Not a Good Friday for Morecambe
It was Memory Lane for Derek Adams today as one his former clubs travelled the long distance from Devon to take-on his current one in north Lancashire. Plymough Argyle arrived in second position in League One, level on eighty points with leaders Sheffield Wednesday but with a game in hand. They had won four of their last five league games but – infamously – lost the last time they took to the field as well. In a match where all Morecambe supporters would be cheering them on, they lost to the hated Ian Evatt’s outfit in the Pizza Trophy thing last Sunday by four goals to nil. So the Pilgrims would want to get their train back on the track today at the Mazuma Stadium and all the omens suggested that they would.
In past encounters with the Shrimps, they have come out on top in nine of sixteen games and drawn four of them. So far in League One, they have beaten Morecambe at Home park twice but drew here last season one goal each. To make things even easier for Argyle, the Shrimps are far too easy to beat currently and have been playing like a team which would struggle in the division below for the last few weeks.
Morecambe started the game in twenty-second place in League Two but have played more games than all of their rivals for relegation – and everyone else, for that matter. They have picked up only a solitary point from a potential fifteen in their last five matches and have scored just three goals in this time but have conceded fifteen – three per match on average to add to the increasingly dire Debit Column in their Goal Difference.
For the visitors, Head Coach Steven Schumacher said about the defeat at Wembley last time out:
“There should be no negativity around our team this season, none whatsoever. We’re playing so well and we’re overperforming if you like, from what we should be doing. Personally it’s my first full season as a manager and days like this is where you learn a lot about yourself – you learn a lot about your team.”
As far as today’s match is concerned, he added:
“We managed to take maximum points from Forest Green and Accrington who were in a similar position to Morecambe in the league. We expect a tough game from Morecambe. One of our old managers is their manager. We know that Derek’s teams will always be really well organised. They’ve got a threat when they counter attack and break, and they can score goals from outside the box. We need to make sure that we’re prepared for that.”
Defender Dan Scarr added, starting with the disappointment suffered at the hands of the Horwich Pizza Gobblers:
“Everyone was hurt, everyone was annoyed. It was quiet for a bit and then we started talking about how we’ve got to use that as motivation. We haven’t really got time to be down about it and dwell on it. Forget about it now. It’s done. It wasn’t a good day. We’re in a great position (in the league). We’ve got lots to be excited about and to look forward to. We’ll go in with our heads high and do what we’ve been doing all season really. We will try to get our preparation right, work out the strengths and weaknesses of the team we are playing. We make sure we do the things that we are good at. I think it’ll be a really tough game. I expect we should have a lot of the ball, but it’s just trying to break them down. They’ll be solid. They’ll want to try and cause an upset; they need the points.”
The man who was in charge of gaining these points – King Derek – spoke about the difficulties facing himself and his players on and off the field earlier in the week. This can’t be easy. From where I sit, trying to keep the club in League One against all odds must be difficult enough given the financial constraints alone that he has faced all season. But to find that – at the very moment that stability within the club is imperative if they are to stand any chance of survival at all – the owners have yet again failed to come up with the basics to keep things going must be truly disheartening for anybody. But Derek is a resilient individual. He said about the situation when the staff and players weren’t paid on time last week:
“It becomes difficult but you are the leader of your players and your staff. As a leader, you’ve got to be seen to be supportive – you can’t go and hide away from the situation. You need to be on the main floor. That’s what I did and that’s what I always do – good, bad or indifferent. I think that’s really important. The players were informed by myself every day as best as I could because information was difficult to come by about what circumstances were going on around about us.”
He added the following about his former employers:
“I’ve got really happy memories of Plymouth Argyle. I’ve still got friends in the area. It’s a football club that I love. It was a tough time when I went there. The reason I got the job at Plymouth Argyle was because I could work within a budget. That’s the reason I probably get a number of jobs – including in Morecambe – because I have to work to the constraints that the football club have.”
Finally, he evaluated today’s daunting task in these simple terms:
“We’ve got to win every game between now and the end of the season to give ourselves any opportunity to stay in League One. We’ve given ourselves still a fighting chance with six games to go. We’re just going to try our best to give it as best as we can.”
The weather in north Lancashire has been really sunny albeit cold for the last couple of days. So the game started in bright Spring sunshine and was played under blue skies throughout.
Things didn’t look that promising for the men in the red shirts in the opening minutes of the match. Roared-on by the massed ranks of their tremendous away support, Argyle took the game to Morecambe right from kick-off. Home custodian Connor Ripley flapped at a cross from the Plymouth left after only a couple of minutes and the Shrimps’ defence looked shaky in the extreme as they managed to clear a corner just after this. (I thought that a man in a red shirt used his shoulder to deflect the ball during this move but Referee Marc Edwards – who had a poor game throughout this afternoon – didn’t give a penalty to the visitors.)
A second corner led to a decent save by Connor from James Wilson after which the ball found its way to Jensen Weir on the half-way line as Morecambe cleared it. He broke through the retreating line of white and green and took it forward confidently to slip beyond Callum Burton in the away goal to quieten the travelling supporters and give Derek Adams’ men an unexpected lead. This was in the fourth minute and by the forty-seventh minute and half time, this was still the score. Morecambe never looked like adding to their lead and the closest they came was after twelve minutes when Weir almost sent the ball over the stand-full of Argyle supporters with a wild shot from the Shrimps’ left.
At the other end, after the initial onslaught by Plymouth, Joe Edwards’ excellent header was deflected away for a corner after thirty-nine minutes. Three minutes later, Tyreik Wright walloped the ball over the bar with a fierce shot and right at the death, Centre-Half Wilson again came close with a low shot which only just missed the target.
But the home team retreated to the Dressing Rooms at half time deservedly in the lead. They had been the better team throughout.
Predictably, though, it was a totally different story in the second period. Argyle stepped-up the pace and began to dominate possession right from the off. Ripley managed to hold a shot from Edwards with just three minutes played. In a rare foray into the visitors’ half, the lacklustre Cole Stockton managed to actually draw a decent save from visiting custodian Burton with fifty-five minutes on the clock. But it was mostly one-way traffic in the opposite direction. Plymouth’s equaliser with just over an hour played was an absolute peach of a goal. Miller and Danny Mayor combined well on the Argyle left as they progressed up the field before Mayor scored with a fantastic shot from distance which swerved into the top corner of Ripley’s net high to his left.
After that, there was only one team going to win today. And Plymouth almost took the lead from a corner in the sixty-seventh minute when Connor did brilliantly to push Ryan Hardie’s near-post header over the bar. Morecambe Skipper Donald Love then smashed a long-range shot from the Morecambe right just wide of the target with six minutes of scheduled time still to play. But just as the home crowd were praying that the match would end in a draw, the visitors duly went further ahead in the eighty-seventh minute. It looked to me at least that substitute Callum Wright had been fouled in the home penalty area but the ball was finally worked by replacement Jay Matete to another sub – Ben Waine – who drove the ball low under Ripley’s body into the net. And – just for good measure – Argyle scored a third during injury time at the end of the game. In doing so, they mirrored almost exactly Morecambe’s opening goal – the visitors broke away quickly on the break and this time Matete himself found the net.
So that was it – yet another precious game played and yet another defeat. Deserved Man of the Match Dan Crowley put in another decent shift but too many of his colleagues failed to do so today. Cole Stockton was the worst offender: he should be ashamed of the way he played this afternoon, with no determination and precious little commitment. The drop looks increasingly inevitable – this team simply aren’t good enough for League One and that’s very sadly all there is to it.
Elsewhere, things got even worse. Cambridge and Accrington both won and Burton and MK Plastics drew to look increasingly safe. Only Forest Green Rovers seem to be a worse team in the entire division than King Derek’s men. As his old club went to the very top of the pile tonight, his current one fell to next to bottom of it. These were his thoughts after the game:
“It was very difficult to take. We’ve lost too many points this season from winning positions. That’s probably due to the inexperience in the squad. We were in a fantastic position today at one-nil ahead against a team that are the league leaders. To succumb to a defeat so late in the match is really difficult to take.”
Morecambe: 1 Connor Ripley; 2 Donald Love (C); 4 Liam Gibson; 5 Farrend Rawson (Y); 6 Ryan Delaney; 8 Daniel Crowley (17 Caleb Watts 70’); 9 Cole Stockton; 15 Jensen Weir; 22 Josh Austerfield (Y); 23 Pape N’Diaye Souaré (25 Adam Mayor 88’); 29 Dynel Simeu (18 Oumar Niasse 88’).
Subs not used: 12 Adam Smith; 7 Jake Taylor; 14 Arthur Gnahoua; 21 Ryan Cooney.
Plymouth Argyle: 25 Callum Burton; 4 Jordan Houghton (28 Jay Matete (Y) 83’); 5 James Wilson; 6 Dan Scarr; 7 Matt Butcher (10 Danny Mayor 56’); 8 Joe Edwards (C) (Y) (17 Bali Mumba 74’); 9 Ryan Hardie; 14 Mickel Miller (26 Callum Wright 74’); 16 Sam Cosgrove (23 Ben Waine 55’); 22 Brendan Galloway; 29 Tyreik Wright.
Subs not used: 32 Adam Parkes; 21 Nigel Lonwijk.
Ref: Marc Edwards.
Att: 4,904 (1.050 from Plymouth.)
