LEAGUE TWO. SATURDAY, 18th JANUARY 2025.

Crewe’s train keeps on rolling…

We start with some very welcome news on the transfer front this week. First of all, Morecambe Manager Derek Adams has persuaded 25-year-old goalkeeper Ryan Schofield to sign until the end of this season. Ryan started his career with home town club Huddersfield Town but has played on-loan for a number of league and non-leagues sides in England as well as a couple of stints north of the border with both Hibernian and Livingston. Having been released by Portsmouth last season, he has been without a club since so this is his big chance to re-establish his career as a professional footballer in the short time he will be with the Shrimps until the summer. Once he had put pen to paper, he said:

“I was in last week training a bit. (It) was nice to see the set-up; the facilities and how the gaffer wants to work and I think it’s something I can really get on board with.” 

Mr Adams has also offered a contract to his fellow Scot, midfielder Callum Cooke until the end of the season. The 27-year-old – who played for Derek at Bradford – was also without a club, having been discarded by non-league Hartlepool United at the end of the last campaign. So this is also a chance for another player who has fallen by the wayside to re-invent his career at Morecambe: quite an ask, given that – in common with so many Morecambe signings this term – he has already been judged not good enough to play at a level a division lower. So very good luck to the lad. These were his thoughts after signing:

“The gaffer gives you a license to go and express yourself, especially in the final third and being an attacking midfielder, having that is vital.”

Both new players went into King Derek’s squad for today’s game against Crewe Alexandra. The Cheshire team arrived in second place in League Two and would be hoping for a better end to last season, when they fell at the last hurdle in the Play-Off Final at Wembley. On the way there, they won by the only goal of the game at the Maz last April, having lost the reverse fixture earlier in the season at Gresty Road where the Shrimps won by the odd goal in five having been 2-0 down at one point. In all, the Shrimps have beaten Crewe five times in nineteen previous attempts but lost eleven of these matches. Currently, the Railwaymen are on a run of only one defeat in their last six league games but three draws. The most recent of these was last Saturday in the Wiltshire fog, when they came away with a goal-less draw against struggling Swindon Town in a game which was suspended for almost an hour at one point because of the poor visibility.

This is what Crewe’s former Morecambe favourite Ryan Cooney had to say about his old club prior to the match:

“Morecambe and Accrington are down there in the table as well as Swindon, so it’s going to be quite similar. They’re going to be fighting for everything as well as us. We’ve got to show what we can do because we know if we perform well, we’ll come away with three points. It was a difficult afternoon for us (at Swindon). I don’t think we performed at our best. We got a point away from home and they are obviously battling to stay up, but we should be going there and getting more if we want to be ambitious. The clean sheet is a positive. This year, we’ve been really solid. As long as you don’t concede, there’s always a chance for us to win the game.  As a team, we don’t like losing. We work – every single one of us on the pitch. We’re a very close team so we’ll fight to the very end of every game.” 

When interviewed last Thursday, Morecambe Manager Derek Adams had this to say about the forthcoming fixture:

“We’ve got an opportunity on Saturday, playing against a team like Crewe – who have done exceptionally well this season – to go and try to win the match. There’s no team in this league which is miles ahead: it’s a really tight league this season.”

It was cold and grey by the side of Morecambe Bay as the game kicked-off on a threadbare, heavy pitch. Prior to kick-off, there was a minute’s applause from players and spectators alike to remember the loyal Shrimps’ dead of 2024, which was a very poignant moment for some of us.

Once the action started and throughout the game, there wasn’t a lot between the two sides and chances were at a premium. The visitors had the first one of the game when Matúš Holíček’s shot following a clever pass from Jack Lankester was well-saved by Harry Burgoyne in the home goal after a quarter of an hour. One of few other decent chances of the first half arrived after just over half an hour when Gwion Edwards forced an excellent save from Filip Marschall in the Crewe goal. And that – apart from a few half-chances – was basically as good as it got before the players returned to the Dressing Rooms at half time with no scores on the board.

Morecambe Skipper and Man of the Match Yann Songo’o headed over the bar within four minutes of the restart, After 53 minutes, David Tutonda tried his luck from distance but his shot just a little too high. But the key moment arrived with just over an hour played. Ryan Cooney won a corner for Crewe which was cleared for another one in the 64^th minute. The home defence struggled to clear the ball  in their own penalty area before substitute Chris Long – who had only been on the field for a few minutes – was in the right place at the right time as he got on the end of Cooney’s cross to turn the ball home.

King Derek shook things up shortly after this and the new-look Shrimps started to put the visitors under sustained pressure from this point on. But as they started to look increasingly disorganised in defence, the Railwaymen introduced an apparently increasingly popular tactic to deal with the sudden jeopardy. For the second time in three league matches – and at about exactly the same time as in the previous contest, Crewe Manager Lee Bell aped what Karl Robinson did at Salford and tipped the wink to Aston Villa loanee Filip Marschall in the away goal to go down way off the ball and get the match stopped.  The Crewe players immediately congregated by the visitors’ dug-out to receive their instructions as to how to deal with the change in their fortunes. The Referee – Paul Howard – allowed them to do this. He shouldn’t have. But the obvious object of this development in the game was to destroy Morecambe’s new-found momentum. And in this, Bell – just as Robinson had done previously – succeeded. It’s cheating – and although you have to sympathise with referees because they have to rely on players being at least basically honest with them – the Man in the Middle let the Crewe boss get away with it. The Shrimps were unable to recover their previous impetus and Crewe weathered the storm and escaped back to Cheshire with a barely deserved win.

Tonight, Lee Bell’s team remain second in League Two, albeit a massive twelve points behind run-away leaders Walsall. Bradford did us all a favour by winning at Carlisle earlier. But nearest neighbours Barrow did us no favours at all by losing 2-0 at Swindon. Accrington lost 0-3 at home to Notts County and Tranmere also lost; 2-0 at AFC Wimbledon. But Morecambe remain five points adrift of both Stanley (who have played one game fewer) and Tranmere. Carlisle and the Shrimps are thus in danger of being marooned together at the bottom of the EFL. But it wasn’t all bad today at the Maz: the team never gave up and played some half-decent stuff at times. As always, Derek Adams could be relied on to pick out the positives at the end of the game:

“We were very good today. In the first half, we should have gone ahead. If you look at the opportunities we had, we’ve had better opportunities than Crewe today. We’ve dominated large spells in the game. We should have come away not only with a draw – but a win today.  Too many times this season, we haven’t had the killer instinct to put the ball in the back of the net. That’s been our biggest problem. We’ve lost seven games one-nil this season. We obviously lack (the) quality of scoring goals. We haven’t scored enough from midfield – that’s painfully obvious – and in the forward areas as well. That needs to change.  We just haven’t been able get the ball in the back of the net today.”

Morecambe:  1 Harry Burgoyne; 2 Luke Hendrie; 4 Tom White; 6 Jamie Stott; 7 Gwion Edwards (11 Jordan Slew 74’); 14 Rhys Williams (Y); 18 Ben Tollitt (8 Harvey Macadam 88’); 19 Marcus Dackers (9 Hallam Hope 74’); 23 David Tutonda (3 Adam Lewis 73’); 24 Yann Songo’o (C); 28 Callum Jones (20 Callum Cooke 74’).

Subs not used:  12 Ryan Schofield; 5 Max Taylor.

Crewe Alexandra: 12 Filip Marschall; 2 Ryan Cooney; 3 Jamie Knight-Lebel (Y); 4 Zac Williams (Y); 5 Mickey Demetriou (C); 6 Max Sanders (Y) (9 Omar Bogle 58’); 10 Shilow Tracey (22 Charlie Finney 95’); 11 Joel Tabiner; 14 Jack Lankester (7 Chris Long 58’); 17 Matúš Holíček (23 Jack Powell 95’); 25 Max Conway.

Subs not used: 1 Tom Booth; 19 Owen Alan Lunt; 28 Lewis Billington.

Ref: Paul Howard.

Att: 3,648 (886 from Crewe).