Horrorgate for Morecambe.
A Statement was made by Morecambe Football Club earlier this week. It read:
“Morecambe FC has received a three-point deduction to be suspended until 30 June 2024 after admitting a breach of EFL Regulations for failing to pay its player wages on or around 28 March 2023.
The suspended sanction will take effect if the payment is not made by the owners of the Club to the Club Deposit Account as per the terms of with the Agreed Decision or there is any failure to pay its players on time until 30 June 2024.”
The season ends in April next year so this sanction – should it be applied – will come into effect next term, regardless of which division the Shrimps might find themselves in then.
Exactly what the “Agreed Decision” concerning a “Club Deposit Account” is something I don’t know – and the statement doesn’t explain. However, the BBC Sports Website tells us:
“Controlling shareholder Jason Whittingham must also deposit an amount equal to 125% of their monthly wage bill to cover any future delays.”
Is that 125% of the total projected wage bill for the entire season? Or a lesser payment of just one month’s bill, paid at regular intervals?
I don’t know –and many of our number clearly don’t care. But somebody will be able to tell those among us who do…
Anyway – the club under the threat of a potential points deduction cloud travelled over the Pennines to visit Yorkshire today. Morecambe have only played Harrogate Town three times before and have won two games and lost one. They arrived at the Wetherby Road stadium in lofty seventh position in League Two: the lowest of the Play-Off positions. They have lost just one but won two of their four league matches so far; most recently with a comprehensive 3-0 victory over much-fancied Bradford City last Saturday at home.
The Sulphurites, on the other hand, have won only one of their four league fixtures so far: the first one at Doncaster by the only goal of the game. Since then, they have been defeated at home by Forest Green Rovers and then lost away at Tranmere and most recently against ten-man Accrington Stanley last Saturday.
Today, we would renew acquaintances with much-loved Liam Gibson (who received a tremendous ovation as he passed the away supporters on the way to the substitutes’ bench) and former Captain Anthony O’Connor, who was not quite as popular in some quarters of the Shrimps’ support.
Morecambe Manager Derek Adams `helped’ previous boss Stephen Robinson’s team Captain O’Connor out of the club last season. But the boss went on record this week to say that he would have kept `Gibbo’ on the books had he been given the financial backing to do so.
So this is yet another example of the continuing circle of monetary mayhem which has been a constant at the club for years now. In a recent interview, JJ McKiernan said that he had expected to join the Shrimps earlier in the year. He was not alone in being similarly disappointed as our club endured its first relegation ever in its 103 year history.
The Morecambe Manager was understandably furious about this at the time. Subsequently – as we have noted before, he has said:
“Being told you are going to have X amount of money to spend in January and then not getting a single penny to spend in January was really hard because we knew we were only a couple of players away from being able to stay in (that) division.“
Now – there is a three point deduction looming over the horizon next season for the same reason JJ and others didn’t sign in January: lack of cash backing from the owners. The Bond Group’s chaotic ownership of our club continues unabated as we all sit by and silently gawp as nothing happens at least publicly to challenge it.
King Derek opened his latest press conference yet again with an overview of the situation at the club currently:
“We’ve got a lot of youth and experience in the side. We’ve got twenty at this moment in time – other teams have for thirty; thirty-five players. (Pundits) don’t look at the players we have taken-in. They don’t know how we coach; don’t know how we work from day to day-to-day. That’s just the nature of the business. That’s because it is Morecambe. They put teams up at the top of the table because of the way that they spend money. As we have shown in the past – when we got promoted out of League Two into League One with the lowest budget in League Two: anything is possible.”
As far as his Opposite Number Simon Weaver (fourteen years in to job and the current longest-serving Manager in the EFL) is concerned, he added:
“Harrogate (have) spent well over the summer period. They did well to get promoted from the National League – and lower – all the way though up into League Two. Actually, I have managed five of their players in their squad over two different clubs. Liam Gibson we couldn’t keep last season because we were outbid by Harrogate but that’s just a measure of where we are as a football club – and where Harrogate are.”
Mr Weaver expressed this opinion about today’s visitors:
“I thought they were outstanding against Bradford. They very much do what we have tried to put on our players, to impress upon them that energy and making sure it’s hard to play against us. Full credit to Derek and his team who did a great job last week.”
It was like a walk down Memory Lane today. Harrogate’s ground is a hotchpotch of stands – some old; some new; odd floodlights and ancient turnstiles which are redolent of their recent non-league days.
The Wetherby Road Stadium is more like Christie Park (and probably not as impressive, truth be told) than it is a modern football stadium like The Maz Mobile. We away supporters were stuffed into two old and tiny stands at the end of the ground on the dug-out side of the pitch. One had seats. The other was standing room only. When the ball went dead on that side of the ground at the other end of the stadium, nobody could see it.
It was sunny in Harrogate this afternoon and quite warm with it. Morecambe kicked-off and looked pretty lively for the first quarter of an hour or so.
Town looked ponderous and seemed to be relying exclusively on live wire Sam Folarin up-front to give them any inspiration or drive. But when Referee Ross Joyce adjudged Farrend Rawson to have handled this player’s shot in the penalty area after nineteen minutes following Stuart Moore’s parry of George Thomson’s strike, Harrogate were given a golden opportunity to score.
Mr Joyce has an unhappy association with the Shrimps – it was he who stopped the game a couple of seasons ago when Ian Evatt played his `racist’ card at the Lancashire seaside. In taking what the Bolton Manager told him at face-value, he effectively allowed the visitors back into the game. He probably had no choice at the time, to be fair to him. But the decision today looked – at first glance at least – to be really harsh. Anyway, Farrend was booked – not for the foul – but for arguing the toss about it afterwards. And this would have ramifications during the second half.
Luke Armstrong duly obliged the Sulphurites from the spot. After this, Morecambe’s bubble basically bursst: they were second best to almost everything from here on in. They kept giving the ball away or just lumping it upfield; they were second to the ball almost every time it ran loose and they looked just generally disorganised and pretty clueless altogether.
Goalkeeper Stuart Moore was really lucky when he left his penalty area after 26 minutes or so; failed to make a clean connection with his head as the ball was in the air and was very lucky that his weak clearance just missed an empty net when Harrogate player Levi Sutton tried to take advantage. Michael Mellon battled away manfully in his centre forward berth. Strike Partner JJ could well have been the recipient of an actual strike – and a sneaky one at that – by the opposition after just over a quarter of an hour. In an incident that Mr Joyce and his weak assistants all missed, he seemed to have been flattened off the ball; was down for quite some time and had to be escorted back to the Dressing Rooms – looking groggy and disorientated – with some sort of head injury.
Perhaps the most appalling decision of the afternoon arrived in first half injury time. Adam Mayor made a perfectly good but strong challenge on Josh Falkingham. The Town player went down – but it was no foul. The `assistant referee’ – Lisa Rashid – was level with this incident but kept her flag down. But Ross Joyce – who clearly couldn’t see it from a position much further away – proffered the young Morecambe player a Yellow Card. And so it went on: he was absolutely hopeless this afternoon.
Harrogate were the better team by the end of the first half and went back to their Dressing Rooms with a single goal lead. They were even more dominant – if anything – throughout the second period.
The key incident of this half arrived in the sixty-sixth minute. Morecambe’s Centre Half Rawson was adjudged to have fouled James Daly and had to take An Early Bath as he received a second booking. From where I was sitting, it seemed to me at least that Folarin had actually fouled him first. But what do I know? I know only that Thomson scored with a simply sumptuous shot from the resultant free kick: this was by far the best moment of a generally poor quality game.
And that was basically that. Ten-man Morecambe never looked like getting back into the game. A few shots just missed Mark Oxley’s goal but the only (really good) save he had to make was within five minutes of the end of the game. On that occasion, the away stopper did really well to push a thunderbolt from Mayor over his bar.
Overall, though, this was a really disappointing display again. The Shrimps were hopeless at Mansfield two weeks ago. Today, they were not much better. Is the record of last season – pathetic away; excellent at home – about to be repeated? We shall have to wait and see.
Anyway, the loss saw the Shrimps drop to eleventh in the League Two table. What was only Harrogate’s second win of the season saw them double their points total and move up to seventeenth place.
King Derek had this to say after the match:
“We started the better of the two teams. We had to take off JJ McKiernan with a head-knock. He got an elbow to his head. He’s got a big lump on the side of his head – and that doesn’t come with fresh air. It was hugely disappointing for us. The incident was missed by the Referee and his assistants at the time. That could have been a red card for Harrogate in the first half. Then the Referee gives Harrogate a penalty. We have seen in the Video footage (that it) looks like it’s come off Rawson’s chest, rather than what the Referee seems to think: it was his arm. That gives Harrogate a lift because we were well into the game up to then. Really, it was a difficult afternoon for us.”
Harrogate Town: 1 Mark Oxley (Y); 4 Josh Falkingham (C) (Y); 7 George Thomson; 11 James Daly (9 Abraham Odoh 88’); 12 Sam Folarin (18 Jack Muldoon 77’); 14 Toby Sims; 15 Anthony O’Connor; 16 Rod McDonald; 17 Levi Sutton (Y) (6 Warren Burrell 80’); 23 Matthew Foulds; 29 Luke Armstrong.
Substitutes not used: 13 Lewis Thomas; 5 Will Smith; 10 Matty Daly; 30 Liam Gibson.
Morecambe: 1 Stuart Moore; 2 Donald Love (C) (Y); 4 Jacob Bedeau (Y) (16 Jacob Davenport 63’); 5 Farrend Rawson (R); 6 Yann Songo’o; 7 Tom Bloxham; 8 Eli King (15 Chris Stokes 77’); 9 Michael Mellon(14 Jordan Slew 77’; 10 JJ McKiernan (18 Jake Taylor 69’); 11 Adam Mayor (Y); 12 Joel Senior (3 David Totonda 66’),
Substitutes not used: 21 Adam Smith; 17 Cammy Smith.
Ref: Ross Joyce.
Att: 2,224 (about 600 from Morecambe; the full away allocation.)
