The New Adams’ Era?
We start this time with even more – but also sadly predictable – news about our squad. One by one, all the players Derek Adams persuaded bigger fish in the EFL to loan to our club earlier in the season have followed his lead – and gone.
Last week, we were still holding on to leading scorer Michael Mellon; outstanding midfielder Eli King and winger Tom Bloxham. Already, Ethan Walker had gone to Oldham Athletic via his parent club Blackburn and James Connolly had been recalled by Bristol Rovers. Since Morecambe’s heroic defeat at Swansea in the FA Cup Third Round last Saturday, though, Michael, and Tom have also been recalled by Burnley and Shrewsbury respectively. Cardiff loanee Eli is off North of the Border to – guess where? That’s right: he will re-join Derek Adams at Ross County.
This development will come as a surprise to a minority of the club’s fans – those fantasists who seem to think everything in the garden is rosy at Morecambe; there are no ownership issues and that the Shrimps Trust has a firm handle on things. They will continue to blame the man with the poisoned chalice – Ged Brannan – for the position the club finds itself in. He’s the Manager – so it must be his fault, mustn’t it? Let’s sack him and get Pep in from Manchester City. Why not?
Fortunately, most Morecambe supporters see the problems facing our club as far more complicated than a matter of who is in charge of the team at the moment. Our Ged is completely blameless for the situation he finds himself in, which is due – in its totality – to other people’s actions. The key player in the current crisis is – and has been for years – Jason Whittingham, the owner of the club and the boss at Bond Group Investments. He oversaw the deliberate dismantling of Premiership Rugby Club Worcester Warriors last season and the selling-off of their resources until a point was reached when the club failed and loads of jobs were lost with it. King Derek abdicated because he saw very clearly the same thing coming down the track as far as our own club is concerned – despite the best efforts of our Board of Directors. Who can blame him? He explained that the remarkable success story he was yet again building on the back of the smallest budget in the EFL was largely based on the confidence that other Managers had in him personally and the benign influence he would have on their players – both on and off the field – if they were to loan them to Morecambe. With him gone, the reason for their investment in our club has also departed and that’s why Eli King at least has been sent Up North to re-join him. It looks like Michael Mellon could quickly follow. So far, Ged Brannan has not had the time to prove one way or the other whether or not he is as safe a pair of hands as Derek unquestionably was as far as developing loanees to the club is concerned. So Blackburn, Cardiff, Blackburn – etc – have taken the easiest and safest option – and decided not to risk it.
Who would be in Mr Brannan’s shoes? We need to be brutally honest at this moment in time: if he is able to keep our club in the EFL at the end of this season, this will be an achievement to be put on a par with our promotion to League One almost three years ago and King Derek’s heroic efforts to save someone else’s seemingly doomed squad from relegation once he returned to Morecambe after his misadventure at Bradford City. We need to give him all the support we can – on and off the field – to achieve this.
One person who will try and help him with this is Joe Adams. The nineteen-year-old native of Guernsey (who is no relation to King Derek as far as I am aware) has been signed until the end of the season on-loan from Wigan Athletic. The promising forward has been loaned to several other clubs in the past but this will be the first time he has played in the EFL. He said the following about his hopes for the rest of the campaign:
“I’ve been on a few loans which were four or five games each, they were good experiences. But here – a proper loan until the end of the season – I’m looking forward to it. I’d say my best position is a Number Ten. I’ll run all game, make runs in behind and I like to get on the ball as well. I’ll take people on and hopefully get some goals and assists.”
Morecambe started today’s match in seventeenth position in League Two; six points adrift of the Play-Offs with games in hand on most of the teams above them in the table. With twenty-two games left to play, the Shrimps also find themselves comfortably fifteen points ahead of the highest of the two clubs in the relegation positions – Forest Green Rovers – who have also played a game more.
Morecambe have won only one of their last six league games and drawn three. With over a quarter of their squad withdrawn since the New Year and long-term injuries to key players such as Captain Donald Love, first choice goalkeeper Stuart Moore and promising young forward JJ McKiernan, Our Ged finds himself down to the bare bones. Even with loan signing goalie Archie Mair and new additions to the squad Joe Adams and winger Gwion Edwards, he has only twenty men to consider as part of his first team pool. Today’s visitors to the Mazuma Mobile Stadium – Mansfield Town – by contrast, have 26 with further signings anticipated this month.
The Stags arrived in second place in League Two on the back of four victories and a single loss in recent league games. Perhaps surprisingly, this was inflicted on them at Field Mill last Saturday by Crewe, who won by the only goal of the game. The two clubs have met twenty times in various competitions over the year with the Shrimps winning six and losing eleven, most recently in Nottinghamshire last August, where they lost 3-0 following a truly dismal display. Mansfield have the best away record in League Two. Asked to explain why this is, Manager Nigel Clough explained:
“Being solid and defending well. Making teams work hard against us. And then having a threat as well, which we have. I think we’ve scored a lot of goals away from home so it’s not just a Backs to the Wall job. We like to try – if we can – to play the same way (as we do) at home: be on the front foot as much as we can – and that will continue between now and the end of the season.”
His view of today’s opponents was as follows:
“I think they’re almost a Jekyll & Hyde. Away from home they look a different side to what they are at home. At home they’re very strong indeed. We had a good result against them earlier on in the season. They’ve changed managers since but the home results they get are exceptional.”
The Stags were without forward Rhys Oates with a knee injury and defender Callum Johnson was also unavailable due to a long-term hamstring injury.
Ged Brannan had this assessment of the strength of today’s opponents and what his new-look side would have to do to compete with them:
“They’re probably the best team in the league. So we will have our work cut out. But we will give it the best we can and go out with a solid team and hopefully put a solid performance in.”
The weather had been iffy in Morecambe before the game – heavy drizzle in the seaside resort at midday – but it was dry with pallid sunshine at times as the match started – with almost twelve hundred Stags’ fans noisily urging-on their team from the away terrace.
Our Ged had shuffled his pack considerably – as he had to do, given the haemorrhaging of talent which he has endured during the last thirteen unlucky days – and injuries. To add to the long-term absentees Stuart Moore and Donald Love, David Tutonda was hurt in training yesterday and was only fit enough to start on the bench this afternoon. Debutant goalkeeper Archie Mair featured right from the off as did new boy Joe Adams.
With Eli King’s old Number Eight on his back, Joe kicked-off and for the first five minutes or so, was conspicuous on the ball as the hosts dominated the play. He did exactly what he said he would do before the game: he ran at the men in the dark blue strip and wasn’t afraid to push the ball beyond defenders and run around them onto it. What a prospect…
On the right-hand side, Gwion Edwards continued his good work against Swansea with another promising display as he, too, asked a lot of questions of the Stag’s defence such as when his sliced shot was the first chance of the game after three minutes. Jordan Slew looked confident and played well once more and his attempt after seven minutes was the second chance of the game: like Gwion’s, his effort missed the target – but not by a lot. Adams had the third chance – also for the Shrimps – but his volley from some way out cleared the bar after eight minutes.
The visitors’ first effort of the afternoon arrived after eleven minutes when Davis Keillor-Dunn’s corner from their right was headed powerfully but wide by Ollie O’Clarke. Edwards got beyond the visitors’ off-side trap with half an hour on the clock but the ground must have shaken behind him as the long-haired giant covered in tattoos and otherwise known as Captain Flint – Aden Flint on this occasion – headed him off at the pass and shepherded him away from the danger area. The match was end-to-end after perhaps twenty minutes and in the thirty-fifth, Slew got the ball in the net as the hosts made a lighting counter-attack right down the centre of the pitch only to have it ruled-out for what must have been a very tight off-side decision. The ball was immediately transported to the other end of the ground where Keillor-Dunn’s instant volley was brilliantly pushed by Archie Mair against his bar and away to safety. The new stopper pulled-off a routine save a few minutes later when he easily collected a shot from Lucas Akins, by which time Slew had again warmed Pym’s hands at the opposite end of the field with a shot from some distance.
So a really entertaining game ended all-square at half time. The visitors played well and used the ball creatively – but I thought that Morecambe actually played even better and certainly had the superior chances.
The second half followed a similar pattern to the first, with both sides clearly trying to win it. Adam Mayor’s superb free-kick after 52 minutes landed in the danger zone but rolled across the Mansfield penalty area as nobody in a blue or red shirt could manage to connect with it. But the visitors took the lead with just over an hour played as George Maris found Keillor-Dunn, whose cross from the right found Baily Cargill completely unmarked plumb in the middle of the home penalty area – and he picked his spot with a shot which gave young Mr Mair in the home goal no chance at all. To be fair to the Stags – with the exception of a couple of occasions such as when one of their number simulated a head injury just to get the match stopped as Morecambe were attacking – Town didn’t sit on their laurels after this. Despite the occasional indulgence of fussy and officious Referee Seb Stockbridge – who was poor yet again as he has been every time I have seen him – Mansfield generally continued to try and add the their score. Just after the visitors had taken the lead, Ged Brannan took an obviously tiring Edwards off and replaced him with Charlie Brown. It was a master stroke. The young striker was in the right place at the right time as Morecambe again counter-attacked in the eighty-second minute up their right flank. Yann Songo’o played a lovely pass into the danger area and there was Charlie to sweep it home past Pym to put the Shrimps level on the day. Yann then tested the away goalkeeper himself with a header three minutes later. Joe Adams – who had looked dead on his feet for some time (as well he might having not played at this level ever before) – was taken-off to a standing ovation with about ten minutes left. After this, his name was announced as deserved Man of the Match. Good for him; perhaps yet another Adams is about to have a transformative effect on our club…
The game ended one-each and Mansfield slipped a place to third in League One as a result. Morecambe went up one position to sixteenth in the table this evening. But the thing that will hearten their fans most was that the team actually looked better without the stars they have just lost than they ever did with them in it. That team lost three-nil at Field Mill at the start of the season and looked like a non-league side. Today, nobody in a Shrimps’ strip had a poor game. Well done to them – and well done to the Manager. This is what he said after the match:
“They are probably the best team in the league. We showed them in every department today to be as good as them if not better. They’ll be absolutely delighted going from here with a point today: we were far the better team. All over, we had the better chances; we played the better football. So all credit to our boys: I’m absolutely delighted for them.”
Morecambe: 30 Archie Mair; 4 Jacob Bedeau; 5 Farrend Rawson (C); 6 Yann Songo’o; 8 Joe Adams (16 Jacob Davenport 81’); 11 Adam Mayor (Y); 12 Joel Senior (Y); 14 Jordan Slew; 15 Chris Stokes; 18 Jake Taylor; 19 Gwion Edwards (20 Charlie Brown (Y) 61’).
Substitutes not used: 21 Adam Smith; 3 David Tutonda; 8 Oscar Threlkeld; 17 Cammy Smith; 23 Max Melbourne.
Mansfield Town: 1 Christy Pym; 6 Baily Cargill; 8 Ollie O’Clarke (16 Stephen Quinn 86’); 9 Jordan Bowery; 10 George Maris (15 Aaron Lewis 86’); 11 Calum MacDonald (3 Stephen McLaughlin 45’); 14 Aden Flint (C); 24 Lewis Brunt; 25 Louis Reed; 40 Davis Keillor-Dunn.
Substitutes not used: 13 Scott Flinders; 22 George Williams; 26 Will Swan; 44 Hiram Boateng.
12 James Gale; 19 George Cooper;.
Ref: Sebastian Stockbridge.
Att: 4,387 (1,191 from Mansfield.)
