Not so good for Carlisle, eh…
In the immortal words of Elvis Presley: Well, Bless My Soul! If Elvis came from Carlisle, he would, of course, be saying: ` Well, Bless My Soul, eh?’ Yes indeedy. But how things have changed in the last little while as far as our most northerly EFL neighbours Carlisle United are concerned. On December 15th last, the Cumbrian club entertained Mansfield Town and won to find themselves second in the League Two table at the end of the game. Today, though, United arrived in north Lancashire on the back of three straight defeats and only a single point gained from their last five League Two matches. Carlisle have dropped from the giddy heights of the automatic promotion positions a couple of months ago to thirteenth in League Two. Whilst Morecambe were beating Crawley 3-1 at home last Tuesday, the Blues were losing again, this time at strugglers Colchester by the odd goal in three after they had actually taken the lead. The enormity of this defeat is emphasised by the fact that this was the Essex club’s first league victory in fifteen attempts. Beleaguered Carlisle Manager Chris Beech said after the loss:
“We have to be better at taking the hits but coming out the other side. We aren’t dealing with that very well at the moment. I said to the lads after the game that I am so frustrated because we’re leading games, but we aren’t seeing them off. At the moment we’re feeling agitated because we aren’t getting what we want, and it is hard for the lads to keep going at it when that happens. If they stop fighting then we’d have a big problem, but they haven’t, and we’ve just got to try and get through this period. For the fans, I’d say stick with us. Let’s be right, we’ve injected blue blood back into the club. You’ve got committed players who are committed to the area, that want to play for Carlisle and understand how important it is to be playing for this great football club. We’ve got to rediscover ourselves and reboot, then see something through, and when we do I have no doubt the good vibes will come back into the building.”
Despite the brave words, Mr Beech must have been worried about his own position prior to the game. For several League Two club Managers, defeat by `little old Morecambe’ has been the last straw: in recent years, several have found losses against the Shrimps to be the final games they have been in charge of. This season alone, Mike Jackson was sacked by Tranmere literally straight after their loss to Morecambe at Prenton Park last year and Michael Jolley was given his P45 as well when Barrow lost at home to them just last month. Whatever his worries, the Carlisle boss was decent enough to say the following about the enormity of the task facing his men this afternoon when he said of the opposition:
“They’ve done unbelievably great, of course they have. They’ve dealt with a lot of stuff off the pitch as well. I think Derek and his staff have done a tremendous job. Well done to them for that. I think he’s done very well and he deserves accolades and credits. But in terms of their style of football, they score good, quick counter-attacking type goals. They and we are very similar in many ways. We speak to many similar players who are out of contract, the finances will be very similar, so the locality of the clubs, you do a deal with players that can sign for either club, it’s quite a competitive situation in the summer to sign players and things like that. Then of course you’re going against a neighbour in what is a great game to be going against them at. I’m really looking forward to playing against them. We will have a fight on our hands, but we would anyway. The biggest fight is to make sure we don’t fight ourselves.”
To bear-out what he had said, for Morecambe, both Cole Stockton and John O’Sullivan had once played for the Blues and Carlisle’s George Tanner and Lewis Allesandra have also worn the red shirts of the hosts in the past. For the Lancashire club though, Carlisle are something of a bogy team: they have lost half of their previous twenty meetings in various competitions since 2009 and won only three. As an example, the Shrimps went down quite tamely 3-1 at Brunton Park in October last time they met and they have never beaten the Blues in a League Two match at the Mazuma Stadium in its various guises or former home Christie Park either for that matter. However, today was a perfect opportunity to improve on this sorry story. Morecambe put on a simply scintillating performance last Tuesday against a skilful Crawley Town team and were unlucky not to score more goals. They started today’s game fifth in the table and on the back of three wins and two losses in their last five league games. As far as their victory over Crawley was concerned, Manager Derek Adams said:
“It was a fantastic performance from us. We’ve had some really good performances at home but Tuesday night was up there with the best. We created a number of chances throughout the 90 minutes; we should probably have scored seven or eight in the game. The front three were excellent throughout and caused Crawley’s back three a lot of trouble. It was really enjoyable to watch. It’s important to have two players in each position. I wanted to freshen things up and give us some fresh legs. We have strong competition all across the team and that contributes to the success that we’re having.”
His choices this afternoon were limited, however, by the bad injury Greg Lyons picked-up on Tuesday night. DA said of the game prior to kick-off:
“Carlisle are a team like ourselves who have done well this season. Games between the two sides are always good, hard-fought matches. I’ve always enjoyed coming up against Carlisle, they were the first side I faced as Morecambe manager. This is a game we really want to do well in. They have a lot of games to play after having a number of games postponed throughout recent months. It will be especially disappointing not to have supporters in for this one. There is a rivalry between the two clubs due to the relatively close proximity. Usually, Carlisle travel here in good numbers so that is a shame. It will still be the same on the pitch though: there will be a lot of passion, energy and both teams will be going for that victory.”
Well – I had assumed that it was dry and the sky possibly even sunny in Morecambe today. But seven miles north in Carnforth, the air was blue in my house at least. The failure of my BT Hub meant that I couldn’t view the iFollow live video of the game I had paid for. That also meant that I couldn’t listen to the Shrimpartial Twins’ commentary either and as Radio Lancashire –as always – treats Morecambe as if we all live in Siberia, the only live commentary I expected to be able to tune into was Radio Cumbria. Without any pictures, I was prepared to try and make some sort of sense of the game from their commentary alone. Like. Eh. But at five minutes to three, the hub finally re-set itself…
It was actually sunny as the game kicked-off. Derek Adams had decided to revert to the same line-up which played so disastrously just seven days ago at Mansfield. And guess what? – they played with the same lack of purpose and shape as they had done a week ago for the first twenty-five minutes or so. Until then, it was all Carlisle: the team were clearly up for it and they didn’t look like a side struggling for confidence at that juncture at least. Lewis Allesandra – noticeably much slimmer and seemingly far fitter than he was as a Shrimps’ player in his second spell – looked as if he had a point to prove against the Manager who soon got rid of him when he took over from Jim Bentley last year. They had the first shot of the game after three minutes but Dean Furman’s attempt was wildly high and wide of the target. Morecambe Skipper Sam Lavelle was rightly booked for a crude foul on Joshua Koyode after eleven minutes and the Carlisle player had to leave the pitch a few minutes later. The visiting goalkeeper, Paul Farman, was lucky after just over a quarter of an hour when his careless clearance almost hit Aaron Wildig almost straight in front of him. But United were still looking the likeliest to score and Kyle Letheren would have been relieved to be able to pick the ball up unchallenged as it came at him through a crowd of players after nineteen minutes. The Shrimps’ performance so far was personified when Wildig played a low, targeted ball up-front after 23 minutes only for Cole Stockton to be caught offside: this was the first ball played by the reds which hadn’t just been hoofed hopefully forward. But Morecambe came the closest to scoring so far when Carlos Mendes-Gomes played a typically incisive pass up the left to John O’Sullivan, whose shot was pushed by Farman at full stretch against his crossbar and away. Suddenly, the momentum seemed to be swinging towards the home side and it was no surprise when, following excellent play on their left, Toumani Diagouraga passed to Liam Gibson whose low cut-back from the goal line was bravely headed home by a diving Wildig, who was hurt as he scored and had to be treated on the pitch afterwards. This was after half an hour. Just three more minutes had been played when `Toums’ had a half-chance which the men in blue managed to clear for a corner. Sully took this; Harry Davis headed it back where it had come from at the far post – and Toumani nodded it home at the near one to put the Shrimps two-nil up. About five minutes later, Cole tried to set Diagouraga up for a second goal but his shot was blocked. At the other end, another weak shot – this time by substitute Gime Touré – was easily gathered by the home goalkeeper. His opposite number then did well to get to the ball just before Wildig did after 42 minutes and the half ended with Carlisle doing most of the defending and the hosts nearly all of the probing.
Half time was an interesting experience. I still had Radio Cumbria on in the background and the doom and gloom indulged in by the co-commentators and all the messages from Blues’ fans which they read out didn’t reflect the half I had just watched. They slagged-off their Manager’s tactics and wondered how much longer he could stay in charge. They blamed their own players for letting their heads drop after conceding the first goal. Nothing positive was broadcast.
Blimey – I didn’t think they were that bad…
Carlisle went onto the front foot again straight from the off in the second period. But – possibly trying too hard – they didn’t have any end product to their sometimes good approach play. After just two minutes, for instance, a cross from the Carlisle right went straight out of play. From a free-kick after fifty minutes, a fine header by Yann Songo’o was brilliantly pushed away for a corner by Farman as he leapt high to his left. But it took only another couple of minutes for the hosts to rack-up another goal. Carlos played another perfect ball from deep to Wildig, who slipped the ball from the left to Cole Stockton to wallop it home against a club at which he apparently had an unhappy time. Around about an hour, the visitors were chasing shadows for quite some time as Morecambe played the ball through and round them seemingly at will. With 62 minutes on the clock, the Shrimps should have gone even further ahead when – following excellent play between Songo’o and Gibson, the latter defender tried his luck from a narrow angle when a pass to an unmarked Wildig just to his right would have been a better option. As the match grew ever older, though, United increasingly started to come into it again. Letheren inexplicably gave away an indirect free-kick on the six-yard line after 68 minutes. Captain Nick Anderton shaped to pass it to Lewis Allesandra but by the time Carlisle’s Number Nine received the ball, men in red were already all over him and the chance was gone. This probably said everything about the game today: when it really mattered, Morecambe were better motivated and quicker to the ball. Having said that, Carlisle pulled one back after 77 minutes when John O’Sullivan managed to get his head to the ball on the Morecambe goal-line but Aaron Hayden’s powerful header from a corner was too powerful for him to keep out of the net. United then dominated the possession as they had for the opening period of the match but, in all truth, they never really looked like pulling the game out of the fire.
The reaction on Radio Cumbria was even more damning at the end of the game than it had been earlier. A constant complaint by Carlisle supporters was the way their players didn’t bawl each other out when they made mistakes but seemed to just shrug their shoulders instead and get on with the match. `Weak’ was a word which constantly recurred. I didn’t think they were that bad in all truth. They have some good players in the shape of the impressive Joe Riley and Aaron Hayden, for example. If they had more discipline in their game, both Omari Patrick and Touré could also both be a real handful. Today, though, it just didn’t click for the Blues. Their fourth loss in a row – and the first one in Morecambe in a league game – saw Carlisle remain in unlucky thirteenth place in the table. The natives, though, are clearly restive…
For Derek Adams’ team, this was another excellent result which saw them go up to fourth place in League Two.
Morecambe: 1 Kyle Letheren; 2 Kelvin Mellor (Y); 5 Sam Lavelle (C) (Y); 8 Toumani Diagouraga; 6 Harry Davis; 22 Liam Gibson 9 Cole Stockton; 10 Aaron Wildig (20 Alex Denny 90’); 11 Carlos Mendes-Gomes (7 Jordan Slew 78’); 16 John O’Sullivan; 24 Yann Songo’o.
Subs not used: 12 Mark Halstead; 21 Ryan Cooney; 3 Stephen Hendrie; 18 Ben Pringle; 19 Liam McAlinden.
Carlisle United: 21 Paul Farman; 2 George Tanner (10 Offrande Zanzala 45’); 6 Aaron Hayden; 3 Nick Anderton (C); 12 Jon Mellish (15 Taylor Charters 69’); 19 Dean Furman; 13 Rod McDonald; 7 Joe Riley; 9 Lewis Allesandra (Y); 11 Omari Patrick (33 Ethan Walker 75’); 14 Joshua Kayode (20 Gime Touré 15’).
Subs not used: 1 Magnus Norman; 32 Rhys Bennett; 17 Jack Armer.
Ref: Sam Allison.
