Totally Unofficial Review of the 2024-25 Season; Morecambe FC.

Part 2: End Of Term Report.

The Manager.

The Thoughts of King Derek. Number Four; About Management:

 “As a Manager, you have to deal with issues. As a Manager, do you get slaughtered in the press? You do – every single day. Everyone knows better (about) how to get a result than me. There’s no doubt about it. That’s just a fact. I know better than other people in other people’s jobs as well. That’s a fact. I think I know things that are different (to them). We’re all similar: we all have an opinion and it’s about getting the best out of us.”

“It’s a very lonely life at times. People don’t understand the problems that you have to deal with in the role. We see it so many times. People don’t understand (what happens) behind the scenes. Pep Guardiola and Neil Warnock were speaking about it the other day. I saw a great quote from John Rudge, who was sixteen years at Port Vale. The outside world don’t know what a manager has to deal with. There are so many little things that become big things inside their business. It’s different from other occupations as well because you are reliant on players rather than a machine to get your business done.”

If anyone knew what they could expect as the Manager of a football club as dysfunctional as Morecambe has been in recent years, Derek Adams is that man. But even he must wonder, looking back less than twelve months, what he was really letting himself in for.

Derek returned from his latest stint as boss of Ross County – having failed to resurrect their ailing fortunes but alienating most of Scottish football by his typically forthright view of the state of the national game North of the Border – to take over the reins at the Mazuma Mobile Stadium for the third time at the start of the season. In doing so, he stepped from the Frying Pan right into the Fire: Morecambe were under the Embargo from the EFL for shady VAT failures which we have already considered which meant he couldn’t sign any players because there was no money in the bank with which he was able to use to do so.

By the time the VAT-inspired Embargo was finally settled, the season was just about to start. So Mr Adams was faced with a situation where he inherited five men already on the books – goalkeeper Stuart Moore; winger Gwion Edwards; midfielder Kayden Harrack, Academy graduate Saul Fox-Akande and striker Charlie Brown – who had all been signed by his predecessor Ged Brannan. His only choices to add to this tiny nucleus of a team were basically the chaff of the soccer world that nobody else wanted plus a handful of reliable players from the previous season who he wasted no time persuading to re-sign. Yann Songo’o, David Tutonda and Jordan Slew were thus very welcome returnees to the club. Derek also wasted no time in getting rid of `Senior Professional Development Coach’ David Fitzgerald and replacing him as Assistant Manager with former Workington boss Danny Grainger, who had just led the Reds to promotion the previous season.

The alarm bells rang when a critical eye was cast over his new squad. In no particular order, Ben Tollitt, Lee Angol, Max Taylor, Jamie Stott and Hallam Hope had all been judged not to be good enough to cut the mustard at National League North or South – two divisions lower than that at which they were now expected to make the grade.

In reality, Max Taylor and Jamie Stott have passed this test with flying colours and have both excelled as Central Defenders for Derek and his team even though Max has been released by the club subsequently. The jury is out on Lee Angol – the young striker suffered from a serious injury for most of the season but was showing signs of real promise before he was struck down with it and has scored a lot of goals since. Ben Tollitt started well enough and his talent as a winger is there for all to see. But his reluctance to get involved in the physical side of the game is also only too apparent. He scored some good goals for the Shrimps early in the season but I have lost count of the number of times opposition goals can be traced back to him losing the ball – or being bullied off it – and making little or no attempt to win it back again. Hallam Hope too has been a bit of an enigma. There’s a good player in there somewhere and he’s shown it in flashes. I’ve wondered if he might be more effective as an old-fashioned inside forward because I fear he is neither physically big nor strong enough to be a match for some of the monsters of Central Defenders he has been expected to compete with in League Two as a conventional Centre Forward. I wish him luck wherever fate takes him next. But the fact that Derek Adams has been able to coach at least a fifth of the squad he was able to assemble at the very last minute into capable players at a much higher level than that at which they had previously failed is a testament to everyone involved.

Despite this, in preseason, the alarm bells rang even louder after Morecambe’s foray into north-west Cumbria and a trial match against Mr Grainger’s old club. Workington of the Northern Premier League were the better team on the day; scored a truly outstanding goal and looked both better-organised and more skilful than their illustrious EFL opponents. The Reds were unlucky just to draw a game in which Morecambe’s shortcomings right across the pitch were there for all to see.

So Derek was facing an uphill struggle right from the start of the latest campaign. He also faced criticism from some Morecambe fans with long memories for leaving the club not just once but twice in the past. His own spin on this – according to recent interviews – is as follows:

When he came here originally and replaced Jim Bentley, his short-term aim was to stabilise the club. His long-term aim – despite the lowest budget in League Two – was to get the club promoted. Having done this, Bradford City made an offer for him; he took it and Morecambe Football Club were duly compensated for his loss.

Second time around, his remit was very much the same: to stabilise a club facing a very swift return to League Two after a disastrous spell under the Reverse Midas Touch of Stephen Robinson – who had very conveniently jumped ship just as the you-know-what had hit the fan and a downward trajectory had almost reached a critical point in its descent. He again succeeded. But then – let down by unfulfilled promises to invest in his team by the owner during the January Transfer Window – he was unable to improve another man’s squad for a second season in a row and Morecambe endured the first relegation of their over one century long existence, albeit only on the last day and by the slenderest of margins.

Back in League Two, his new but still underfunded squad was doing very nicely, thank you very much. He had spoken volubly about his ambitions to take the Shrimps as far as the Championship and even about improvements to our home ground. But these plans were based on even more assurances about an imminent change in ownership which yet again failed to materialise. Then another suitor came knocking. This time, it was from Derek’s spiritual home – Ross County – and he again accepted the offer and Morecambe Football Club once more received compensation for his loss.

What happened then – a failure to turn Ross County’s fortunes around and a well-publicised public falling-out with just about everyone involved in the game North of the Border – put him in a tricky position as far as his own career was concerned.

Virtually unemployable in Scotland because of what he had said about the SPFL and with two failures on his recent CV, he decided to give Morecambe a go for the third time.

He’s done his best in a literally impossible situation. In my view – faced with the initial embargo which we have already discussed and yet another failure to improve the squad due to lack of funds last January – which in turn led to another embargo – Derek has done all anybody reasonably could be expected to do in the circumstances. But the bare facts are that he has not only achieved the very unenviable distinction of leading Morecambe Football Club not only to their only two relegations ever – he has also guided the club into the wilderness of the National League for the first time in its history.

Most Morecambe fans understand the reasons for these failures – but bald statistics have no context and are utterly unforgiving: Derek will be judged solely on the brutal facts as outlined above.

However you look at it, it doesn’t read positively. And if anyone has any doubts that the things he said about the game in Scotland have been forgotten – much less forgiven – a quick look at the sometimes extraordinarily vitriolic abuse which poured out on social media as the Shrimps sank without trace this season will soon dispel any such quaint notions: many Scottish football supporters in particular literally hate poor old Derek.

So he has a lot to prove to his critics. More importantly from his point of view, Derek has a lot to do to rebuild his own career. Already, this is proving difficult. As we have seen, he told the media after the final away game for his team at Chesterfield just a couple of weeks ago that the owner and the Board of Directors at Morecambe had no plan to deal with the current crisis, let alone provide a strategy for next season. Currently, he is maintaining that there actually is a plan – but that he is not party to it. Asked if this wasn’t a strange position to be in; i.e. not only not to be aware of any plan but – as surely the key player in it, not to be even involved in it – he was, for once, very vague in his responses.

So what will happen? As with everything else in the Soap Opera which has enveloped Morecambe Football Club since the appearance of Jason Whittingham – and longer, in all truth – we shall all have to wait and see. But – faced with a latest episode of fudge and uncertainty by the hierarchy at our club – if Derek Adams decides to cut his losses and run for a fourth time, I don’t think anybody could really blame him. And I, for one, would wish him all the luck in the world because I still think that King Derek is the best thing ever to have happened to Morecambe Football Club – all the things that have gone wrong are not his fault and outside his personal control.

The Shrimps Trust.

Having just identified in two words – Derek Adams – the best thing that has ever happened to Morecambe Football Club, I can think of two others to label the second best thing: Tarnia Elsworth.

As Chair of the Shrimps Trust, Tarnia has almost single-handedly rejuvenated the role and the fortunes of an organisation which was dead in the water prior to her leadership. She is bright, media-savvy; creative, dynamic – and determined. Under her watch, the Trust has played a leading role in forming a bridge between the B.o.D. at Morecambe and the fans. She communicates clearly and effectively with Morecambe supporters via her regular updates and ensures that all members are kept in the loop as far as Trust meetings and interactions with the Morecambe Board and even the owner are concerned by regularly publishing them.

This season, she has been instrumental in leading the protests against Jason Whittingham which the previous incarnation of the Shrimps Trust flatly refused to support and has done her absolute utmost to keep the profile of Morecambe Football Club and the dilemmas it faces high on the internet and in the media generally. If only she was the owner of the club…

If you’re not already a member of the Shrimps Trust, please think about joining. You can do so by emailing:

hello@shrimpstrust.co.uk

The Christie Crew. 

Many Morecambe fans will have been puzzled – as I was – by the sudden appearance of a shadowy organisation purporting to represent all Shrimps fans during the season just gone. Initially, this group called themselves The Christie Crew but soon changed their name to something a little more catchy: J.B. 1923. (I believe that this was a brilliant effort to both reflect the founding of our club and its initial benefactor, J.B. Christie. Yes, I know that the club was actually founded in 1920 but that doesn’t rhyme with ‘J.B.’, does it?) 

Anyway, in November 2024, they posted the following on their dedicated Faceflannel homepage:

We are J.B. 1923, a collective of Shrimps fans who were the Christie Trust. In the short term, we are committed to taking action against Bond Group’s ownership of our football club.

When the ownership situation is resolved, we want to evolve to become a voice for Shrimps supporters in the long term. We believe in forward-thinking ideas that will improve fan experience on matchdays. Same Group, Same Intentions.

As a statement of intent, this doesn’t tell anyone very much. They use the word `collective’, for instance. So what is the nature of this `collective’? How is it structured? Can anyone join? Who is already a member of it?

The ambiguous statement at the end – Same Group, Same Intentions – equally poses more questions than it answers. Presumably, they mean that J.B. 1923 and the Christie Crew are the same entity. But what are their joint quote/unquote `intentions’?

They tell us we believe in forward-thinking ideas. Who can argue with that? But what are these ideas – and how have they been formulated?

They assure us `we want to evolve to become a voice for Shrimps supporters in the long term.’ But a long-established group to do precisely this in the shape of the Shrimps Trust already exists. So does J .B. 1923 intend to act in conjunction with the Trust? Or do they intend to operate independently of it? If so, will they co-ordinate their activities with the Shrimps Trust? Or do they simply intend to ignore – or even replace it?

Regrettably, this new grouping never said who they actually were; what their full strategy was or how other Morecambe fans could join it. But they did have certain very well defined aims. The first of these was to meet regularly at the pub several hours before matches in order to create the right sort of atmosphere conducive to a serious pressure group hoping to affect change at the very heart of Morecambe Football Club. Then – carrying the banner sponsored by a certain well-known lager manufacturer: “Probably – hic! –The Besht Shrimps Shupporters in the – hic! – West End!”, they intended to stagger march towards the Mazuma Mobile stadium in order to bring the general public’s attention to the plight of our club. In tandem with this, they planned a demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament, where fireworks would be set off; a bonfire lit and an effigy of detested owner Jason Whittingham burnt upon it. (Unfortunately, not realising that explosions and echoes of Guy Fawkes aren’t generally welcomed in Westminster, the organisers of this particular stunt were arrested and have subsequently received Banning Orders which means that they are now unable to travel to anywhere in the world where parliamentary buildings are to be found.) It also means that they have had to abandon their secondary plan to have a hired assassin shoot the Referee from the roof of the main stand at the Mazuma Mobile stadium after precisely 19 minutes of each home game. Oh – and to similarly have a sniper take-out any replacement after precisely 23 minutes to reinforce the message “19-23”.  

The activities of this fringe group caused quite a stir on social media at the time but the fuss soon dampened down and the J.B. 1923; Christie Crew or whatever else they may have been known as seems to have died a natural death. The good news for them, though, is that the many Shrimps fans who populate Vatican City – possibly confused by the Latin meaning of the word preceding ‘Crew’ in the group’s initial title – invited J.B.1923 to the recent Conclave to elect the new Pope. Who knows – if they are successful, maybe we can expect a Papal Bull from Leo XIII reinstating Morecambe to the EFL and a canonisation for the manager, Saint Derek, in due course. 

(Please note – any unintended reference to groups such as Dial M for Morecambe; It’s a Maz, Maz World; The 1920 Union; Shrimbeciles; Shrimpletons – or even the very Woke group set-up recently to help with any mental health challenges to fans caused by Morecambe’s recent demise: Shrimpathetic – is purely coincidental.)

King Saint Derek speaks about J.B. 1923:

“Really poor. The standard was shocking. I’ve seen the standard and I think: “Wow – any chance?” It needs to get up its game. The standard is so poor. The standard is rubbish. It really is. I don’t see any entertainment. If this is the best we’ve got in the country, what are we going to do? “

(I most apologise unreservedly to Derek and J.B. 1923 for the above. For reasons I can’t begin to explain, I seem to have taken a quote from the King from another context altogether which has no bearing whatsoever on the current subject.)

Shrimps Trust Player of the Year.

Congratulations are in order to Tom White for winning this accolade. His skill, his terrier-like performances; his obvious commitment to the cause and particularly his interaction with the fans makes this reward richly deserved. If we had another ten players in the team like Tom, Morecambe would be playing in League One next season, not the National League. I think a statement he made just before the end of the season says it all:

“Since the start of the season, I’ve said it many times that I’ve found myself at a football club where I feel something towards the place that I haven’t really felt before. The fans have taken to me, and I’ve taken to them so it hurts you that bit more. Every lad in there cares and I can tell you that from the bottom of my heart; there’s still a chance and we will keep fighting till the very end.”

(The club’s Official Player of the Year and related awards are still to be announced.)

The National League.

Anyone who thinks that the National League is simply a re-badged version of the Conference which Morecambe Football Club escaped eighteen long years ago has another think coming.

What we are going to face in the next few months is a totally different animal.

The Conference was a much weaker division than anything to be found in EFL football. The National League isn’t: and there is plenty of evidence to suggest it is actually a tougher league than League Two is at the current moment. So let’s look at a few statistics.

Since the fortress of the EFL which kept clubs like ourselves out for decades was finally breached in 1987, loads of teams which could once have been found in the EFL since this date – including ourselves – can now be found there. The ones we will face (almost) for certain next season are: Aldershot Town; Boston United; Carlisle United; Forest Green Rovers; Hartlepool United; Oldham Athletic; Rochdale; Southend United; Sutton United; Yeovil Town and York City. Barnet, as Champions, have rejoined the elite of English football as will have either one of the above or FC Halifax Town as Play-Off winners accompanying them in due course. Going in the opposite direction are our old sparring partners Dagenham & Redbridge. Coming back is one of two former EFL sides: Chester or Scunthorpe United; Torquay fell by the wayside at the final hurdle and will remain in the National League South next term. So – at the end of this season – just over half of the members of the National League were ex-EFL clubs. Most of these have bigger budgets than ours; many of them larger fan bases. They are all full-time professional outfits.

Back in 2006-7, the Football Conference included just three teams which had been relegated since the 1987 watershed: Oxford United; Cambridge United and Exeter City, who we beat at Wembley to enter the EFL at the end of the campaign. It was a totally different – and much weaker – organisation. Survival in it, following the disgrace of failing in the EFL, is by no means guaranteed. Lower leagues are littered with the detritus of former Football League clubs; most – admittedly – as a result of dodgy ownerships which had been sanctioned by the even more dodgy EFL itself at the time. Bury; Chester; Darlington; Kidderminster; Macclesfield; Scarborough; Scunthorpe and Torquay are among the clubs to have failed to stop their rapid descent into the jungle of non-league football and have fallen even further adrift of the elite in recent years. But even the clubs which have been conspicuously successful after stints in the National League: most obviously Wrexham and Stockport County (who were playing part-time professional football in the National League North not so very long ago) have spent years in the wilderness before regrouping and galvanising themselves for another shot at life in the Football League. Most fallen clubs struggle, at least initially. York and Yeovil have both recovered from spells in the National League North and South respectively, for example and it is very rarely that relegated clubs make a quick return to the EFL.

King Derek told us just a few weeks ago that Morecambe would be the tenth-best (worst?) financed team with their current budget if they were members of the National League at that particular moment. That situation is unlikely to improve as long as you-know-who holds the purse strings at our club. So those of us expecting an easy ride come the autumn in our new surroundings need to strap themselves in: the National League is attritional and the standard is really tough as evinced by the fact that so many winners of it in recent years have breezed through League Two straight into League One – and higher…

The Retained list.

On May 5^th, Derek published his retained list on the club’s website. This is it:

Gwion Edwards remains contracted while Harry Burgoyne, Luke Hendrie, Harvey Macadam, Jamie Stott, Ben Tollitt, David Tutonda and Tom White have all triggered one-year contract extensions.

Lee Angol, Adam Lewis, Paul Lewis and Yann Songo’o have all been offered one-year contract extensions.

Players who have not been offered new contracts and will therefore leave the football club are Saul Fox-Akande, Callum Cooke, Hallam Hope, Ross Millen, Stuart Moore, George Ray, Ryan Schofield, Jordan Slew and Max Taylor.

Marcus Dackers, Andrew Dallas, Ged Garner, Callum Jones and Rhys Williams all return to their respective parent clubs after the expiry of their loan deals with the Shrimps.

Two U18 players and one U19 have been offered professional contracts; they are Lennon Dobson, Adam Fairclough and Alfie Scales.

We must thank all the players who really tried this season for their efforts to keep us in the EFL and commiserate with those who have not been offered new contracts. Good luck to each and every one of them: people like Stuart Moore must be concerned for his future as a professional footballer given his injury record in recent times and I’m sure we all wish him the best of luck. Which leads us to

The Thoughts of King Derek. Number Five; Human Value:

“`Valued’ means for everyone in the world. Everyone’s got a value; everyone’s a human being and it’s up to (all of us) to treat people the correct way. Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself.”

NAPM.

This acronym – which looks alarmingly like `napalm’ – could have a similarly combustible and destructive effect of our club. It stands for `Not A Penny More’ and advocates of it do not want any of us to buy Season Tickets for next season for instance for fear that the money spent might fall into the hands of Jason Whittingham and his detested Bond Group.

But what does the B.o.D. at Morecambe think about this proposed boycott of the club? The Shrimps Trust asked them on our behalf:.

Can the board put out facts/figures, they believe how the NAPM campaign would affect the club?

This was the answer:

That’s not possible, as it depends entirely on how many fans decide to support the campaign or not, what is for certain is that any reduction in spend by the fanbase will obviously have a detrimental impact on cashflow and therefore the Club’s ability to meet its obligations including payroll.

So it is up to us to make our minds up. Personally – although I understand the anger which underpins it – I think is a self-defeating strategy. Jason won’t get his hands on funds paid directly to the club: it doesn’t work like that. In the meantime, the Board need every penny they can get their hands on if Morecambe’s fortunes are going to be turned around any time soon. Denying them funds to achieve this seems to me like shooting yourself in the foot. If you fear that the club will go bust altogether – why not pay for tickets and merchandise with a Credit Card? – that way, you can claim the money back if the worst comes to the worst…

Any Other Business.

I began writing this article some time ago, when I genuinely believed that Morecambe would still escape the dead hand of non-league football. Derek was confident of making key signings in January which would transform the fortunes of his mis-firing squad and we would gradually pull away from the Danger Zone and all would end happily.

But then Jason Whittingham – not for the first time – failed to come up with the means for this to happen; the EFL seized the opportunity to again Stick The Boot In with another embargo and by the time it was lifted, all Derek was able to achieve at The Eleventh Hour was a loanee from Barnsley in the shape of Andy Dallas and a man who had been out of work since being released by non-league Hartlepool last season: Callum Cooke. Unsurprisingly, we all know what happened next…

So all we are left with – for now at least – are our memories. Low points don’t get much lower then what has happened this season. Relegation from League One was almost as bad. The final game at Coventry in 2018 when Jim Bentley’s squad was really lucky to survive as an EFL club was memorable for the world-class saves from Barry Roche which kept us in the game as the Blues – seeking promotion themselves – threw the kitchen sink at us for at least an hour. The Coventry fans’ tremendous reaction towards us all at the end of the game will also live long in the memory – god bless them! I heard Clinton Morrison whingeing on Radio 5 Live afterwards that the result was a `stitch-up’ between the two teams. But the Dame hadn’t been there and would have had no chance to watch the highlights at the time he proffered this expert opinion. But he excelled himself a few years later following another low point in the Shrimps’ EFL adventure. Morecambe had just drawn at home against Bolton Wanderers. Their Manager – the delightful Ian Evatt – had managed to get the game suspended temporarily on the completely baseless allegation to the referee that his black players on the bench were suffering racist taunting from Morecambe fans. We all know the personal toll this has had on members of our own clan – ejected from the ground; arrested and facing possible prosecution for months on end afterwards. 

But a thorough investigation by the police and others showed absolutely no proof to back Evatt’s claim, which turned-out to be nothing more than an utterly cynical ploy to get the game stopped at a point when his side was clearly going to lose. As the teams were off the field; drunken Trotters’ fans invaded the pitch. When they returned, our goalkeeper was struck by missiles thrown from the crowd. Outside the ground later, Morecambe fans, including a disabled one on a motorised scooter, were attacked and several arrests – exclusively of visiting `supporters’ – were made.

However, none of this was worthy of coverage on the TV show which covered EFL football at the time later in the evening. Instead, as slimy but always Politically Correct host Colin Murray expressed apparently heart-felt outrage on his behalf, Dame Clinton was given a platform to express his acute personal distress that clubs as thoroughly racist as ours apparently is can actually exist at all in these enlightened times. As his diatribe – delivered in that utterly preposterous accent he has adopted (who on earth else talks like that?) – gathered strength, he didn’t offer a single piece of evidence to support the nonsense he spouted in front of a mass live audience and nobody at the club was invited on to the programme to defend his absurd allegations. Once again, he wasn’t there and didn’t see – as we did – at least part of what actually happened on the day: but why let reality get in the way of a good old rant which probably boosts the ratings?

Sadly, the fact that both he and Ian Evatt have got away with their outrageous slurs on our club and its supporters without any consequences whatsoever was not just a dark day for Morecambe Football Club – it was a dark day for football and society in general.

So let’s remember all the good times instead: the 5-0 annihilation of Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth at Christie Park, for instance during 2009. Even more excitement just a year later as Dave Artell scored the winner in injury time against a club he would soon be leading to League One as ten-man Morecambe came back from 3-1 down and a penalty saved by Big Baz to finally beat Crewe Alexandra 4-3 in an unforgettable match. The humiliation of the delightful Steve Evans’ high-flying Crawley by six goals to nil at the Maz in 2011. Then victory at Wembley over Newport County which assured the club the highest status it has ever enjoyed. Cole Stockton’s unbelievable winner in injury time at Fleetwood not all that long ago. The visits to Ipswich; Derby County, Sunderland and others on equal terms. The FA cup jollies to places like Tottenham and Chelsea.

It’s been great whilst it’s lasted and – for old farts like me who can remember watching Morecambe play in the Lancashire Combination and then struggle in the Northern Premier League, a dream come true. Because – back in the day – membership of the EFL was precisely that: a dream. Those reactionary old fossils made sure that clubs like ours were kept out of what was for most of last century a totally Closed Shop.

For what it’s worth, this is how I started my original article back at a time when I genuinely still believed that our squad was too good to be relegated:

I was hoping to open this Review of a really extraordinary season for Morecambe Football Club with a sufficiently meaningful quote from someone – Plato or Aristotle perhaps – to add gravitas to the profundity of Derek Adams’ astonishing achievement of keeping the worst-resourced club in the entire English Football League within its auspices. But the best I have been able to come up with is this:

“I believe in Miracles!”

So, with all due thanks to the late Errol Brown and Hot Chocolate, let’s get on with it…

Sadly, I can’t think of anything else worth saying about this season’s debacle on and off the pitch other than this:

Keep the Faith!

Tomorrow is another day and just think – this time next season, we could have won the FA Trophy for a second time; taken Morecambe Missionary Work to the far reaches of the uncivilised world such as Gateshead and Woking; had a massively long Cup Run whilst earning zillions of pounds and then been promoted back to where we belong into the bargain: the Promised Land of the English Football League.

Cynics will say I’m deluding myself – things like this don’t happen in real life, do they?

 But remember, going back to where we almost started…

♬♪#“I believe in Miracles!”#♭♬ ♮  ♪

Have a great summer everybody, you sexy things. See you next season. I leave you with someone else’s very profound thought as I say Roger Over and Out:

The Thoughts of King Derek. Number Six; Negativity:

“When people talk in a positive way, that’s only going to help you. But that’s the same as society. In society, we’ve got a problem of negativity. We’ve got a problem of talking about the negatives. Why not talk about the positives? It’s a beautiful world out there.”