Current Carlisle boss Paul Simpson has been the man in the hotseat at Brunton Park for just over 200 games – a tally that covers two spells from way back in 2003 to the present day.
“I can’t believe I’m that old,” he responded when confronted with that particular statistic. “That’s brilliant, yeah, but I must admit that I don’t really look at things like that.
“I’ve no idea how many games I’ve managed, but that is brilliant. When I started off at it I was offered the job as player-manager at Rochdale and I didn’t even really know if I wanted to do it, to be perfectly honest with you.
“I was comfortable enough doing the Blackburn Rovers under-8s so I suppose it’s a big achievement. Let’s hope I can get a hell of a lot more.
“It’s been good, I haven’t been sacked yet so that’s not a bad thing for management. I’ve enjoyed it but I don’t really look at stats like that. I don’t know it for players, and I certainly don’t know it for me.
“It’s brilliant, and like I say, when I was asked to do the job at Rochdale I wasn’t too sure it was for me. Everything just snowballs and moves on and I really am enjoying it.
“Everything is going well at the moment in terms of our results and what we’re trying to do, and it’s been a good week with the additions we’ve had. Let’s hope next week is another positive one for us.”
It can be a thing with certain players and managers that some clubs just work for them, as is the case with this situation.
“If anyone has a good memory they’ll remember that the first 30 or 40 games back in 2003 certainly weren’t successful, we got relegated,” he told us.
“I came into the club when it had some problems back then and we were able to turn things around. It wasn’t just me, but John Courtenay to start with and the absolutely brilliant job that Fred Story did.
“Fred deserves a hell of a lot of credit for what he did at that time. This time I’m here and the club hasn’t really gone forward since I left in 2006, they’ve had ups and downs, and we’re still working to make it better.
“I will continue to work to improve it as much as we possibly can and hopefully, when the day comes and they get me out of here for whatever reason, I’ll leave it in a better place than I found it.”
“In terms of why it’s worked for me here, I don’t really know,” he continued. “I think I just get it. Maybe I just get the club with being a Carlisle lad. I really don’t know what it is.
“I don’t go out of my way to try and be clever, I just try to do it as I see fit and thankfully it works. What I would say is that I’ve tried to do it at other clubs as well, and sometimes it’s worked for a period, but then you lose your job, but it’s been good here.
“What happened in 03 to 06 was good, and it’s the same since I came back in February. I want it to carry on that way. I committed by signing the contract that I was happy to sign and by moving back up to the area, and I’m really enjoying life. I want that to continue.
“The fans have responded but I’m quite sure that if we’d had a run of results that weren’t going our way it probably wouldn’t be this way.
“We earn people’s trust by the way the players go about their work, and they’ve been magnificent. I know we have a different group now than from what was here the first time, I made changes to that group sometimes because of ability, and sometimes because of personality.
“I wanted to break up cliques that were there back then, but I think we’ve got a good group. We’ve got a group that’s all together and we’re leaving lads out, but they’re the first to greet everybody when we get back in after the game.
“We have to keep that and we’ll only achieve something if we stay together in it. I’ll make decisions I think are right for the team and club, it will never be personal, and hopefully I get more right than wrong.”