Things Look Really Grim For Grimsby
There’s an old adage: “Lies, Damned lies… and statistics.” So if we look at only the statistics concerning Morecambe’s hosts this evening, we could all easily come to the wrong conclusions. Grimsby Town have lost only one of their last ten league games. On Saturday last, they beat many people’s pick for automatic promotion – Bolton Wanderers – 2-1 at Blundell Park. Pretty impressive, eh?
So why are they rock bottom of League Two and seven points from safety with only four games of the campaign left to play?
The answer is another cliché: the season is a marathon, not a sprint. The Mariners have lost too many of these `sprints’ in past performances, particularly when Ian Holloway was in charge earlier in the season. Since returning to the banks of the River Humber on December 30th 2020, however, current Manager Paul Hurst has totally shaken- things up at the seemingly doomed club. Today, only one player – impressive goalkeeper James McKeown – remained from the team which lost to the Shrimps in the League Cup at this venue right at the start of the season. Two others – Luke Hendrie and Elliott Hewitt – survive from the team which lost 3-1 at the Mazuma Arena on Boxing Day last year in the first game after the former Blackpool Manager had cut all ties with the club. It is a matter of record that many Grimsby fans accuse `Olly’ of deserting a sinking ship and blame him for its plight in the first place. Whatever the truth or otherwise of this, Paul Hurst has clearly stabilised things in his second spell there and although the club may be dead in the water, at least it is still afloat. However, there are few things more dangerous than a wounded animal and the Grimsby team would be playing for not just for their individual futures tonight but potentially the actual destiny of the club itself. The Shrimps’ Manager, Derek Adams, was only too aware of that. He said, following his team’s thrilling 4-3 defeat of Oldham Athletic in North Lancashire last Saturday:
“Grimsby have come off a fabulous win against Bolton, they’re fighting for their lives at the bottom of the Football League. We know at this stage of the season that no game is easy but we just have to keep on fighting to continue that run. The players are hungry for more success and although we know that Blundell Park is a difficult place to go to, we went there earlier in the season and won. Picking up points at this stage of the season is vital because every point means something to us. We made it to 69 points on Saturday and we want to be on 72 by Tuesday night. We know it will be difficult, points in this league don’t come easy and Grimsby will be in good spirits after beating a side in the automatic promotion places on Saturday. They’re on a good run but our players are in very good form themselves, they’re in a very good mood and we’ll just keep on going.”
Derek was probably too tactful to mention that it is one thing to be collectively fighting for your lives – it is another altogether to start fighting among yourselves. Two weeks ago, Stefan Payne was sent-off at half time for head-butting his own Grimsby team mate – Filipe Morais – in their game against Bradford City. This was a fixture that, unsurprisingly, the ten-man Mariners went on to lose: as we have already noted, their sole defeat in their last ten league fixtures. Manager Hurst has made it clear that neither player has a future at his club. He must feel personally very badly let-down by the crass stupidity of Payne in particular. After all, the loss at Valley Parade could make all the difference between survival or relegation back to the dog-fight of the non-league world in a few short weeks’ time.
The omens for Town to repeat their victory against Bolton last Saturday were not all that promising from their point of view. Morecambe seem to like visiting Cleethorpes. The Mariners have faced the Shrimps nine times previously at Blundell Park – and lost five of the games; winning just two. Overall, in the previous twenty meetings between the two clubs in all competitions, Grimsby have only won five to Morecambe’s seven. Mr Adams’ team arrived in Lincolnshire on the back of two straight victories and a draw and two defeats before that. They were fourth in League Two, just a single point behind Bolton in the automatic promotion slots. So both teams had a lot to play for tonight.
Disappointingly, John O’Sullivan – who has had an outstanding season for the Shrimps – was hurt near the end of the Oldham game and was not fit enough to feature in the first team this evening. Freddie Price took his place and Alex Kenyon was added to the contingent on the bench.
It was dry and quite bright on the coast on the other side of the country from Morecambe this evening. The pitch looked rock-hard and the ball bounced quite high on it as it soon became clear what the home side’s tactics were going to be. In veteran bruiser James Hanson and the never knowingly undersold Skipper Lenell John-Lewis, Grimsby had two big men leading their attack. Hanson caused Morecambe Captain Sam Lavelle to have to have treatment for a facial injury which meant him having to change his shorts because of blood spillage after just ten minutes. This must have been bad because he was playing in an unmarked shirt by the start of the second half. Furthermore – if Referee Paul Howard had seen what was clearly a deliberate throw of an elbow by Hanson into Nathaniel Knight-Percival’s face just before the break, Grimsby’s Number Nine could have been going off for an early bath. So Plan A was clearly attrition: hoof the ball long and try and mix it with the opposition defenders. It didn’t work. But Town seemed to have no Plan B. It took them 40 minutes to win their first corner; John Lewis booted the ball out of the ground after 34 minutes with what I assume was supposed to be a strike on goal and Elliott Hewitt took a wild swing at the ball following a corner near the end of the half after John Lewis had forced a fantastic save from Kyle Letheren. But that was the sum total of Grimsby’s efforts: they looked slow, pedestrian and woefully short of both confidence and ideas.
In contrast, Morecambe set about them right from the off. In the very first minute, Cole Stockton made a good run down the Morecambe right and drew a good save from James McKeown. Seconds later, Aaron Wildig also chanced his arm but missed by quite some margin from the other side of the penalty area. They had a half-chance after thirteen minutes which was missed after good work by Liam Gibson on the left wing. Five minutes later, McKeown was lucky after Cole and Carlos had combined well on the left only for Mendes-Gomes to force the save, which the home goalkeeper pushed away right across his own area. But he was beaten after 21 minutes when Yann Songo’o made an interception in the centre of the pitch and passed the ball to Stockton, who ran some way before unleashing an assured low shot from the left of the penalty area from his point of view right into the far corner of the net. Sadly for the Mariners, there wasn’t any obvious wind to be taken out of their sails but there was equally no obvious reaction from the home team after finding themselves in arrears. Twenty minutes had been played when, following more excellent approach play by the visitors on their left, Wildig found Songo’o in the middle near to the goal only for McKeown to block his close-range effort – but Morecambe’s big Number 24 buried the ball at the second time of asking. The goalkeeper complained to the Referee that the ball had been kicked out of his hand when he had it under control – and he may have had a point – but the goal stood. Freddie Price then set-up Aaron for a chance which he wasted by blazing high and wide after forty minutes but the visitors looked comfortably in control so far as the game reached half time.
Town Manager Hurst shook things up at half time in what was already looking like a pretty desperate attempt to pep his side up a bit. Jay Matete did well to carve-out a chance for himself on the Grimsby right after almost an hour – and missed. John Lewis forced a decent – and painful -save from Letheren at his near post (which he banged his head against) from the Town right flank again with 61 minutes on the clock. Finally, substitute Luke Waterfall came close with a header after 48 minutes: but that was the sum total of their chances tonight. The Mariners played with a little more fluidity for a while but as the match wore on, the visitors started pressing them increasingly higher up the pitch, disrupting Town’s play and stopping them from creating any sustained momentum. Morecambe, indeed, could have gone even further ahead after just two minutes of the re-start: Cole was played-in by a clever lob from Toumani Diagouraga and, in turn, lobbed McKeown. But Rollin Menayese appeared from nowhere and did brilliantly to hook the ball to safety just as it was about to cross the Mariners’ goal-line. Price then blasted wildly high and wide from the Morecambe right after 48 minutes. They looked well in control all of the time and – with a big game against Bolton coming-up at the weekend- Derek Adams even had the luxury of taking off some of his key players long before the end. Even so, the Shrimps managed to score again. With ten minutes left, more sloppy play from the home side saw `Toums’ do well to pick-up the ball and slip it to substitute Ryan Cooney who was accelerating up the right wing. Ryan’s low cross was beautifully swept past his own goalkeeper by a hapless Waterfall at full stretch. This moment summed-up tonight’s game in all truth. Grimsby just weren’t up to it: they looked like a poor side throughout and they played as if they have already accepted the inevitability of relegation, immensely sadly for their long-suffering fans.
What I think is Morecambe’s sixth double of the season saw them stay in fourth position. With just three matches left to save themselves, Town remained bottom. With the seemingly also damned Southend United losing the critical Essex derby against Colchester tonight, it looks really Grim for Grimsby and the end for Southend too. Bolton beat Carlisle at home as well to make Saturday’s clash at the Mazuma Stadium potentially a decisive moment in the run-in to the end of the season: if Morecambe beat them, they will go into the automatic promotion positions with only two games still scheduled to play.
This is the sort of thing that makes the results of the next three remaining games for both Morecambe and Grimsby so exciting – or potentially terrifying. This can be summed-up in a single word: `jeopardy’. Grimsby are in real danger of losing their EFL status altogether. Morecambe, on the other hand, could end-up in League One automatically at the end of the trio of matches. But there again, they might still be in League Two when the season ends.
The new, money-driven initiative to set-up an elite Closed Shop where the same old boring clubs will play each other for ever and ever for a totally contrived prize in a similarly totally contrived `competition’ is a retrograde step. It would take us back to the Bad Old Days when clubs like ours, Macclesfield, Wigan and Wimbledon were better than many clubs who bored everybody to death in the Closed Shop of the Football League year after dreary year. But we couldn’t get in to replace them – and they were very rarely kicked-out, no matter how hopeless they were.
Does anybody – other than accountants and already greedy owners – really want to go back to this sort of uncompetitive stitch-up with a totally phony European so-called Super-league?
Grimsby Town: 1 James McKeown; 15 Harry Clifton (Y); 26 Rollin Menayese; 22 Elliott Hewitt; 36 Sam Habergham; 31 Evan Khouri (16 Ira Jackson Jr 45’); 14 Luke Spokes; 20 Jay Matete; 42 Julien Lamy (6 Luke Waterfall 45’); 21 Lenell John-Lewis (C); 9 James Hanson.
Subs not used: 13 Ollie Battersby; 4 Danny Rose; 7 Matt Green; 33 Luis Adlard; 29 Joseph Starbuck.
Morecambe: 1 Kyle Letheren; 2 Kelvin Mellor; 4 Nathaniel Knight-Percival; 5 Sam Lavelle (C); 22 Liam Gibson; 24 Yann Songo’o (14 Alex Kenyon 86’); 8 Toumani Diagouraga (15 Brad Lyons 86’); 9 Cole Stockton (19 Liam McAlinden 86’); 10 Aaron Wildig (3 Stephen Hendrie 75’); 11 Carlos Mendes-Gomes; 23 Freddie Price.
Subs not used: 12 Mark Halstead; 6 Harry Davis; 21 Ryan Cooney.
Ref: Paul Howard.
