Last updated 18:52, Friday, 28 March 2008

Leyton Orient 0 Carlisle Utd 3: It was plainly one of those afternoons when attacking for 90 minutes wasn’t nearly enough.

Knocking Leyton Orient into next week was just the beginning, it turned out, as Chris Lumsdon continued Cumbria’s pummelling of East London long after time had been called on this non-contest.

For an hour and a half, the Blues destroyed their hosts with their most lacerating football of the season. A while later, Lumsdon hopped off the team coach and threw some verbal grenades back into the Matchroom Stadium before departing the big city.

Pull up a chair, because it’s tasty stuff. “We had an extra incentive,” explained the midfielder. “Whenever we come down here, Martin Ling seems to have a pop at us.

“So we were wound up and I think it has backfired on him.”

What Ling said, pre-match, was that Carlisle were lucky to creep out of Swindon with a point the previous weekend, and their away record was “not so good” compared with their imposing form at Brunton Park. Hardly incendiary stuff, but with Carlisle in this mood, it was the equivalent of tweaking the lion’s tail.

“It was the same last season and the same when we were in League Two,” continued Lumsdon. “He always wants to have a go and say we’re not as good a team as we think.

“Well, maybe we’re not. But I think we’ve shown we can play pretty well.”

His point made with cold precision, Lumsdon then climbed back onto the coach and cleared the floor for David Raven to talk about his first goal in 94 attempts as a professional footballer. And to think some of us assumed Kevin Gall’s impending clash with David Beckham in the American MLS had extended the game’s boundaries of probability for one week.

Let’s say it again: John Ward’s players slotted together their most persuasive performance of the League One season two days ago and might have doubled, even trebled their tally with sharper finishing. When that’s the sum total of your criticism, you know you’re analysing a pretty remarkable set of events.

On reflection, “remarkable” doesn’t begin to cover the sight of the ball leaving the right boot of United’s number 2 and entering the opposition net in the 32nd minute.

Raven’s own brain was so scrambled that, by the end, all it could do was punch out clichés. “The lads just take each game as it comes,” said the frazzled right-back. “Quite literally, we do.”

Those of us who are paid to supply the words can have a better stab at it. Were the Football League onto something on Saturday by appointing to the game an assistant referee called Ashley Slaughter? No word better describes what Carlisle did to their play-off chasing foes as they leapt convincingly into second place with a match in hand.

Defensively, they were as sturdy as they needed to be. But for the main reason United glided through the gears so smoothly on their way to their 10th-straight unbeaten effort, look no further than their three central midfielders who passed cleanly and with pace, tackled with appetite and urgency, and provided every last moment of Saturday’s spark. The contrast between Carlisle’s influential middle men and Orient’s gloomy troops was as stark as the elements, on a day when hailstones and rays of sunshine both dropped onto the Matchroom Stadium.

A purposeful start from the Cumbrians included a flurry of attacks, the best of which required Orient’s Alton Thelwell to athletically deny Marc Bridge-Wilkinson after Lumsdon had sent Danny Graham galloping down the right.

Meanwhile, Jason Demetriou’s cross, just out of Sean Thornton’s reach in the 10th minute, was a misleading suggestion of Orient’s potential.

Carlisle’s opener, seven minutes on, was as expertly executed as it was deserved. Raven pressed down the right, found Lumsdon in decent space, and the midfielder’s cross was headed clinically home by Graham for his 15th of the season.

Then, to universal astonishment, Raven assumed the stage, rumbling into the box, eventually taking control of a deflected Grant Smith shot, and rifling the chance high into Glenn Morris’ net. If that was the moment when Orient’s mental wiring came loose, the short-circuiting was complete seconds later when JJ Melligan leapt recklessly into a two-footed tackle on Evan Horwood and was instantly dismissed by referee Keith Hill.

Another Graham header, this time ruled out for offside, merely preceded more waves of Cumbrian pressure. Ling’s anger was reflected in a double half-time substitution, but there was simply more of the same from Ward’s men.

Cleveland Taylor, suddenly appearing confident and dynamic down the right, drew a sharp near-post save from Morris after a menacing run.

Then the third goal arrived, when Lumsdon sent Bridge-Wilkinson on another telling counter-attack. Scampering into space, Bridge-Wilkinson fed the overlapping Grant Smith, and the Scot arrowed the chance into the bottom corner. The end of the carnage? In goals, yes, but not in terms of slicing Carlisle attacks.

On they surged: a Graham header which Morris just clawed away; a trio of golden chances which Simon Hackney failed to convert; a pair of Bridge-Wilkinson shots, one just over, another superbly saved; a driving run and cross from Taylor which Graham couldn’t pocket; and then, at the death, impressive strength and a bullet shot from 17-year-old sub Gary Madine which Morris managed to scramble to safety.

From the hosts, token late efforts from Jabo Ibehre and Charlie Daniels, but a sight more bloodletting at close of play.

“We didn’t get going in any shape or form,” seethed Ling, who plainly has work to do to reconfigure his side into promotion possibles.

A sore throat prevented Ward from delivering the United assessment, but that simply allowed his number two, Greg Abbott, to buzz into the void. “All we’re doing is giving you plenty to write about and be enthused about. It gives your paper a nice flavour,” said the coach, who remained his livewire self on the touchline all afternoon even as the hail was thumping down.

Architect of the triumph one minute, journalist’s assistant the next. Anything to add? “Yes - if David Raven can score goals, then we can get 15,000 in Brunton Park for the Northampton game.”

At that point, we left Abbott alone with his racing thoughts and departed the scene of the annihilation, pausing only to watch Lumsdon take Ling out at the neck (figuratively, of course).

His toxic attack completed, Lumsdon then left behind the afternoon’s defining image.

“The board have put their hands in their pockets and we’re flying back home,” he said with a smile.

“I think they should let us fly everywhere after this.” On this of all days, most of us could picture United taking off.