Totally Unofficial Review of the 2024-25 Season; Morecambe FC.
Part 1: “We’ve Got a Problem.”
Morecambe Manager Derek Adams, Chesterfield, April 26th 2025:
“We need to start thinking and talking and planning. We don’t have a plan in place for next season yet; not one plan. That’s a problem from up there (pointing towards the stands at Chesterfield where the Morecambe Directors could be found) and that is a huge problem. This is where the problem lies. The Board of Directors (and) the owner need to start planning. They don’t have a plan. And until they get a plan, we’ve got a problem. They’re the ones who are custodians of this football club. We’ve got supporters who pay week-in and week-out for this football club. It is their responsibility – from up high – to give us a plan going forward – where they want to take this football club. I haven’t got a plan. I can’t have a plan. They’re the ones who need to start having a plan. And until they get a plan, then we’ve got a problem.”
For the eighteen long years that Morecambe have been members of the English Football League, the club has always been the pundits’ favourite for relegation. When you consider that some of these self –styled `experts’ include beacons of intelligence, objectivity and vast knowledge of the game such as Dame Clinton “Articulatedness is a word!” Morrison, it’s no wonder they have been confounded over almost two decades. Only four years ago – and to really upset all the Bookies – Derek Adams led the worst-financed club in the entire EFL to the giddy heights of League One. But even Dame Clinton probably gets something right – like putting the correct shoe on the appropriate foot when he doesn’t have anybody to help him – from time to time and this year, the Bookies’ dire predictions of the last eighteen years have actually come true.
Morecambe have been officially the very worst team in the entire English Football League this season. They ended their campaign with a paltry 36 points out of possible 158; six points below second worst team in the EFL, Carlisle United – and a massive thirteen points shy of Newport County in safe twenty-second place.
It was hardly a surprise. When King Derek agreed to return to the club last year, it was under an embargo from the EFL for VAT irregularities which meant he couldn’t sign any players to add to the handful he inherited from Ged Brannan, who – with a heavy heart – had the very good sense to return to Accrington Stanley after seeing The Writing On The Wall by the Lancashire seaside.
The Embargo was lifted just as the season was about to commence. The results for Morecambe meant that Derek had no choice other than to make last-minute signings of journeymen; players who have missed their way or have suffered serious injuries plus too many players who were not deemed good enough to have contracts renewed at National League North or South level (two tiers lower in the football pyramid than Morecambe were at the time).
This nightmare scenario was always doomed to failure. After all, Derek Adams is primarily a football coach – and not a magician. As far as I know, he hasn’t discovered the secret of genetically altering National League North reject footballers into athletes capable of playing at elite Football League level either. But he’s done his best and some of these men – Jamie Stott and Max Taylor notably despite Max’s subsequent departure from the club – have had their careers turned around at Morecambe by the management and coaching they have received from Derek and his staff.
The Thoughts of King Derek. Number One; About Football:
“The game is simple, complicated by idiots.”
The boss’ Mantra throughout the season as his team lost game after game has been “they try their best’ and – with a couple of notable exceptions – this is undoubtedly true. But – to quote another old adage, `you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’ – and their best, very sadly, was nowhere near good enough to make the team truly competitive in League Two.
But a weak squad is only part of the reason the club has been relegated.
The Thoughts of King Derek. Number Two; About No-Blame Culture:
“We’ve become a nation of protecting people – that’s wrong. I think we have to stand up as a nation – and as people – and we have to lead. And that’s why I am in the position I’m in: I’m a leader. Why do I explain things in the way that I do? It’s to try and make us better – that’s the reason. If we sweep everything under the carpet and we don’t say anything, then there’s a problem. Free Speech is a good thing in this country. It’s quickly getting diminished and that’s not helpful in any walk of life.”
So who is to blame for Morecambe’s total failure this season? Let’s look at some other key factors now.
The Ownership.
The Ownership – well, what can you say? Two words sum it up: nothing changes.
Jason Whittingham and his Bond Group have allegedly been trying to sell Morecambe Football Club for over two years. But we seem to be as far away from having new owners now as we were when the club was first put on the market. This year, led by a rejuvenated Shrimps Trust, Morecambe fans have organised protests; marches and shows of resistance by means of radio and TV interviews by dynamic new Chair of the Trust, Tarnia Elsworth; banners; black balloons and various other gimmicks – to absolutely no avail. A fringe group of Morecambe supporters even went as far as to plaster Buckhurst Hill – the hide-away dahn sarf where an owner who never shows his face at even nearby football matches featuring the Shrimps – actually lives.
But our Jason is not easy to influence – or embarrass. After his dismemberment of Worcester Warriors Rugby Union club for his attempted personal considerable financial gain, the EFL should have disbarred him as a fit or proper person to own any football club under their jurisdiction. But the EFL is too incompetent, complacent and disinterested to do anything so pro-active. So we’re stuck with him. Rumours of alternative owners – some bloke with an apparently invisible soft drinks company in India and other business interests of which no trace can be found either plus a group called Punjab Warriors (whoever they are) – have surfaced over the years only to sink again without trace.
So, given that Jason apparently takes no cash payments from our club for his investment but still has to bail it out (and the losses are enormous), I wondered what he actually gets from being the owner of Morecambe Football Club except widespread loathing by its fans and bad publicity in at least the soccer community in this country.
So – as a member – I asked the Shrimps Trust to ask the Morecambe Board of Directors (B.o.D.) if they could shed any light on this conundrum. They put this question to them:
Are the Board able to explain what it is they think that Mr. Whittingham has gained from owning our club, if anything at all?
This was the reply they received:
The rise to League One was of benefit to the owner, but any gains have been squandered through the protracted sale process that negate any potential uplift in value.
So why’s he still here? Your guess is as good as mine…
All that is certain is that with this man in control of our club; successive relegations have been inevitable – and much worse could still be to come if he isn’t replaced by someone else who actually puts the interests of the asset they own first and foremost.
However, not all the reasons for the club’s loss of its Football League status can be squarely laid at Jason Whittingham’s door…
VAT Fiasco.
Sadly, the VAT fiasco – which set in motion a train of event eventually culminating in the loss of Morecambe’s EFL status – is one of the few really bad things to have happened at the club recently which can’t be blamed on Mr Whittingham.
I wrote this in my Totally Unofficial Preview of the season:
“It’s a shame that the Board have not deigned to put anything on the club’s website about this subject – this entire fiasco does not reflect well on them if only because of their lack of communication with the supporters. As has been noted elsewhere, thoughts about mushrooms, manure and being kept in the dark spring all too readily to mind…”
Since then, their response to a problem ultimately of their own making has simply reinforced this observation. Earlier in the season, as another threat of a further points reduction and potential Embargo was made by the EFL, I wrote the following article about this subject:
The many on-line responses I received to this talked of `shenanigans’ and being `fed gobbledygook’ by the B.o.D. and included repeated pleas for more openness from them.
Perhaps naively, what I was hoping for when I wrote the article was a public response from the club’s Board which would confound my earlier `mushrooms’ criticism of them.
Regrettably, this hasn’t happened. Instead of being more open about their mistakes with the club’s fans, the B.o.D. has circled the wagons and dug its heels in.
So I thought of some specific questions I would like the B.o.D. to address and sought means of having them answer them. This is what I came up with:
1) It has emerged that the club failed to pay VAT to the HMRC on not just one but five occasions in recent months. How was what should be a simple transaction which any reputable accountant or business should never overlook be allowed to happen not just once but multiple times?
2) These repeated failures caused the EFL to impose a points reduction and embargo on Morecambe FC. This situation put an end to our Play-Off push last season. It has also led directly to both of our last two Managers being unable to offer extended contracts to last season’s squad nor make new signings until the Eleventh Hour this season. So
a) How does the Board justify these two major imbroglios?
b) Why have they never acknowledged their responsibility for both of these nightmare scenarios to the fanbase?
3) The EFL is again threatening to deduct points from Morecambe in the future, with all the possibility of fines and a further embargo that this might mean. So
a) Why have the Board never publicly even acknowledged, let alone addressed this situation?
b) What contingency plans have the Board set in place to avoid this appalling state of affairs coming about again?
4) As fans, we have had to rely on outside sources to even tell us when the infringements involving late tax payments were made. But we still don’t know how much money each of the late payments involved. So
a) What sums did each of the five individual infringements involve?
b) If the club is still not prepared to tell us – why not? If the answer is `commercial privilege’; can the Board please explain what definition of this term (or any other excuse they might proffer) could possibly be more harmful to the club than the reputational damage these repeated failures have already caused?
I won’t bore you with the grizzly details of what happened next but my efforts to get the Board to actually consider – let alone answer – these questions fell on stony ground. Furthermore, it has been made very plain to me that the B.o.D. are not going respond at all to our collective worries about their elusive attitude towards the VAT fiasco.
They seemed equally unmoved by our really seriously worrying shared concerns about their failure to even acknowledge the further threat of a points deductions from the EFL, let alone share with us their plans to avoid it. Maybe relegation to avoid having to deal with this scenario at all has been their aim all along…
I jest. However, I have learnt subsequently that explaining some of the aspects of the VAT fiasco involves legal issues which it is best not to interfere with but I despair when the club doesn’t even make any attempt to suggest this as a reason for their silence about this absolutely key subject. We’ve all heard the rumours that some of the matters involved in this fiasco could be genuinely sub judice as pending court cases could have a bearing on the ultimate responsibility for the cock-up. But does the B.o.D. think we are collectively too thick – or whatever – to understand or appreciate this? Or is it none of our business in their opinion?
They may not think any of these things. But the basic problem of communication between the Board and the Morecambe fanbase is that is we have little idea what they actually do think – because they rarely tell us.
As a result, the widespread belief that the Board have something to hide will persist. And this impression, very sadly, will remain if they continue to keep secrets from us all, whether they like it – or even comprehend it – or not.
As has been stated at length above, the results of the original embargo by the utterly useless EFL almost scuppered our Manager‘s choices this season – and our club with it.
The Board may – rightly or otherwise – pin the blame on someone else for the failures which caused this situation to arise in the first place.
But is telling us – the fans without whom the club would not exist at all – how they intend to ensure that this doesn’t happen again really such a Big Deal?
Putting my Political Hat on, I can see all too clearly why the B.o.D. would like to keep the things many of us would like to know in-house. Because however they spin it, repeatedly failing to pay VAT on time; simply ignoring the reality of a further threat of a points deduction and refusing to even attempt to justify incompetence that has put the very future of our club in jeopardy makes them look bad.
But who are they kidding? We all know these things have happened.
Although the Board has tried to keep these things secret, The World and his Wife already knows that the club has been fined the not inconsiderable sum of £5,131.82 for its VAT errors alone – and when the no less than five occasions these oversights occurred actually happened.
I’m sure anyone with even a basic accountancy background can identify the sums involved – which the Board are clearly so very touchy about – and how much they were by looking at the club’s books for last financial year.
But as I’ve said before, it would be far easier – and much more honest – if the Board simply owned-up and told us.
So why don’t they?
We all make mistakes. But sometimes, we have to have the guts (and the maturity) to own them. If we don’t, the truth we are trying to hide inevitably seeps-out anyway – fact of life.
In their defence, I suspect that some Board members must think to themselves `we’re damned if we do – and we’re damned if we don’t.” I don’t imagine for one moment that running a football club – particularly one with an owner as slippery and unreliable as ours has been – is easy.
To be fair, I must also acknowledge that some of the postings by the B.o.D. about the state of the club since the VAT fiasco occurred have been far more open and honest than is usually the case and we must thank them at least for difficult statements such as this one, made on 22 April 2025:
A statement from the Board of Directors of Morecambe Football Club.
It is with heavy hearts that we, the Board of Directors of Morecambe Football Club, acknowledge our relegation to the National League. This moment is one of profound disappointment for everyone associated with the club—players, staff, supporters, and the wider community.
Derek, his staff, and our players have shown commendable determination and resilience throughout the season, overcoming the challenges of forming a squad almost from scratch and under embargo during the summer. They have worked hard and battled through every match with the spirit and fortitude we expect at Morecambe FC. Unfortunately, the results just haven’t been forthcoming, and we will now drop into the fifth tier of English football for the first time since 2007.
As directors and fans, we understand the frustration and anger that relegation, combined with our ongoing ownership challenges and the seemingly interminable sale process, creates. At times like these, it can feel impossible to look forward with any degree of optimism. It is also the case, in the absence of being able to confirm a change of ownership, communicating with everyone who loves the Club is especially difficult. However, look forward and communicate we must; the only other option would be to give up, and we can’t contemplate that.
Firstly, we extend our deepest gratitude to every Shrimps fan who has stood by the team through thick and thin. Your unwavering support has been a source of immense strength. We ask for your continued belief and support as we embark on this new journey in the National League. We are confident that, together, we can rise above this latest challenge in our 105-year history and reclaim our place in the higher echelons of English football.
Secondly, we can confirm the process of selling the club is ongoing and, as things stand today, there appears to have been real, positive and recent progress within the last two weeks. We fully appreciate how much this sounds like a stuck record, but we are committed to providing updates which are as open and transparent as possible, and therefore we will continue to do so regardless of how they may understandably be received.
Thirdly, we wanted to address the response to season ticket pricing for next season. Our aim was to provide the best possible value to all fans while also attempting to make the Club as sustainable as possible. The costs of running a football club, on and off the pitch, have continued to increase, as demonstrated by the huge losses of the majority of clubs in the EFL and National League. Only those clubs with owners willing and able to lose millions every season can operate without increasing prices from time to time, and we aren’t one of those clubs.
That said, we have to point out that our attempts to provide the best possible value do stack up next season. Our pricing sees us offering the 8th most reasonable adult seated season ticket and the 5th most reasonable adult standing season ticket in the National League. We understand that any price increase feels like a kick in the teeth when coupled with relegation, but we have to do all we can to return to the EFL as quickly as possible, and that means generating the funds necessary to be both sustainable and competitive.
Finally, as directors, it would be remiss not to admit there have been times during the last two years where we have had no choice but to consider our own positions, both collectively and individually. Dealing with Bond Group’s endless unmet deadlines and assurances, finding the time to run the club on a voluntary basis amongst family and other business commitments, and fielding the understandable but still tough-to-take criticism from some quarters have all taken their toll.
However, Morecambe Football Club is more than just a team in whatever league the First Team plays. It is a family, a community, and a part of us, and it will endure. We must face the next chapter with the hope, resilience, and determination required to see us rise again, and we ask that as many of you as possible do the same and stand alongside us.
Thank you, sincerely, for your continued support.
The Board of Directors
Morecambe Football Club
Moving on, I think that the criticism I have made of the B.o.D. over the VAT fiasco is legitimate but some of the other flak they refer to in the above statement certainly isn’t. This is just one case in point:
During the Chesterfield game on 26th April, Co-Chairman Rod Taylor appeared among the away fans – to general applause it must be added – and then returned to the Directors’ Box shortly afterwards. `Nice gesture!’ I thought at the time: Rod has a deserved reputation for being approachable and has the guts to face-up to fans to explain at least some of the things the Board gets up to; most recently, for example, ticketing prices for next season.
But in no time at all, that dumping-ground for lost souls, the inarticulate and people who have severe problems with basic spelling and grammar – Social Media – was awash with accusations aimed at Mr Taylor. If these are to be believed, he is a bully who uses hired muscle to intimidate young Morecambe fans into towing the B.o.D. line – or else. It is a misuse of power and Rod Taylor is actually a threat to free speech!
Oh really? An alternative – and far less hysterical interpretation of what actually happened – is as follows:
First of all, in order to navigate any football ground when a live game in is progress needs the permission of the host club so Rod would have been accompanied by one of Chesterfield’s security staff to allow him to travel back and forth from the Directors’ Box to the area where the bulk of away fans were situated. Secondly, he could have been interpreted as simply taking a rare opportunity – and congratulated for actually making the effort – to talk to a fan about a particular issue which affected the club. Thirdly – and according to the individual concerned – this discussion was frank but good humoured on both parts.
End of story.
We already have enough genuine melodrama at Morecambe Football Club without any need to fabricate any more. We’re all in this together and divisive, sensationalist stories like the one related above really don’t help.
The EFL.
Sadly, these complacent nincompoops will no doubt be congratulating themselves after Morecambe’s demise that their tried-and–tested model of dealing with clubs who have rogue owners actually works.
`So what is this tried-and–tested model?’ you might well ask.
First of all, they always help clubs like ours on their way out of the Football League with sanctions such as points deductions; fines and embargos. That way, they can wash their hands of the problem instead of doing something to remedy it – such as reviewing their laughable `Fit and Proper Owner’ alleged `Test’ which has failed time and again at places like Bury; Darlington; Macclesfield – and now at our own club. Secondly, the EFL can then totally ignore these clubs as they struggle – sometimes – on the very brink of existence. Or fold altogether – as Darlington did, whose convicted safe-breaker Chairman was considered a `fit and proper person’ by the halfwits at Preston in their Ivory EFL Tower throughout his catastrophic reign at the club.
But why worry about trivialities like that? After all, if – given a few years; decades or whatever – these afflicted clubs are able to sort their problems out themselves in someone else’s jurisdiction, they might just come back again. And the EFL can take all the kudos, can’t they? Exeter did it, after all. So did Wrexham and Stockport County – and look at where they are now! We won’t mention the ones that haven’t – Darlington; Boston United; Scarborough; Macc and Bury for instance – but we at the wonderful EFL will take the plaudits for helping on their way the chaff which makes life difficult and thus tell the world and his wife that the system of constantly penalising individual clubs instead of their recalcitrant owners actually works. Even though it obviously doesn’t…
The death knell for Morecambe as an EFL member was sounded as soon as the authorities in their Preston fortress placed an embargo on the club last season. I’m not suggesting for one moment that this was undeserved – the failure in the VAT fiasco by the club itself caused this. But lifting it at a time when most if not all other clubs in the EFL had signed-up their squads and were some way into pre-season training left Derek Adams – already facing a tiny budget – to only have football’s dross to choose from. The club’s fate was sealed from that moment on and I believe that the EFL must take a lot of responsibility for this situation. If they had taken a more pro-active stance against the owner to whom the bulk of Morecambe’s problems of the last few years – including relegation from League One – can be traced back, the club would not have found itself in the pickle it was in a year ago. But tackling slippery individuals and their lawyers takes intelligence, determination and a degree of commitment to natural justice. And the EFL clearly lacks all three of these characteristics – and always has done. There is a Bill going through Parliament at this moment which – at long last – seeks to start at least to tackle some of the woes of English football and club ownership. It includes plans for a new Regulator to take control of the less savoury aspects of the Beautiful Game – and keep things in order. It is a national disgrace that the overpaid and underwhelmed bosses at the EFL have never actually done this in all the years of its pointless and reactionary existence. It should be scrapped and replaced with a regulator which actually regulates…
Referees.
Probably all football fans of any club that has ever existed for all time have complained that referees are biased against their team.
This season – for the first time ever – I have become one of them.
I have never – in more than sixty years of watching Morecambe FC – seen such a low standard of refereeing previously (even at Northern Premier League level all those years ago) as I have done this season.
One of my Shrimpoviki chums has maintained throughout the last year or so that Refs – just like everyone else – speak to each other before games about teams they have encountered in whatever league or division they are officiating at. He insists that Morecambe were labelled early doors this season as a dirty team with a gobby Manager. The result of this prejudice is that we were issued more yellow cards and Derek Adams was sanctioned more often than many of his Opposite Numbers simply because Men in the Middle don’t make their decisions on the basis of what they actually see go on before their eyes on the pitch; in a sense, their minds are already made up before games even start.
He may or may not be right but it’s indisputable that King Derek has been in trouble with officials on match days much more often than most Managers in League Two. Given that – very unusually for anyone associated with soccer in this country – Derek doesn’t swear, this seems a little strange, to put it mildly.
Of course, another – far darker – reason for poor or biased officiating could be that bribery or match-fixing in some shape or form is happening in football right across Britain currently. I would like to think that this is not the case but some of the utterly bizarre decisions I have seen go against us this season really makes me wonder…
A simpler explanation, of course, is that referees at League Two level simply aren’t up to the job.
This is hardly a scientific sample but it was interesting to speak to a student at Lancaster University on the way to the Maz one day earlier this year. He was about to officiate in a match played at Trimpell around the corner from the ground. This young man from Macclesfield was in his final year at the Uni and also his final year as a trainee Referee with the Cheshire FA. He told me he attended a Morecambe game a few weeks earlier with one of his mates from Bailrigg, who was a Grimsby supporter. He said that he simply couldn’t believe the number of errors made by the match officials on the day and that if his assessors witnessed him making even a fraction of their mistakes, he would fail to make the grade as a qualified referee.
This is a pretty damning indictment from within the refereeing fraternity’s own ranks. But the reality of the incompetence of match officials this season could have made all the difference between Morecambe remaining in the EFL and slipping out of it altogether – at least at a time before the run-away train of successive losses took us over the brink right at the end of the campaign.
The club have received official apologies on countless occasions for mistakes which have cost them dear in a succession of matches this season. In the very first game of the campaign, referee James Durkin was ruled to be in error by the FA when he failed to send off Saddlers’ substitute Albert Adomah after he had simply launched himself at Ben Tollitt on the touchline with a two-footed lunge. This, remember, happened in a game when George Ray’s season had already been ended by another foul which went completely unpunished by the referee. Morecambe lost the game 1-0: but they should have been playing for a large part of it against ten – or possibly even nine men. Move forward a month to the game at Doncaster:
“It continued to be virtually one-way traffic until the 38th minute when Edwards got away from the Rovers defence only to be stopped in his tracks by a blatant shirt-pull from Brandon Fleming. The Donny defender should have been sent-off for denying Gwion a goal-scoring opportunity as he was within a few yards of the target with no covering players to stop him. Referee Scott Tallis inexplicably only booked Fleming, though. (Later – to add insult to injury, the defender was named as Rovers’ Official Man of the Match.)”
September; home game against Colchester. The man in the middle is Geoff Eltringham, one of the worst officials ever to have been awarded a Referee’s whistle anywhere in the known universe. He sent-off Luke Henrie: two yellows; one for an innocuous foul; the other worth a booking. But
“Samson Tovide made a ridiculous dive in the hope of gaining a free-kick early in the first half. He should have been booked. Then – right at the end of the half, he booted the ball almost out of the ground when the Ref had stopped play some time beforehand. Strictly speaking, this also deserved a booking – so he should have been sent off too. But it didn’t work like that today: he wasn’t even booked for either infringement.”
To rub salt in the wounds, Tovide then scored the only goal of a game in which Morecambe had been the better team until the sending-off. Derek was also dismissed and at the end of the game, Assistant Danny Grainger had to choose his words carefully:
“Some of the decisions today – I’m not going to go into it because I don’t want to get in trouble – some of the decisions were absolutely bamboozling at times. The consistency is what we ask for and I thought there was a lack of it today but I don’t want to go too far into it because we‘ll end up in trouble.”
And so it went on, month after month – the list is endless.
Some of the referees who performed badly in matches involving Morecambe are Repeat Offenders. The 2-2 draw at home against Barrow in March saw referee Scott Simpson send off Max Taylor for an alleged elbow to the head on a Bluebirds player after just 28 minutes. It was a dubious decision at best and Mr Simpson’s performance throughout the game was clearly affected by Barrow’s tactics of getting in his face at every conceivable opportunity to obtain an unfair advantage for their side. I think that any objective judge would conclude that his performance was way below par and not even remotely either consistent or fair. I didn’t realise this at the time and I am indebted to my namesake Keith Fitton for the following posting on the fan site he hosts – Shrimpsvoices – for the following acute observation. Keith remembered that Simpson was in charge of the away game at Crewe earlier in the season (a match that Morecambe also lost one-nil to a penalty given against Shrimps’ Skipper Yann Songo’o.) This game was being televised live. Keith pointed out:
“Even Sky Sports’ retired Premier League ref, Chris Foy agreed that it was wrong to give the penalty.
Incident: Possible penalty, holding – Crewe Alexandra
Decision: Penalty awarded, holding – Crewe Alexandra
Foy says: “After awarding this penalty to Crewe Alexandra, the referee clearly communicates to the players that it was given for a holding offence by Morecambe no. 24 on the Crewe no. 5.
“With the benefit of viewing the replay, we can see there is contact between the players, however the action of holding is neither sustained nor impactful. It therefore falls below the threshold for penalising, as it was not clearly impactful, particularly as Crewe no. 5 is still able to get to the ball and has a clear shot at goal.
“The correct decision in this case would have been to allow play to continue with a Morecambe throw-in from the far corner.””
So is this just Sour Grapes from a disgruntled supporter? Perhaps. But if other clubs have suffered similar injustices on the same scale as ours and just as regularly, something is clearly wrong somewhere. Will the refereeing standard improve next season when we take our chances in the National League?
What do you think?
Injuries.
With a small and already weak squad, the last thing any football manager needs is injuries – particularly injuries to his or her key players. As we have already mentioned, George Ray – who I suspect Derek expected to be the King-Pin of his new defence – was injured in the very first game of the season and had to be replaced at half time, never to play for Morecambe again. Stuart Moore – retained by the Manager as the senior goalkeeper in the squad despite a serious injury which meant him missing a huge amount of last season – broke down again Early Doors with a related complication and hasn’t featured since. Probably the most talented player in the squad – Gwion Edwards – has also spent at least as much time in the Treatment Room this campaign as he has actually playing. Add to this serious injuries to Harvey Macadam; Lee Hendrie, Callum Jones and others at key times of the season and Derek has found himself down to the bare bones more often than not for more matches than he probably cares to remember. Even with all these players fit and raring to go; Morecambe were going to struggle this term. Without them, their chances of survival disappeared altogether.
The Thoughts of King Derek. Number Three; About Injury – and even Death itself:
“When you’re injured; you’re a better player. When you’re dead, you’re a great person. When you’re out of the side, you’re a better player than you were when you’re in.”
So there we have it: four major influences on the demise of Morecambe Football Club this season. But where does that leave us all?
PART TWO IN DUE COURSE…
shrimplythebestfootball 