Saturday, namely: defensive shoddiness, zero creativity at the other end, and quite appalling body language at the first sign of trouble. After fortune had deserted Ward, below, in the warm-up, when Jennison Myrie-Williams pulled out with back spasms, Colchester leapt into life from the kick-off and claimed an opener that was shockingly simple in its execution.

Steve Gillespie gathered the ball in excessive space and fed Mark Yeates, who twice tormented Darren Campion and saw his second cross pushed out by Ben Alnwick to Perkins, who volleyed impressively home. Simon Hackney, a shadow of his old self, might have engineered a leveller in the sixth minute, but crossed weakly after a rare, positive run. Then Lambert’s men landed punch number two, when John White and Kemal Izzel supplied Yeates, who curled his shot past the unsighted Alnwick from the edge of the box.

Colchester, with Clive Platt performing majestically as a target man, were making several convincing inroads, while United offered a blocked Danny Graham shot and a Livesey effort in token reply. Sunday Wasiu (on for the injured Gillespie) and Yeates had further pot-shots before the latter doubled his tally, pouncing on that embarrassing Kavanagh backpass which bounced off Darren Campion, and sprinting clear to tuck the chance through Alnwick’s legs.

Ward, exasperated, made two quick substitutions in a bid to provoke a second-half response from his troops. But neither Jeff Smith nor Gary Madine could raise United’s game. Instead, the hosts remained in command, and Platt skied one golden chance in front of goal after good work from the dangerous Wasiu.

Kavanagh’s best attempt at redemption, a well-aimed free-kick in the 63rd minute, was superbly clawed away by Dean Gerken, the home goalkeeper. There were umpteen other times, it should be said, when the Dubliner’s set-pieces did not receive appropriate attention from his ponderous team-mates. The feeling persists that any Carlisle recovery hinges quite specifically on 34-year-old Kavanagh’s qualities.

But it wasn’t going to happen here. Instead, Colchester claimed the additional goals their confident play deserved. First, in the 89th minute, sub Scott Vernon bustled into the area and teed up Dean Hammond for a firm finish, then Wasiu capitalised on United’s desperation a minute later and slipped one past Alnwick and into the bottom corner.

So United, who granted Hereford their first goal in 7½hours last Tuesday, had played their part in another milestone: this was Colchester’s first win in their new stadium at the seventh attempt.

No jinx, it seems, is too problematic that it cannot be addressed when Carlisle provide the bewildered opposition.

The black humour can stop there, however, because all this is genuinely sad to report. And yes, amid the howling abuse, there has to be a portion of sympathy for Ward, a properly decent man in an industry which houses too many undesirable characters for its own health (see J Barton of Newcastle, for instance).

But no-one will be more sharply aware of the game’s pitfalls just now. A big part of you wants Ward to spin all this around and salvage United and himself at the eleventh hour. The rest of you takes one look at his bankrupt team, and fears the depressing worst.