LEAGUE TWO. SATURDAY, 17th AUGUST 2024.

Gills?* Gillingham have GALLONS of luck….

(* I am contractually obliged to explain to our younger readers that a Gill is an old term to describe a quarter of a pint. A gallon is eight pints. And if you don’t know what a pint is, you really do need to get out more…)

It’s not been an encouraging start to the season for Derek Adams’ new-look Morecambe side: two games so far; two defeats and not even one single serious attempt on goal by the new players in three hours of football. King Derek said this, after a far-too-easy three-nil League Cup victory for Huddersfield in Yorkshire last Tuesday night:

“The players have learnt a lot tonight – in and out of possession – and that’s important. Saturday, being back at home, will help us. It’s our first home game of the season and we’ll be ready for it – we’ve learnt a lot in the last two games.”

Today’s visitors would be Gillingham, a club against which the Shrimps have an appallingly poor record, with just one win in twelve previous meetings and a massive seven defeats. The Gills arrived in north Lancashire in second place in the League Two table, having comfortably seen-off Carlisle United 4-1 in Kent seven days ago. In mid-week, though, they lost 3-1 in Wales as Swansea easily dumped them out of the League Cup. To make things worse, their Euan Williams was sent-off for a really bad late tackle which incensed the entire Welsh team at the time. Since then, fans’ favourite Bradley Dack has re-signed for the club. The 30 year-old midfielder was a free agent after having been released by Sunderland at the end of last season. Even without him in the side, the Gills would be hoping to get their act back together against a Morecambe team which lay nineteenth in the table. The Shrimps lost tamely by the only goal of a very poor game at Walsall last Saturday and were simply outclassed by a below-strength Huddersfield last Tuesday night and lost 3-0. The Gillingham Manager, Mark Bonner, had this to say about the task facing his men at the Mazuma Mobile Stadium this afternoon:

“(There will be) loads changes just in terms of the logistics of it and how you prepare going into the game, just through time really, particularly when we’ve had an away game on Tuesday. But in terms of how we want to play, I think you’ll probably see a difference in every game, slightly. They might not even be that noticeable sometimes as they might be small things but the opposition always is something we have to respect and take into consideration when we pick our team or the way in which we go about playing with the ball, hurting them, defending their threats – that’s the nature of the game. What I’d like to hope is that the principle of our team is always the same: try to outscore the opposition and chase wins – and we want to be that team home and away because it’s wins that get you successful seasons. We’ll try and be really positive to chase the game, to start as well as we did last week, to try to score first, but be responsive and positive if it doesn’t go our way to try and put ourselves in a winning position. That’s the team we want to be, whether we’re here or on the road.”

Gillingham would have been on the road for a long time in order to play this game. It’s 290 miles from their base in Kent to the north Lancashire seaside. (I can only think of two longer journeys which the Gills will face this season: Barrow and Carlisle.) But spending hours on end sitting on a coach as it travels from one end of England to the other has had a knock-on effect as far as Mr Bonner’s selection of a team is concerned:

“We’ll probably be a few missing. Conor (Masterton) has been struggling with his Achilles, a bit of tendonitis there so he’s not done so much, we’re unsure on him. Tim Dieng was out running (on Thursday morning) but we’re unsure whether it will be too early for him with his hamstring: we certainly don’t want to take big risks this early in the season. Aaron Rowe felt his hamstring a bit tight after his 45 minutes on Tuesday and the longer journeys make that difficult so we’ll decide whether or not we use him. We’re not far away from having a real big set of players to choose from. But what we don’t want to do is force people through in this period and then count the cost of that for a long time afterwards.”

As far as the Shrimps are concerned, Mark Bonner added:

“They were really competitive in the game against Walsall, had more of the ball, lost narrowly and had some good chances in the game. A new team, lots of players put together so they’re in that phase of learning. It’s their first home game so we all know the bounce that they can bring and the atmosphere in the stadium so we’re expecting a really tough game at the end of a long week but also expect us to find a level that really gives them a good game.”

Derek, on the other hand, had plenty to think about after two poor results. George Ray – one of the definite improvements to last season’s squad – had to be helped off the field at Walsall. This followed what seemed a fairly innocuous collision but it turns out that he has a fracture which may need to be pinned. He faces being on the sidelines for at least three months. Kayden Harrack, meanwhile, picked-up two yellow cards in the Huddersfield match and already faces a suspension at this early stage of the campaign. Most of all though, Derek must be worried about his team’s powder-puff attack. With Charlie Brown clearly out of the Manager’s thinking altogether, he must be hoping that Gwion Edwards and Jordan Slew start to show the form they had last season and – perhaps more importantly – both Lee Ingol and Hallam Hope begin to play like strikers good enough to compete in the EFL: there has been precious little sign that either of them are so far.

This is what the King had to say prior to the game today:

“We learn lessons all the time. Every day is a day where you’re at school; you’re at university and you’re learning. It’s the same in football. We learn from every game – good and bad. The (players) are always looking to improve. We’re in a situation where we’re evolving: we’ve changed a lot of players from last season to this season and the players are really knitting together well. That’s the beauty of the squad: they want to improve; they want to get better: we’ve got a lot of players in this team that I think will do well this season. It will be a more even match on Saturday between ourselves and Gillingham. Looking back to Mark when he was at Cambridge: they play in similar ways – pragmatic (and) they have decent options in that front area – they will have a similar style to what they had at Cambridge. The players will enjoy it. We do really well at home and they’ll have to do that because we know that Gillingham are one of the teams that are looking to get out of this division.”

It was mostly sunny before and during the game but with a keen breeze blowing towards the home end of the ground. It was against the Shrimps in the first half and right from the off, the men in the red shirts looked the sharper, better organised team. The impressive Callum Jones forced a decent save from our old pal Jake Turner after nine minutes at the cost of a corner. Gwion Edwards was a threat to the Gills all afternoon and Romeao Hutton was allowed far too much leeway by Referee Daniel Middleton throughout to repeatedly manhandle and otherwise foul the Welshman. Hutton was eventually booked – but just how many free-kicks do you have to give away to be sent off in League Two these days? Alongside him in the centre of defence, muscular Gillingham Skipper Max Ehmer also took no prisoners all afternoon and the visitors were not slow to stop the play by committing usually niggly fouls whenever Morecambe looked likely to set-up chances to score. Ben Tollitt was on the receiving end of not just two but three doubtful challenges on the right-hand edge of the away penalty area from his point of view after 21 minutes. Instead of going down and calling for a free-kick, though, Ben stayed on his feet and produced a phenomenal strike which seemed to be dipping just under Turner’s crossbar to his left – but what I thought was the visitors’ outstanding player on the day produced a tremendous save to push the ball over the top of the goal. Our former loanee from Newcastle came to the Kent team’s rescue again with 24 minutes played. Callum Jones took a free-kick from the Shrimps’ right which Jamie Stott met at the far post only for the man in the turquoise strip to dive to his right and deny him. Turner came to the rescue again as he was very quick to come off his line with just over a half an hour on the clock to dive on the ball as Harvey Macadam almost played Hallam Hope through for a strike on goal. Gwion then missed narrowly with a sharp strike in the forty-second minute. But the team in the yellow strip showed they weren’t there just to make up the numbers when Jonny Wiliams unleashed a low shot from distance and forced Stuart Moore into a tremendous save to his left with two minutes of the half still to play.

So Morecambe went back to the Dressing Rooms having asked almost all the questions in a match which – in sharp contrast to Walsall last Saturday – was always good to watch. The Gills started the second period trying to compress the play in the home half and obviously playing at a higher tempo. Luke Hendrie conceded a free-kick in a good position for the visitors after a foul on Jack Nolan with 54 minutes played. Nolan struck the dead-ball himself but – as was the case repeatedly for the Gills when they were awarded free-kicks and corners all afternoon – struck it straight into touch miles away from the target. He attempted to redeem himself with twenty minutes left but his shot from a long way out was relatively easily saved by Moore. By this time, Morecambe were exerting some concerted pressure on the visitors’ goal and the momentum of the match was clearly with Derek Adams’ men.  The introduction of Jordan Slew after 68 minutes gave Morecambe more attacking thrust on their left flank but despite some nice interplay and a few corners, they just couldn’t force that all-important breakthrough. Instead, the biggest slice of luck of the entire game arrived in the seventy-sixth minute. Gillingham were attacking and Nolan again tried his luck from range from the Gillingham right. His shot ballooned high into the air but the strong breeze ensured it didn’t go out of play but instead fell just short of touch at the far part where Hutton managed to play it back to Shadrach Ogie. He, in turn, spun and took a shot which hit the post to Moore’s left but bounced back into play for substitute George Lapslie to sweep it home. The whole move was fluky from beginning to end but all goals count – and this one won the match. The Gills could have gone further ahead when tall substitute Oliver Hawkins headed against the bar right at the end with the home goalkeeper beaten but that really would have added insult to injury.

Gillingham will play better this season and lose. But the win pushed them up into second position in the League Two table with maximum points – and also further extended their excellent record against the Shrimps. Meanwhile, only the Plastic People from Milton Keynes and Crewe lay between Morecambe and the bottom of the entire Football League tonight. The Plastics lost 2-0 at Colchester but Crewe were absolutely hammered at home by new boys Chesterfield. So things could be a lot worse. On today’s performance, though, Derek’s latest iteration of the Shrimps is far too good to go down. I thought they played like a unit this afternoon with Macadam, Jones, Williams and Tollitt looking a threat in the middle of the park and the wings all the way through the game. But it doesn’t matter what I think. These were the thoughts of the King straight after the game:

“That’s the problem in the last two league games: we haven’t been able to get that killer touch in front of goal. We certainly had some good opportunities – I’m not saying we’ve had loads of opportunities – but I thought that as a team all round, we were much better today. It was a tight affair. I didn’t think that they were causing us too many problems. We’ve got to be better at a lot of things in the game – both in and out of possession. But to lose the game today in the manner we’ve lost it is hard to take. It might have been that a point was fair. They won’t see it that way. We just need a break to go with us – we’re not getting any small breaks at this moment in time.”

Morecambe: 25 Stuart Moore; 2 Luke Hendrie (22 Ross Millen 91’); 4 Tom White (11 Jordan Slew 68’); 6 Jamie Stott; 7 Gwion Edwards; 8 Harvey Macadam; 9 Hallam Hope; 18 Ben Tollitt (10 Lee Angol 80’); 23 David Tutonda (3 Adam Lewis 91’); 24 Yann Songo’o (C); 29 Callum Jones.

Subs not used: 1 Harry Burgoyne; 5 Max Taylor; 26 Lennon Dobson.

Gillingham: 25 Jake Turner; 2 Romeao Hutton (Y); 3 Max Clark; 5 Max Ehmer (C); 7 Jack Nolan (29 Joe Gbode 81’); 8 Armani Little; 10 Jonny Williams (32 George Lapslie (Y) 62’); 14 Robbie McKenzie; 17 Jayden Clarke; 22 Shadrach Ogie; 24 Jacob Wakelin (12 Oliver Hawkins 62’).

Subs not used: 1 Glenn Morris; 18 Marcus Wyllie; 31 Alex Giles; 42 Harry Waldock.

Ref: Daniel Middleton.

Att: 3,611 (411 from Gillingham. Their coaches set off at just after six this morning. It never seems such a long way back when you’ve won, does it?)