I’m writing this on Monday evening. Still smiling but propping my eyes open with a pair of matchsticks after a few days to remember.

It isn’t every week you receive an out of the blue e-mail from the Guardian sports desk asking if you’ll be interviewed for their pre-game supplement. Nor do I count e-mailing with TV’s Helen Skelton amongst my normal list of pastimes. Jon Colman and Workington’s most famous man, my Dad, (‘everyone knows Eddie McGee from the Amateurs’ as one post match drinker informed me on Sunday) are normally the high point in my weekly mailbag of illustrious Cumbrian correspondents. Alas, this was a very different week.

The weekend started with a bang on Friday evening as the London Branch hit the pub to celebrate the birthday (75th was it?) of their notorious whinge-bag, Iain ‘Dickey’ Davidson. At one point he paused in his incessant blather about ‘Coco the Clown’ as he calls the gaffer to allow his eye to cast over my column in last week’s Wembley supplement. ‘Your head’s been stretched, you look like a cube.’ As a fellow Branch member consoled me afterwards though, to be ‘Dickeyed’ is to be truly accepted as part of the furniture.

Saturday saw a visit from my internet pal Mark Nicholson who some fans will know for his regular Twitter updates as ‘@fromthepaddock’. Mark and I had never met before but in the spirit of charitable delirium that filled me post-Huddersfield I offered him an uncomfortable sofa and a threadbare sleeping bag to ease the financial pain that was making his attendance questionable. I sincerely hope he enjoyed the little sight-seeing our time allowed – a semi jog round the outside of the Emirates and a tour round some of Soho’s more reputable hostelries, with the London Branch again in tow. Including (of course) a game eve nerve settler in the Carlisle Arms – ‘Be Just and Fear Not’ as the sign said. None of us were in any fit state to question!

Sunday morning saw a cracking occasion at the Civil Service Club as over a hundred fans congregated to hear from ex-Blue Lee Maddison and (we hoped) buy a #teamabbott t-shirt. I was delighted to meet Vegard Jensen, a young lad who’d travelled alone from Norway to the game. He comes to BP every year so I’m looking forward to seeing him again soon. Gratifyingly a couple of visitors recognised my unpalatable mush up there and said nice things. ‘Oh that’s really kind’ I said. ‘We work with your Dad, he makes us read it’ they replied. Typical.

Oh yeah, and the match. It was hardly a classic was it? But I thought our victory was deserved as did my Brentford supporting colleague – ‘you were average and we were terrible’. That means the best team won.

For Peter Murphy the day was a triumph. Impeccable throughout and underscoring his ‘club legend’ status with a script to rival those of Roy Race himself. The after match grog in Euston’s Bree Louise, all the sweeter for his stunning strike – Redemption Pale Ale. Quite.

I’ve been beginning to worry about people questioning my credentials for this job - thanks to a combination of ill luck, poor weather and a tendency to say yes before consulting a fixture list I’d yet to see a game.

When I realised a fortnight ago that the re-arranged Charlton fixture clashed with a charity quiz I’d agreed to host for a friend I was less than amused. After keeping the quizzers appraised of the score in the evening’s ‘big match’ I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. A fantastic win and I was less than five miles away doing an impression of Roy Walker.

I sat through last year’s fixture at the Valley. We were awful. Uninspiring, one dimensional and unlikely to score in a month of Sundays. It was a similar tale at Brighton – a game I attended with two good schoolmates, neither of whom are football (or Carlisle) devotees. To say that both of them took more joy from an optimistic early April beach barbeque than they, or I, had from a workmanlike and ill deserved 2-1 victory is something of an understatement.

As a glutton for punishment I found myself back at the Withdean on Saturday. Tom again agreed to brave the worst view in football thanks to the promise of a night on the ale and my lingering hope for a better spectacle. This despite describing last year’s fare as ‘the worst £20 I’ve ever spent’.

He was at least rewarded in one of those things. The game was excellent but a funny turn after the game led me to head back to the London to seek the sanctuary of Match of the Day and my girlfriend’s fluffy pink hot water bottle. Sunday was spent on the sofa with a duvet and a multipack of Lemsip.

The manner of our defeat at Brighton shouldn’t detract from an assertion I’ve been making for several weeks – we have a much better side than at this point last season. That side knew only one way to play, the starting eleven picked itself and the spectacle was in short supply.

In the classy hold up play of Curran, the adhesive running of Zoko and the fire and ice combo of Taiwo and Berrett the makings of one our best sides in recent memory – who play proper football – are there. Promising cameos from Paddy Madden and Harry Arter and a spirited effort from Matt Robson at left back almost outweighed a bad day at the office for what is, after all, our second choice centre back pairing. Much scorn will be poured about Murphy and Liveseys performances – they were certainly at fault for all four goals, but they also soaked up a wall of pressure as the home side contrived to screw chance after chance, none of which was down to the twosome.

The speed with which some fans leap to suggest that the statistical analysis bears out a different story, their desire to find fault where there is none is maddening and disheartening. True – there’s plenty to find infuriating in this young, green side but worse than this time last year?! No chance. Don’t take my word for it, take Tom’s.

A stressful week in North London as I’ve spent time helping my girlfriend move all her worldly possessions from her flat in Hackney to my house in Holloway. It’s a two bus route which passes within a hundred yards of the Emirates Stadium and on matchdays presents its own logistical challenges. She dropped some things over after work on Wednesday and I cunningly reminded her that she’d need to leave by 9pm to beat the traffic before settling in to see Arsenal’s spirited fightback over Barcelona. My slippered jog to the corner shop for a pint of milk after the game was met by a torrent of red and white scarves and beaming faces on Holloway Road which were in contrast to my own as I realised I’ll need even more cunning as she moves in on Saturday!

A somewhat unexpected fillip was provided by back to back away wins for the Blues at Oldham and Swindon. The former impressive due to the form of the opponents and the latter due to the team’s previous ability to throw away points at struggling sides. Seeing both Craig Curran and James Berrett add to their season’s tally was also pleasing – I’ve developed soft spots for both over the course of the season.

To me both Berrett and Curran represent our esteemed leader’s eye for an unpolished gem in the transfer market. Plenty has been written about Berrett’s stats in this and other publications but equally impressive are his guile and composure while Greg’s right to say that Craig Curran is only a ‘purple patch’ short of being a full blown fan’s favourite.

It’s this skill, his improving grasp of bespoke tactics, increased ability to motivate a team and, most importantly, his frankness in interviews that lead me to love Greg. I’ll never go so far as to say he’s the best manager in my time as a fan but he’s surely my favourite. It was this fact that made me happy to support the ‘#teamabbott’ campaign launched by fan Kristina Carr a fortnight ago.

In the interests of full disclosure I must state that I’ve given Kristina a tiny bit of help with the project so have some vested interest, but most of the work is hers – including securing club director Steven Pattison as backer and getting the t-shirts to print.

The charity, Carlisle Mencap’s Grace Little Centre, was the other reason for my support. My girlfriend’s brother is severely mentally handicapped and lives in a facility like this in the Midlands. The respite it provides to her parents helps they, and he, live happy and fulsome lives. I was happy to support such an excellent cause. I hope other Carlisle fans feel the same – whatever their opinion of Greg himself.

‘#teamabbott’ shirts, along with ‘#teamcarlisle’, ‘#lubo’ (celebrating our Slovak giant) and ‘#teamradar’ (the hardest working member of staff at Brunton Park and constant source of new talent) are available online – search ‘#teamabbott’ on Facebook or eBay. If you want to donate, but don’t want a shirt, head to www.justgiving.com/team-abbott

A week off for me last week as my girlfriend and I took a short jolly to Paris where I took in the sights, learnt a little more about art and – most importantly – added to my burgeoning collection of football pennants in Paris St. Germain’s enormous club shop on the Champs-Elysees. My girlfriend, quite fairly, calls me a geek for this but seeing her marvelling at the Musee d’Orsay’s collection of ‘Degas ballerinas’ was all the proof I needed that the beauty of all forms of art is entirely in the eye of the beholder. Yes, I am saying that football is art.

Despite being in Paris I couldn’t stop myself from checking the Blues result against Walsall. Oh how I wish I’d never bothered. At the time I was sat drinking coffee in the backstreets of Montparnasse in Southern Paris. The café I sat in was ‘Le Select’, a favourite haunt of 20th century authors Hemingway and Fitzgerald and artists such as Picasso and Matisse. Now it’s a familiar stop on the bohemian tourist trek but back in the early 20th century it was THE place to go for the drink of the day – absinthe. As I sat there mulling our capitulation to the league’s bottom club and the unpalatable thought of a Livesey-Michalik central defensive partnership I strongly contemplated reaching over the bar for a bottle of the devil drink to drown my sorrows – no need for a sugar cube and a draft of warm water, I just wanted the solace and the hallucinations.

Three days later I was back in the pub, this time in London’s Covent Garden, and United were back on the pitch in the JPT second leg in Huddersfield. Perhaps the choice of ales on stock was a premonition for the night ahead – Lancaster Bomber and Yorkshire’s Black Sheep – no Cumberland Ale in sight. I can’t have been good company sat stooped over my phone checking the scores in between sups and disengaged chatter about the meaning of life.

When my uni pals decided to move pubs in search of snacks I toddled disinterestedly into the next den of iniquity to see the smiling face of Sky Sports’ Ed Chamberlain and look beneath his mush to see the words ‘Huddersfield 2 Carlisle 0 – Alan Lee (70)’. Not again. The next pint dropped quickly. ‘Alan Lee (80)’. Ed Chamberlain was haunting me from behind the bar. ‘You alright John?’. ‘Alright? I’m bloody brilliant. We’re of to Wembley again!’

Don’t think as I live down here it’s any less wonderful either. The London Branch party, the trip on the Routemaster (touch wood), friendly workplace rivalry with Brentford following colleagues and the ability to invite fellow acolytes of the #teamabbott phenomenon (more next week) to kip on my sofa. And that’s all pre-match.

I ask only one thing – this time, could Carlisle United, representatives of the Great Border City – make my full-time beer one of pride whatever the result, not of relief or sorrow.

Here’s hoping Saturday’s performance against a team who play every inch in the image of their tenacious gaffer can be put behind the Blues as a blip in their current, excellent, run of form. It’s also been a busy week for the revolving gate at BP – I was pleased to see our links with Man United strengthened by the arrival of Joe Dudgeon, a player a pal tells me is very highly rated at Old Trafford, whilst the signing of Rory Loy notched another score for my own personal predictions column. I discussed striking targets with your esteemed correspondent Mr Colman via e-mail suggesting Loy’s performance in a friendly and youthful exuberance could tick Greg’s boxes - fingers crossed he fires us up the league and silences the band of critics who have made their mind up about him based on his Wikipedia entry.

Outgoing this week were Kevan Hurst and Jason Price. I expected both players to form a central part of the squad this season and am disappointed Greg’s deemed them surplus to requirements. I guess it just highlight’s the fickle nature of football.

On which note I was lucky enough to be addressed by former FA Chairman Ian Watmore as part of a work training event this week. For those of you who don’t remember, Watmore was appointed by then Chairman Lord Triesman after a stint at the head of the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills. He left the post 9 months later in a storm of innuendo and bad publicity.

What was clear is that the experience hit Watmore hard – he was frank about his motivations for taking his ‘mid life crisis job’, he wanted to promote football as a tool for social good and to re-invigorate the women’s game – but he fairly shied away from questions about his hasty and shady exit. He did however pause to question Telegraph football writer Henry Winter’s summary of him as an ‘insignificant civil servant’, noting wryly that his public pasting in that paper made him better understand the plight of his political masters.

I revisited Winter’s article the following day. Its pure scorn insinuates that his opinion of Watmore was canvassed a few days before his departure. If that is the case, why? What possible role should a member of the press pack play in such a high level footballing decision? It goes so far as to suggest that Watmore’s lack of footballing background made him doomed to failure, conveniently ignoring both his stint as MD of the global consulting firm Accenture and his tenure as a close personal advisor to Tony Blair’s premiership – both surely fine preparation for the hothousing of the FA. On re-viewing the episode works as a microcosm for the pervasive and over-powered role of the media in English football, the rough side of which has been on display again this week. Ian Watmore comes out of it as a man with his dignity intact, if not his pride; which is more than can be said for Mr Winter.

John McGee