Shrews – sorry – Snooze Fest – at Morecambe.
First of all, since I wrote my Totally Unofficial Preview of the season,
https://shrimplythebestfootball.com/…/23/preview-2022-23/
the Shrimps have acquired the services of another player. Interceptor – sorry for such a crass remark but I just can’t help myself – Midfielder Jensen Weir has arrived on a season-long loan from Premier League side Brighton & Hove Albion. The 20 year old native of Warrington started life as a professional footballer at Wigan Athletic but moved to the south coast just twelve months later in 2020. Last season, Jason played at fellow League One club Cambridge United. There, he made 24 appearances altogether, including United’s 0-2 win over Morecambe at the Mazuma Stadium last November.
Until I looked at the Seagulls’ website, I would have thought that a `Pathway Development Manager’ would be a Civil Engineer or Town Planner – or at least a very posh garden designer. My – I must be getting old because I learnt something altogether unexpected:
“Pathway development manager Gordon Greer said: “The aim of this opportunity with Morecambe will be for Jensen to play regularly and continue his development in a men’s team environment. We will be monitoring his progress throughout his loan and we wish him the best of luck for the season.””
Amen to that – and let’s hope Jensen proves to be yet another key piece in the jigsaw that Derek Adams has assembled to face the reality of Life in the Fast Lane which is League One.
Morecambe’s first game in their second ever season in the formerly exalted company of the likes of Derby County followed a pre-season campaign against one Championship and three non-league clubs away from home plus two EFL members at the Maz. They only won one of these games – the first one against Stalybridge Celtic. They drew the other games against Macclesfield and Chester away plus Carlisle at home but lost against both Huddersfield in Yorkshire and Middlesbrough at home. Friendlies pose as many questions as they provide answers and the only way to test the real value of what is effectively a brand new Shrimps squad is to see them in the competitive action which started again by the north Lancashire seaside at three o’clock this afternoon.
Visitors’ Shrewsbury Town’s own pre-season warm-ups ended as long ago as a week last Tuesday, with a nil-nil home draw against Championship Cardiff City. Previously, they lost at home 1-3 to relegated Premiership club Burnley and were unable to score against non-league local rivals (Jim Bentley’s old team) Telford United in a home match which also ended nil-nil. The Shrews finished last season just one place higher than Morecambe, albeit with a relatively massive eight extra points on the board. In previous meetings, Town have won eight of sixteen games and drawn three. In League One, they lost to Morecambe at the Maz last August 2-0 but fairly walloped the north Lancashire club in the return fixture by five far too easy goals to nil only four months ago.
Salop sold out their initial allocation of 600 tickets earlier in the week and were given another 200 for even more of their fans to see the curtain-raiser of the season. Manager Steve Cotterill said that he wanted
“To do better up there than we did last year: that would be my initial thought ahead of the fixture. It’s obviously away from home and we wanted to be away from home for the first game of the season so I’m pleased about that. I think that last season – when we went up there – we started very well for 20-25 minutes but Nathanael Ogbeta gave away a penalty and then we dipped. We didn’t play very well for the rest of the game but for 20-25 minutes, we were the better team. If we can go up there and start as well as we did last year, that’d be great. I prefer to be away from home for the season’s first game. I think there’s a lot of added pressure when you’re the team at home because there’s always more pressure on you to win home games than away games. I look forward to all of the games. I think the excitement and the build-up is all for the supporters really. They go into the season full of expectation and hope but I think the players look forward to it most and the manager will always say he needs two or three more players and two or three more weeks. You try and prepare and get yourself as ready as you can tactically and fitness-wise – which is always a balance in pre-season, especially when you have games – but we are where we’re at and I think we’re in a good place going into the game.”
Reminded of the five-nil thrashing his team handed out to Morecambe last March, he added:
“There won’t be too many players who played for Morecambe in that game who will start on Saturday in my opinion.”
Mr Cotterill was absolutely right. Only three players – Cole Stockton; Dylan Connolly and Liam Gibson (who was injured and had to retire hurt early on both then and today) were involved in this hammering but survived to feature in the Shrimps’ starting line-up today. King Derek had this to say about his hopes for his new-look squad prior to the match:
“We’d all love to get off to a good start. It’s forty-six games and you play everyone twice. How you finish the season; how you start the season and what you do in the middle are all very important, (but) it’s throughout the season that points are accumulated. We’ve got Shrewsbury at home, we know that they can be tough opposition and we’ll go into it looking to have a capacity crowd and a very good atmosphere.”
In the middle, Marc Edwards was in charge of proceedings today. This was not a good omen – this man sent off Shane McLoughlin for the only time in his career last September when the Shrimps faced old foes Accrington Stanley. It shouldn’t have happened even according Stanley’s boss, John Coleman. Mr Edwards then lost control of the game on that occasion and showed himself to be weak in the face of intimidating behaviour by Accrington’s big lads. Later, he also put in another appalling display when Morecambe hosted Plymouth Argyle and almost spoiled a match which was otherwise played in a good spirit from both sides by a succession of wrong decisions – for both teams. I just hoped before the game today that the referee would put in a performance such as the one he did when Morecambe won at Charlton Athletic last April. In probably the key game of their desperate campaign to avoid relegation, he was anonymous throughout the game. Ideally, that’s how Referees always should be: the game is not about them after all.
It had been wet in north Lancashire all day before kick-off and the weather continued to be unsettled throughout the game. Thin, drizzly rain relentlessly sheeted across the players borne on winds from the Irish Sea less than a mile away from the moment they kicked-off until the second the match ended.
The visitors all Took the Knee – to applause from every corner of the ground – but Morecambe didn’t for whatever reason before the game started. What followed was a poor contest between two teams who played as if they had never met their team-mates before. In charge of proceedings was a Referee who both sets of players made plain early on that none of them had any respect for. As always, he made a succession of appalling mistakes. In the first half alone, the ball clearly went dead at least four times; once when it was played back from beyond the goal-line into the centre for the best chance the visitors created in the first half. Neither the man with the whistle nor his two incompetent assistants flagged for the offences except once – when the Referee ignored him. Mr Edwards sprayed shaving foam on the pitch at one juncture in the first half and then was distracted by something going on in the middle of the field and went to wag his ineffectual finger in someone’s face – queue the two-man Shrews’ wall to wriggle slightly closer to the kick. And so it went on. When George Nurse brought Dylan Connolly to earth with a crude agricultural challenge near the end of the first half, he should have been booked for it. Then he should have received another yellow card for the dissent he clearly was responsible for right in the Custodian of Law And Order’s face. But the Referee kept his cards in his pocket. It was pathetic to witness. Once again, his was a performance not worthy of non-league or even park football and he should not be officiating at EFL level at all.
It would be wrong, though, to blame Marc Edwards entirely for what was a truly dreary spectacle for the entire ninety minutes. Morecambe were guilty of constantly giving the ball away during the first half and were too eager right throughout the game to just lump it down the field instead of playing the ball forward constructively out of defence – particularly when they were under pressure. During the first half, Ash Hunter and Ousmane Fané were totally anonymous in the midfield and although Hunter improved in the second half, too many of his team-mates looked off-colour and off-form. Cole the Goal had little impact up front. Arthur Gnahoua continually ran down blind alleys and gave the ball away more often than not. Connolly had a good first half but contributed virtually nothing to the second. However, he contrived the best chance Morecambe created all afternoon. After 26 minutes, he ran onto a clever pass from Cole into the Shrewsbury half at lightning speed following an away attack and drew a superlative save from visiting custodian Marco Marosi in front of the massed ranks of his own supporters.
In the second half, Town created the best chance after 66 minutes when Nurse hit the bar with a superb volley which was deflected by a despairing touch from Stockton but nevertheless beat Connor Ripley only to cannon back off the bar. Shortly after this, Ryan Delaney did well to block a Ryan Bowman tap-in. At the other end, Matthew Pennington did equally well during injury time to deny Connolly a goal; deflecting the ball for a corner which Referee Edwards didn’t allow the home team any time to actually take.
Other than that, there was little to report. Dead ball routines from either side were badly executed; the ball was booted right out of the ground at least four times and neither team ever got to grip properly either with the conditions or the match itself. This was a truly poor advert for League One football – neither team played well and a point each after this bore draw was probably a fair result.
Derek Adams put a more positive spin on matters at the end of the game:
“I thought we played really well (and) to shape. Our discipline was good because Shrewsbury are a very good side. I thought today when our new recruits came in, they stuck to the task and put on a really good home performance.”
At the end of it, Morecambe were sixteenth in the new table; Shrewsbury one place lower on alphabetical order alone.
Morecambe: 1 Connor Ripley; 2 Donald Love(C)(Y); 3 Max Melbourne; 4 Liam Gibson (7 Jake Taylor 66’); 5 Farrend Rawson; 6 Ryan Delaney (Y); 8 Ousmane Fané; 9 Cole Stockton; 10 Ash Hunter; 11 Dylan Connolly; 14 Arthur Gnahoua.
Subs not used: 12 Adam Smith; 15 Jensen Weir; 17 Caleb Watts; 18 Shane McLoughlin; 19 Jon Obika; 22 Anthony O’Connor.
Shrewsbury Town: 1 Marco Marosi; 3 Luke Leahy (C); 5 Matthew Pennington; 6 Taylor Moore; 9 Ryan Bowman (Y); 20 Tom Bayliss (15 Rekeil Pyke 66’); 22 Cheyenne Dunkley; 23 George Nurse; 26 Jordan Shipley (10 Aiden O’Brien 84’); 29 Julien Dacosta; 33 Tom Flanaghan (Y).
Subs not used: 13 Harry Burgoyne; 18 Tom Bloxham; 19 Charlie Caton; 30 Josh Barlow.
Ref: Marc Edwards.
Att: 4,725 (780 from Shrewsbury).
