Carlisle United should consider Barrow raid after Paul Huntington decision: View | OneFootball

Carlisle United made the tough decision to release Paul Huntington when his contract expires at the end of June, and replacing him will be a big task for them.

While the former Preston North End man wasn't a mainstay of the starting XI this past season, because of injuries and preference of the manager, he played a huge part in getting the team promoted in the first place.

Players with his leadership, organisational skills and nous are hard to find in the free agent market, but Paul Simpson wants to take his squad in a more athletic direction - something that Huntington isn't at 36-years-old (soon to be 37).

The defender told the News & Star, after his release: "I respect his [Simpson's] decision, respect him as a guy. We’d already spoken the week before the end of the season and I took from that 20-minute chat that I wasn’t going to be offered something.

"So our one-to-one [29th April] was only a couple of minutes. He said he was going in a different direction, looking to the future and there would be big changes."

So Huntington is gone, and, as is the case with most of the squad, the Blues need to look to improve on what they had, and there could well be a solution an hour-and-a-half down the road.

Carlisle should turn to George Ray to replace Paul Huntington

Blues fans don't like giving Barrow praise; in fact, many took great joy in watching Pete Wild's side collapse at the end of the season, and miss out on the play-offs.

But where Carlisle do have to give the Bluebirds credit is with their defensive record. It wasn't as good as United's from the 2022/23 campaign, but conceding 56 times made Barrow one of the best defences in League Two this season.

At the centre of that defence was George Ray, more often than not. He started 41 games for Barrow last season, and established himself as one of the better defenders in the league.

The 30-year-old won just under five aerial duels per game, at a 70% success rate, was only dribbled past 0.07 times per game, and kept 13 clean sheets in total, according to Sofascore.

When you compare those numbers to that of Huntington from Carlisle's play-off winning season, there are certainly similarities, if not improvements.

Simpson does want to go down a more mobile, athletic path. Whether he feels a player like Ray fits that bill well enough is yet to be seen. But his record, as a defender, speaks for itself.

Paul Simpson is right to try a different approach to squad building, but it will be tough

That lack of raw physicality in Carlisle's squad, whether it be pace, strength, mobility, was so evident in League One. The majority of most teams in the third tier were able to out muscle, out jump and out sprint their counterparts when playing against United.

If the ambition is to return to League One as quickly as possible, and the boss has said that it is, then trying to prepare a team for that division now is the right thing to do, but it won't be an easy thing to pull off.

The reason why these attributes end up higher in the football pyramid is because they make you a better player if you have them compared to if you don't.

There aren't all that many players lurking in the fourth tier who are quick off the mark or can bully people off the ball, let alone do both.

If Carlisle had the Hollywood pull that Wrexham have, that allows them to attract players from higher divisions to come down to their level, then Simpson's ambition to build a team in his new vision would be much easier.

But the geography, which can always be a killer for the Blues in the transfer window, and the current lack of glamour around the club, to the outsiders, will make it a big challenge for Simpson this summer.