To get Carlisle United out of relegation battle Mike Williamson must change key element in November | OneFootball

Something needs to change, otherwise the Blues could suffer back-to-back relegations.

Carlisle United are in the midst of a downward spiral which some people feel they will struggle to get out of with Mike Williamson at the helm.

The Blues' head coach has only been in charge for a little over a month, but pressure is mounting on him and his team. He has only won just one game (his first) since Carlisle reportedly agreed to pay £200,000 in order to get Williamson out of MK Dons and back up north, where his coaching career began.

After a run of seven games in which United picked up just two points, some sections of the fanbase are starting to turn on the head coach, but Carlisle's chairman and owner, Tom Piatak, has come out and backed the head coach, stating that he and his team are the right people to "execute this vision and strategy."

Even with the current public backing of the board, there will be no doubt about the need for things to get going in the right direction quicker than they currently are.

Results have to start coming fast if the former promotion hopefuls want to get out of the hole that they have dug themselves into. In order to do that, changing one key element of Williamson's team will be crucial.

Carlisle United's defensive weaknesses

Under both Williamson and former manager Paul Simpson, the Blues have kept only two clean sheets in 14 games so far this season. They came in games against Barrow, when a last-minute equaliser was ruled out, and Colchester United, who forced goalkeeper Harry Lewis into making some strong saves.

There's been a frustrating consistency to how the Blues attempt to stop goals from going in, and that is by being consistently poor and sometimes mind-boggling.

The majority of the 28 goals that Carlisle have conceded this season haven't been to do with the sheer attacking forces that they have come up against. It's mostly been them shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly. Whether it's soft goalkeeping errors, a lack of concentration or a lack of mental clarity, the Blues have found new ways to let goals in this season.

Defensive solidity could be Carlisle's best bet to help them climb the table

Williamson is a head coach that almost always sticks to his principles of building attacks from the back, although those rules were bent on Saturday against Cheltenham Town when they had more of a balance between trying to keep the ball on the ground and going long.

Regardless of how he ideally wants Carlisle to play, the main aim at the moment has to be to pick up points by any means necessary. He isn't incapable of winning in this dogged way, that is how he picked up his only current victory as United's head coach - a scrappy 2-0 win over Swindon Town in which they limited the opposition's chances.

Whether it be restoring the confidence of those at the back or adjusting their set-up when out of possession, Williamson and his team of coaches need to find a way of making Carlisle hard to beat, because that's probably going to be their best route to getting points with the amount of injuries in attacking areas they have.

Daniel Adu-Adjei, Georgie Kelly and Jordan Jones are yet to return to first-team action. Their absences were compounded by the season-ending leg injury that Charlie Wyke suffered shortly after coming on against Cheltenham.

Partly because of these fitness issues, they have been bereft going forward, so Williamson and his team may as well focus their attention on the other end of the pitch where there's more of a chance of sudden improvement.