This far into Carlisle United’s complicated journey towards becoming a winning team, it would be churlish to say no. The Blues found a way at Solihull, even if that way required a journey to the very depths of association football before they came back up into the daylight.

Clearly the way they started this game and progressed through the first half will deliver nothing but rotten tomatoes. Much of the first 45 minutes on Saturday was a windswept, rain-sodden, rather disturbing spectacle that barely deserves the word spectacle.

Yet they still won. And this has to be the real quiz. United, in late summer and early autumn, infuriated us by playing more expansively and, in theory, “better” than this whilst stubbornly failing to do the bits that count at both ends.

As such, there was too much that was incomplete about their work. This game was the opposite – less of the thrills and the appealing style, but the clearest reminder that football is a 90-minute game, and something that looks awful midway through can still be salvaged with the right work.

Josh Williams drives forward for Carlisle (Image: Richard Parkes)

Rob Elliot and Carlisle indeed rescued something that was bad with some timely substitutions and the restoration of some lead into their pencil. A triple change on the 60-minute mark was initially impressive in that Elliot narrowed down the choice of players to take off to only three.

It was then clinically effective in changing the game’s course. Miguel Azeez, Ryan Galvin and David Ajiboye, who scored the winner, proved better than those they replaced and there was a new freshness and focus about Carlisle’s work from that point.

Against a Solihull side precariously in front but with little track record this season of converting, it proved enough. This might not have been the case against better sides, but that is theory; let us accept the reality for now. Carlisle have won four of their last five games, inched up to 11th and taken the satisfaction of a third straight away victory here.

Carlisle fans brave the miserable conditions at Solihull (Image: Richard Parkes)

This amounts to a little spell that has revived something, after the couple of wretched performances that preceded it. And the way they won this game is as relevant as the way they stained it initially. Ajiboye’s goal in particular was an excellent, killer moment. United do have this in them, even when the wider patterns are so…varied.

What we can expect from the overall journey is a thornier question, given how bad they are when they are bad, and how effective they are in their better moments. In the short term, they can now go up against a flying Harrogate Town in good form themselves. Again – we should take that for now.

Before the turnaround, the only thing most spectators were wishing to take was the quickest road away from Damson Park. In the first period Carlisle did not so much play into the strong wind as stumble into it, losing their wig in the process. Storm Boelo was fiercer back home but conditions were still unpleasant and so was the football.

From an early stage it settled into sub-standard, attritional form: clearances, long throws, misplaced passes, big vacant gaps in the middle of the pitch, a stodgy pace about everything. A terrible compilation.

Only occasionally did chances emerge through the gloom: a blocked shot by Regan Linney, a Marvin Johnson corner that tested Adam Desbois, a Tom Anderson block to deny Ben Wodskou, an inaccurate Teddy Jenks header, a Solihull clearance after Micah Obiero had evaded keeper Sam Johnson, a Callum Whelan attempt that skimmed the post.

Anderson went down with a calf injury and Kenton Richardson came on, but little changed. A period on the half-hour when Desbois smacked it forward, Solihull returned it, Harvey Bunker headed it inaccurately back and Desbois had to find touch summed up the decline. Brad Nicholson, from a bad piece of control, somehow beat two men, lost the ball and Bunker scythed it out of play.

Morgan Feeney celebrates his equaliser (Image: Richard Parkes)

People had paid to watch this. Solihull then scored right at the end of the half – Wodskou whistling a shot into the far corner after a semi-cleared free-kick – and one wondered if another cold kind of reckoning was coming Carlisle’s way.

Mercifully, they fended that off. A few combinations early in the second half offered a degree of promise, Obiero with the best chance during that spell, but then came the triple change and Carlisle at last pressed onto their hosts, played more football, felt the wind at their back and properly examined Solihull’s nerve.

It was found wanting when Richardson, with pleasing intent, slid into a challenge and kept the ball high, before Azeez’s shot looped off a defender and parted the yellow defence for Feeney, who kept his head over the ball and skimmed it home.

Carlisle, to their credit at this point, smelled blood and bit once more. Ajiboye looked particularly eager as he danced in from the left, and a while later he sped in front of his man to volley Whelan’s cross through Johnson's gloves.

David Ajiboye applauds the away support, with a delighted Josh Williams (Image: Richard Parkes)

Well-worked, well-taken, no matter what had gone before. Tyler French had the best of Solihull’s very limited opportunities after that, and Obiero nearly made it three for Carlisle before ref Kavan Hurn blew for time. Was it the full banquet? No. Would you ever want to watch it again? Not even for money. Will you take the result and its benefits? All things considered, a hundred times yes.