21st DECEMBER 2024.LEAGUE TWO. SATURDAY
Morecambe deeper in the mire as Bromley accept two early Xmas presents.
This has been yet another week in the troubled history of Morecambe Football Club where a bombshell from off the field has rocked the organisation. This involves a potential further two-point deduction by the English Football League for financial irregularities – which the club’s Board has typically tried to sweep under the carpet. You can read my report on this development here:
Moving on, it was a crunch match at the Mazuma Mobile stadium this afternoon as Morecambe played National League Play-Off winners of last season – Bromley – for the very first time ever. The Kent club arrived in fourteenth position in League Two, ten points better-off than the lowly Shrimps and on a fine run of form – two wins and no defeats in their last six league outings.
Morecambe’s recent form can be summed-up in one four-letter word: dire (other perhaps more appropriate ones are also available…) Including defeat to Lincoln at home in the EFL Trophy, Derek Adams’ men have now lost three games in a row and the frustration of the Manager has begun to show after recent poor performances. After the last home game at the Maz, where his men lost tamely to Dave Artell’s Grimsby by three goals to nil, he complained:
“I thought it was our worst performance of the season, especially at home. We didn’t play well today. We didn’t create many opportunities on goal. Our defending all over the pitch was horrendous at times. There was nobody in that team that performed well today – it was a really poor performance. It wasn’t good enough. Today, they let themselves down.”
Last week, after another feeble display at Cheltenham where they lost 2-0 and failed to force the home goalkeeper into even a single save, he seemed actually angry as well as frustrated when he said:
“We had a great chance at the back post – we have an open goal; we miss it. They have three attempts on target; we have zero on target. Everyone can see where our problem lies: we’re not hitting the target. We said this to them before the game: we had fifteen opportunities on goal the other night (against Lincoln); zero on target. It’s not good enough. We are lacking in quality – that’s plain for everyone to see. That’s why we have lost the game two-nil. “
King Derek has made it clear in recent times that he is pinning his plans for the survival of the club in the EFL on next month’s transfer window with the hope he can draft-in players who know where the net is and can defend well and consistently for 90 minutes.
But that’s then and this is now: if they are to keep pace with the rest of the Legion of the Damned – Carlisle United and Swindon Town – Morecambe need to start winning again. They haven’t been victorious in a League Two game at home all season and today would be as good a time as any to change things around, whatever the obvious inadequacies of the current squad. The King of Morecambe gave the media his take on today’s game on the eve of the match:
“Bromley have come up from the National League and competed well (and) won a good majority of games. But we’ve competed really well at home without getting the results we feel we deserve and we need those three points to catch the teams above us. They’re all winnable (games) in this league, there’s no doubt about it. We understand how important three points is and it’s something that we strive to do. We haven’t done it enough already this season, and we want to do that more come the Christmas period and into the New Year.”
Opposite Number, Ravens’ Manager Andy Woodman, said the following:
“It’ll be a difficult game. If anyone thinks it’s going to be an easy game, we’ve just got to remind ourselves we’re the new kids on the block. We can’t start getting ahead of ourselves, Morecambe have been a league club way longer than us so they’ll be the favourites for this game. We’ve got to go there and be resilient, solid and make sure we do what we do and concentrate on us. We certainly won’t be showing any disrespect to Morecambe, regardless of league position – that’s all irrelevant. We’ll be going there with the upmost respect for Morecambe and their management team and ready to slug it out.”
It was the shortest day of the year today, which is appropriate because this is going to be one of the shortest match reports I have ever written. I’ll start – as ever – by mentioning the weather conditions: windy and grey with occasional torrential icy downpours. I can tell you for certain that a really heavy rain squall swept across the ground at 3.34pm – the stair-rods of rain so dense that I could barely see the time on the scoreboard on the other side of the ground at the end of the pitch from where I was sitting.
The sad fact that I remembered that hardly fascinating detail tells you all you need to know about how absolutely dire the game was at that point – and it never improved from Morecambe’s point of view. Bromley are a well-drilled, workmanlike team which plays basic football but does it effectively. In comparison to them, the Shrimps were an absolute shambles: no shape; no plan; absolutely no nous or skill. Yet again, they weren’t able to create even a single accurate strike on goal for the entire ninety soporific minutes. They were loudly booed off the pitch at the end of the day and trooped off the appalling playing surface knowing that they had dropped to the very bottom of the EFL once again. With Carlisle drawing 0-0 at top dogs Port Vale and Swindon overcoming Grimsby 3-1 in Wiltshire. Morecambe are now five points adrift of Ian Holloway’s outfit and a single point behind United, who have a game in hand. So Christmas is looking particularly bleak at the Maz this year and on this form, they will not fare much better next Xmas in the National League – for that is where they are currently heading at a rate of knots.
For the record, Bromley took the lead in the nineteenth minute and home Morecambe Harry Burgoyne was at fault for the goal. He struggles with crosses and flapped at one coming in from the Bromley right only to see the ball lofted back into the danger area for Corey Whitely to head it back across goal by Kamarl Grant for Omar Sowunmi to nod it home from eight yards out. The Ravens scored again after 81 minutes when Referee Steve Copeland adjudged Danny Imray to have been fouled in the box and visiting Skipper Michael Cheek scored from the resulting penalty. And it could have been more: Harry partially redeemed himself with a phenomenal save to keep out Callum Reynolds’ looping header after 73 minutes.
King Derek must be truly sick and tired of doing his Broken Record week-in, week-out after one poor performance after another.
“We were the better team to start with and then give them a goal out of nothing. We’ve done that so many times this season. Another goalkeeping error today. That has been the story of our season: we’ve had so many goalkeeping errors. Then we make an error for a penalty kick as well. So we give them two goals on the day. We haven’t had any chances on target today. So that’s a huge problem in itself. The quality hasn’t been there because we haven’t done well enough defensively and we haven’t done well enough offensively.“ olloway’soutfit and H
Morecambe: 1 Harry Burgoyne; 2 Luke Hendrie (22 Ross Millen 85’); 3 Adam Lewis (9 Hallam Hope 45’); 23 David Tutonda (Y); 4 Tom White; 6 Jamie Stott; 8 Harvey Macadam; 14 Rhys Williams; 18 Ben Tollitt; 19 Marcus Dackers; 24 Yann Songo’o (C).
Subs not used: 21 Alfie Scales; 5 Max Taylor; 11 Jordan Slew; 12 Kayden Harrack; 28 Callum Jones.
Bromley: 1 Grant Smith; 2 Callum Reynolds; 5 Omar Sowunmi; 9 Michael Cheek (C) (Y)19 Levi Amantchi 87’); 16 Kamarl Antonio Grant; 18 Corey Whitely; 20 Jude Arthurs; 22 Cameron Congreve (29 Olufelo Olomola 66’); 25 Danny Imray (7 Joshua Passley 87’); 30 Idris Odutayo; 32 Ben Thompson.
Subs not used: 12 Sam Long; 4 Ashley Charles; 8 Lewis Leigh; 11 Louis Dennis; 17 Byron Webster.
Ref: Steve Copeland.
Att: 3,515 (93 from Kent.)
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