Carlisle United can’t afford to repeat Crystal Palace mistakes: View | OneFootball

The 2024 summer transfer window is one of the most important in Carlisle United's history and one of the most important parts of any window, the loan market, has been mismanaged by the Blues for a while now – they need to avoid repeating these past mistakes.

Paul Simpson has admitted that he could lose his job if he and the club's recruitment staff fail to have a productive summer window.

Not only is the importance of starting the 2024/25 campaign well being felt by Simpson and his staff but also by the club's owners and fans.

The Piatak family announced that a further £4.5 million would be invested into the club, on top of the £4 million that they plan to spend on building new training facilities for the club, in order to renovate Brunton Park. That's not including the money that they plan to put into recruiting players.

For that sort of investment, a return is required, and people with the business acumen that the American family has know when they are not seeing the results that they should be seeing, based on what they are putting in.

The overall recruitment last season was poor but a recurring theme of loan moves not working out needs to be sorted in the summer because they can be so helpful for teams like Carlisle.

Over the past two seasons, Crystal Palace has sent more loanees to Cumbria than any other team.

This seeming reliance on certain contacts within the industry - something that Simpson played down in an end-of-season interview with the club's media team - has to be moved away from because these wells are running dry, if they haven't dried up already.

Carlisle United's Crystal Palace loanees

The three players to temporarily move from Selhurst Park to Brunton Park over the past two campaigns were John-Kymani Gordon, Luke Plange and Sean Grehan.

They were all signed in different windows - January 2023, summer 2023, and January 2024, respectively - and they all had varying degrees of success (or lack thereof).

Gordon had some very memorable moments, helping United to promotion in the 22/23 campaign. Plange never really struck a chord with fans, and was only able to notch a couple of goals in his six-month stint up north, and Grehan barely played at all.

The Irish defender's signing was, arguably, the most egregious, as it led to Carlisle having too many players in the team to put all of them on their squad list for the second half of the season, and promotion-winning defender Corey Whelan was omitted from the eventual list. Had Grehan not signed, this issue wouldn't have popped up.

Carlisle have also gone back to another well in London on a couple of occasions over the same time frame. Fulham have sent two young players - Sonny Hilton and Terry Ablade - to play with the Blues since the start of the 22/23 campaign.

None of the aforementioned five had the stellar impact that the Blues hoped they would.

Carlisle need to stop going back to the same clubs for loan signings

The benefit of these youngsters coming to clubs like United is that, even though they won't have the experience or knowhow of potential free agent signings, the quality that they possess which got them through the academy systems of these top flight teams should be a point of difference in the squad.

In League Two, there isn't a bottomless well of veteran players with outstanding technical ability; that's why the loan market can be such a good option, if you get it right, because these talented players are out there and are available.

In fairness, the Blues haven't been complete duds because of their use of the same repeated avenues in this market. Without Simpson's connection to Steve Cooper, Carlisle wouldn't have got Fin Back at the start of the previous season.

But these wells that they have been going back to year after year don't seem to have much left to offer them, and it's time to look for another way to replenish the quality in the side.

This may sound very hypocritical, but teams like Palace shouldn't be 100% ruled out. They have a very good academy system, with the likes of goalkeeper Joe Whitworth being the type of player that Simpson may look to sign in the summer.

These contacts shouldn't always be the first port of call as Carlisle may benefit from being a bit more adventurous with their recruitment.