Morecambe: The totally unofficial Review of the season.
Well – there are two chants which Morecambe fans have prided themselves for voicing over the years. They are: “We’ve never lost at Wembley!” and “We’ve never been relegated”.
The latter one, very sadly, has to be retired this season.
On the Eleventh Day at the Eleventh Hour, it all went pear-shaped at Exeter and the club duly went back down to League Two.
So the unanswered question is: what will happen now?
On the one occasion I was privileged enough to meet him, Morecambe Manager Derek Adams told me that the most difficult task he faces as a football manager is to tell individual players they are not going to be re-signed by the club. Although he doubts – for whatever reason or reasons – that many people would believe him, he clearly is deeply troubled by the knock-on effects that letting players go could have on their future careers and – far more importantly – their lives as individuals as well.
So this must have been a particularly testing Bank Holiday for the Morecambe Manager.
On Sunday, Morecambe’s remarkable late season form of three wins out of three – home and away – came to a shuddering halt as they lost by the odd goal in five at Exeter. In doing so, they were relegated for the first time ever in the Shrimps’ one hundred and three year history.
Objectively – this is failure; unprecedented failure at that. But – as with all successes and failures – there is a context.
Derek Adams has been absolutely consistent throughout the ultimately unsuccessful campaign to express this context. Not many football Managers do this and survive. But the context King Derek has fearlessly and repeatedly identified ever since the season began is:
- The ownership off the field has hampered all his attempts to make progress on it.
- He has been consistently let-down by these owners in the shape of unfulfilled promises concerning the club’s finances right from the start of the campaign.
Nobody can doubt that. There is only one creditable or positive thing that the current owners of the club – known to one and all as Del Boy and Rodney – can claim about their stewardship of our club this season. It is that we have not ended-up in the same situation as former Premiership Rugby Union club Worcester Warriors, which they also owned just a very short year ago. As the Warriors found their physical resources – car parks at first but finally the stadium the club played in – sold-off behind their backs, Worcester were booted out of the top tier of Rugby Union club football in this country as countless players, staff and other employees lost their incomes altogether.
Derek Adams – to his considerable credit – has not remained silent about this.
He has clearly bitten his lip about what has been happening Behind The Scenes right from the start of the season. But at times, his clear rage about what has been happening off the field has boiled-over. The first time I remember being aware of this is when he spoke about his frustrations after the Shrimps had been very unlucky not to beat Portsmouth at the Mazuma Stadium last November. I wrote this a few days later:
“After the draw against Portsmouth at the Maz last week, Morecambe Manager Derek Adams said the following:
“We haven’t had some decisions because we are the minnows. We’re playing against superpowers in the league and we’re not getting the big decisions when they come along. There’s no doubt about that.”
He has a point. But what worries me is what he went on to say:
“The big thing for me over the summer I’ve been disappointed because I’ve had to make changes and unfortunately I’ve not been backed enough in the summer to make the changes. If we had been backed in the summer then we’d have a far different team to what we’ve got now. That’s the big disappointment for me coming back to the football club. That’s my biggest disappointment over the summer – we haven’t been backed. The previous management were backed – and we haven’t been. We’re fighting every day just to compete in this league. We just haven’t been able to get enough revenue to help us. It’s hugely frustrating for me as a Manager of Morecambe Football Club. To get out of League Two; to stay in League One last season because we were down and buried. We had eight teams out of the top eleven to play; we had none of the bottom five to play and we were able to stay there. We’re going to have to do the same again this year. Fifth bottom- whatever it is – is a huge success. It’s like winning the lottery for Morecambe. People don’t understand. The supporters – some do, some don’t; they haven’t a clue, some of them. What happens in the inner sanctuary of the football club – they have no idea.”
It’s unusual – to put it mildly – for any football Manager to directly criticise the leadership of their club and stay in post. Most Managers in any walk of life who publicly criticise their owners get the sack. For Derek to speak out in such a forthright manner about what anybody with even half a brain cell can see is the dire reality at the club is obviously going out on a limb. Asked by our own Quinny what difference the Transfer Window re-opening in January would make, Derek interrupted – with obvious frustration bordering on actual anger that even the interviewer didn’t seem to fully appreciate the utterly grim financial situation at the club:
“January? We’re skint! We’re absolutely skint – we have no money! January doesn’t mean anything to me! What am I going to do?”
As I’ve said before, Derek Adams is the best thing ever to have happened to Morecambe Football Club. What he said about the Board backing Stephen Robinson last season is true. Robbo brought a lot of dead wood to the club and gave most of them long contracts. He then took the two best of these signings – Jonah Ayunga and loanee Trevor Carson – with him to St Mirren this season. Derek has been left to pick up the pieces and try to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear both last season and this. Some of the better signings he made prior to the latest campaign have been injured subsequently and basically haven’t featured in the first team so far. It’s a tough gig and nobody could blame him if he simply chose to walk away from it.
One of the things I personally hope is that he is not going to do so. If he does, we will not only struggle to stay in League One but – with the continuing questions about the finances of a club which is up for sale without any guarantees for the future – potentially face a struggle to stay in the EFL at all. With the nagging fear of extinction as a football club altogether still a very real possibility always hovering in the background. It happened at Worcester Warriors under the same ownership that we have. Don’t think for one moment that it can’t happen to us as well…”
I don’t claim Second Sight but I will say again that Derek Adams is by far the best thing that has ever happened to our club. He took us into League One. Against all odds, he kept us there last season with another man’s squad. I make no apology for repeating what I said about him two years ago when he led us to the Promised Land of League One in the first place:
Adam was the original – but Adams is the finished product.
This season, he came within a whisker of doing so again with a squad of loanees and young players. Key footballers he had actually signed himself this term – Max Melbourne; Ash Hunter and Jake Taylor for example – have spent as much time on the Treatment Table as they have actually doing their business on the pitch. This is bad luck, not bad judgement or poor management.
It would have been easy for Mr Adams to blame the club’s recurring predicament on this sort of misfortune. It would be even easier for him to call his squad out as not being good enough for League One and wash his hands of them. But he never did – not even once. To his considerable credit, Derek resolutely both defended his players in public and constantly insisted that they were collectively trying their very best all the way to the (eventually) bitter end.
Here is an example of what he said throughout the campaign, this time after being beaten by eventual relegation fellows MK so-called Dons by the only goal of the game earlier this year:
“I don’t think Morecambe had any (delusions) of grandeur coming into this division – the budget will tell you that; the resources will tell you that. The reason we are in the division is because we got from League Two on a bottom of the league table budget. We’re not here because of finance. The players are trying exceptionally hard to get that win. I think the spirit is fantastic. We can’t ask any more of them. They are playing to the best of their ability. We will just keep on working hard to keep ourselves in the division. The players have given their all.”
What he said was absolutely right: against a division including ex-Premiership clubs such as Ipswich; Derby County; Barnsley; Sheffield Wednesday and the hated Horwich, Morecambe held on to their League One status right until the Eleventh Hour of the final day of the campaign. It is no shame to go down with the likes of the MK Muppets – with their huge bankroll – and FGR (with their enormous potential financial backing from Right-On but fabulously rich Chairman Dale Vince). Accrington Stanley and ourselves are almost umbilically linked by a relatively small support; Lancashire and our own John Coleman. We may ritually hate them on one tribal level – but we respect them on a far more important one as a small club like ourselves constantly punching against their weight. I expect them to get back again if only because their ownership has been settled off the pitch for the last few years. Andy Holt has done a fantastic job there. He has brought a stability which we can only envy from a distance. The Crown Ground has improved beyond recognition. Ironically, even Coley has admitted that the backing he has received financially from the club this season is better than ever before. He blames himself for spending it unwisely for once. If only we had someone like Mr Holt at the helm of our club…
Next season, it is back to Sutton United; Harrogate, Grimsby and Barrer.
But just five years ago on Saturday 5th May 2018, I remember celebrating the fact that Jim Bentley’s pretty hopeless team managed to cling-on to their EFL status at all at the Ricoh Arena. So yesterday’s relegation is relative – we’re still in the Football League, after all.
Scunthorpe United were in League One three years ago. On Sunday, they were relegated to National League North. Going down with them from the National League are Torquay and Yeovil Town – both far bigger clubs than ours has been is the relatively recent past.
Since we entered League Two all those years ago, we have seen clubs such as Darlington effectively disappear altogether due to appalling management off the field. Southend United slipped from League One straight into the National League, just as Scunny have. The Shrimpers ended-up just outside the Play-Offs this season – but a Miss is as Good as a Mile and they will probably struggle all over again next term. Last season, Rochdale were in League One. Next time, they will begin a very unfamiliar life as a non-league club – 102 years as a Football League club lost in a single season.
Would we like to be in their shoes?
We will be if we aren’t very careful. We could even do a Scarborough or Rushden & Diamonds and disappear altogether. The key thing that Morecambe Football Club needs to do is sort out the ownership issues off the pitch. If the current Board can persuade Derek Adams to stay, the future will be bright.
But if they don’t – well…
The absurd position of the ownership of the club – and therefore its finances – meant that Derek Adams has been unable to offer contracts even to those men who have played a significant part in giving its League One chances of survival some sort of hope right until the last moment.
The result is that only the five players who had already been signed on two-year contracts have been retained. These are Club Captain Donald Love, fellow defenders Max Melbourne and Farrend Rawson along with Jake Taylor, Jacob Bedeau and Young Player of the Year, Adam Mayor.
All loanees have returned to their parent clubs: Jensen Weir thus went back to Brighton & Hove Albion , Caleb Watts and Dynel Simeu to Southampton; Liam Shaw took the High Road to Glasgow Celtic and youngsters Josh Austerfield and Michael Mellon have gone back to Huddersfield Town and Burnley respectively.
Fans’ favourites such as Connor Ripley; Liam Gibson; Ryan Cooney and Daniel Crowley plus old stagers like club legend Cole Stockton have all been released. Footballers who might have benefited from a second season at Morecambe such as Papa N’Diaye Souaré and Oumar Niasse will also not be coming back next term. The club has no goalkeepers on the books: second and third choice Adam Smith and Andre da Silva Mendes have also been released. Additionally, Ash Hunter; Ryan Delaney; Arthur Gnahoua, Jon Obika and Courtney Duffus have all gone. So the final break with Stephen Robinson and his profligate reign has finally been broken.
But King Derek almost certainly wanted to retain some of the players who have now departed for Pastures New. He said:
“Firstly, I would like to thank all of the players for their contributions across the campaign and for the effort, commitment and dedication they have given to the club.
To the departing players, it is very difficult as some of them have been with me here for a significant period of time. Ryan Cooney, Liam Gibson and Cole Stockton were all part of our play-off winning side and depart with nothing but my best wishes for everything they have given both me and the football club.
My thanks also to the further departures who will always be able to look back with pride at the fact they played for Morecambe FC in League One. These players have given as much as they possibly could for the club and created some memorable moments for Morecambe along the way.
I would finally like to express my gratitude to Brighton, Southampton, Burnley, Celtic & Huddersfield for allowing our loan players to be here. Each one of them contributed well to the team and we wish them all the very best for their futures as they continue their development.”
Until the thorny issue of ownership is finally settled off the field, though, the Manager is hamstrung. How can anybody plan for a new campaign with just six players on the books and no money in the coffers to employ any others? Send your answers to the Board, please – not to me.
Whatever happens, I will be buying a Season Ticket for the next campaign and I will support Morecambe throughout whatever trials and tribulations might lay in store in the immediate future.
All the Shrimps supports I personally know will be doing the same.
Being relegated for the first time ever isn’t the end of the world. Losing its League One status does not have to be a Death Blow for the club. But if it doesn’t get the fundamentals right and sort-out it basic business model as a football club – and do this very shortly – relegation could prove to be the least of Morecambe FC’s problems.
Here’s a final thought. Morecambe as a town is on the up: the Eden Project and funding for the Winter Gardens – which will soon be the premier music venue to be found between Manchester and Carlisle in this region – provide plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the future. The football club should be in the vanguard of this positivity.
Let’s all hope that it proves to be – as it has been more often than not in the past. The sun hasn’t set yet over the Mazuma Stadium…
I hope to see all of you back at the Maz next season. Until then, have a wonderful summer.
