Is No News Good News?

There’s been no word from hated Morecambe FC owner Jason Whittingham or the mysterious last-minute buyer he promised we would hear from as early as Wednesday last as far as Morecambe Football Club is concerned. The Essex `businessman’ has also maintained radio silence as to why he hasn’t already sold the club – as he publicly committed himself to do at a specific time (last Monday) over a week ago now.

As we noted yesterday, local Morecambe MP Lizzi Collinge posed him several other questions pertinent to our club and the people who work for it on Thursday by email.

But so far at least, there is no news of any response to this plea for more information – and candidness – from the owner of the financially-troubled Bond Group.

To keep its members in the loop, the Shrimps Trust published this update late on Thursday:

The really bad – and very unwelcome – news in this concerns yet another transfer embargo on the club. The team Derek Adams put-out last Tuesday night at Longridge is nowhere near enough the standard to survive in the National League. If the Manager finds – yet again – that he is in the impossible position of not being able to improve it (as has been the case since Wednesday, 9^th July 2025), it is difficult to see a way forward for either himself or the club. Having said that, I believe that the embargo does allow him to have sixteen players in his squad and I assume that also means sixteen players who are distinct from the Academy team. I reckon there were nine squad players in Derek’s team last Tuesday – and another on the treatment bench. So he can presumably still sign another six and remain within the rules. (Except that it would appear he has no cash with which to honour any contracts he would like to offer anybody. So it looks like Catch 22 for the second season in a row for long-suffering Derek…)

There’s nothing to add to the announcement above other than to flag-up the optimistic statement at the end: that the club will still fulfil its first fixture against Boston United on August 9^th. That’s in only four weeks’ time from today.  If it actually happens, it looks – at this moment in time – as if the tea ladies at the Maz might be playing. (Oh – but there aren’t any; there’s no money to pay such casual staff anymore, is there?)

Last night (Friday, 11^th July 2025), the Shrimps Trust put out a further message to its members to update everyone on the situation as it stands at the moment:

Dear members,

Matters have taken a few turns since my update a month ago. Statements from all parties have been made available, so I won’t go over old ground, just focus on the matters at hand, and provide communication as to what the current position of matters is, and what your Trust is doing for you at this present time.

On Wednesday we were promised a new buyer, and that they would reveal themselves soon. Initially, our investigations came up blank, no-one had heard or knew who this mystery buyer was. Yesterday, we started to hear that a new buyer wasn’t fictitious, and that Bond Group were in discussions with someone. We have unofficially been provided with a name, and are working hard to verify it, in the meantime we urge Bond Group to share details of this ASAP. Once we have verification we will share it with members.

If this buyer is real, and is engaging with the National League, the process of approval can take 10 days after all paperwork has been provided. This doesn’t solve staff wage issues now. And as we know with Bond Group, a deal could be dragged over months. The club also doesn’t have a Board of Directors, and if our former board does not return, new directors will have to pass the testing, to be appointed to the club, to then be able to finalise a sale.

Where would that leave Panjab Warriors? We are in contact with PW every day. They are seeking recourse action wherever they can, and we thank them for providing their own substantive statements so our fanbase understands their position. We will continue to work with PW.

We updated our members on the club transfer embargo yesterday. We understand this will remain in place until the club is proved to be running solvently again. We also understand that the currently playing squad are only obliged to stay at the club for 14 days after nonpayment of wages. That would be today. We understand the players are taking their steer from the PFA (Professional Footballers’ Association), and I am sure any decisions from them will be communicated.

The EFL stopped being our governing body on the 4th of June, we are now governed by the National League and the Football Association, whom we are in constant dialogue with. They communicate as openly as they can, but there are matters that they cannot disclose, but we will work closely with them to ensure we get as clear a picture to communicate with you as possible.

There has been more media interest in our plight. We have had coverage with the BBC, Independent, and lots of radio outlets. We are due on TalkSPORT on Sunday between 10am and 12noon. We hope this keeps the pressure on Bond Group to move as quickly as possible in all areas.

The club itself is effectively grinding to a halt. We thank all of those that have stepped up to support cancelled events, and it is amazing to see the wonderful community effort. The club has no money to pay for supplies, staff, or anything else.

I want to also note my personal thanks to Lizzi Collinge MP. We are in constant contact with Lizzi, and she is doing all she can to get our plight on the national stage, and in the ear of our government. This is invaluable and will continue.

We appreciate everyone that has contacted us via email, we are as responsive as ever. We can only response to members, and we do not pick questions up from social media, if you are a member please email: hello@shrimpstrust.co.uk.

Things are changing daily, and by the hour in some cases, you may not always be able to visibly see the work that we are doing, but I can assure you we are across everything that we need to be, and the number of volunteer hours going into this is significant. Please do remember we are volunteers and working on this for the love and future of the club. We appreciate folk’s concern; at this time, we need your support. Negative comments towards us do not help, they just dishearten.

We thank every single person that has sent a positive message of support. This weekend I have asked my board to switch off, and enjoy time with family, if anything pressing happens, I will pick it up, if not we will be taking a well-deserved break, so that we can pick up the fight well rested on Monday.

Up The Shrimps

Tarnia

Chair of the Shrimps Trust

There’s not a lot to celebrate in this and the news that players are able to seek new employers because the club is in breach of contract with them is particularly bad news.

However, I’m going to concentrate on just one part of it: the last bit.

I was lucky enough to study Crisis Management as part of my undergraduate Politics course at Lancaster University.  We looked at possible ways to defuse crises and some of the theory – Chicken Game and Zero Sum Game, for instance, immediately springs to mind. But one problem I always had with virtually any Crisis Management theory I encountered was the reality they were all predicated on. This always assumed that the parties to any crisis a) were open to negotiation in the first place and b) were – to use the jargon – `rational actors’.

The world came to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missiles Crisis of the 1960s. So – imagine that the Americans had given the Soviet leadership an ultimatum saying: “Get your missiles out of the Caribbean by Monday – or else!” and delivered this on Friday night. What would have happened if it turned-out that the Soviets all retreated to their Dachas on Friday afternoons and were incomunicado until Monday morning?  Well -god help the world if this was the case. 

Even if this wasn’t the case – how could anyone have solved this particular crisis if the Soviets had flatly refused to communicate with the Americans at all?

Worse still, what if the other side retreated into a fantasy world and started making conditions or excuses – or even promises – which were completely irrational instead of responding to the other side’s genuine attempts to settle the crisis?

It doesn’t bear thinking about…

It seems to me that a mix of the last two scenarios is precisely what everybody attempting to negotiate with Jason Whittingham over the last week at least has been experiencing. If just one party to any crisis isn’t rational, solving it becomes an impossible task.

So – just imagine for a moment what you would do if you were in a situation like this. You’re on a hiding to nothing: if the other party won’t play ball at all or just makes increasingly absurd responses to your attempts at diplomacy – what would you do?

I don’t know the answer to this – and neither, whatever they might tell you – does anybody else either.

However, another term I came across when studying Crisis Management was this one: “Shooting the Messenger”.

Anyone attempting to resolve a crisis is under pressure: usually primarily from the adversary they are in dispute with. But some of this pressure can come from their own supposed side. If negotiators are constantly being harangued by people in the background who are a) telling them they are going about things the wrong way or b) presenting them with completely useless advice which would complicate things even further if it was acted upon – this ups the ante for the people in the hotseat as well. In simple terms, it really doesn’t help. Shooting the messenger – blaming the people trying to negotiate instead of the incalcitrant opponent who is frustrating them – is unhelpful, self-defeating and ultimately pointless.

But that’s what happening in the real world right now.

To repeat Tarnia Elsworth’s words:

“Please do remember we are volunteers and working on this for the love and future of the club. We appreciate folk’s concern; at this time, we need your support. Negative comments towards us do not help, they just dishearten.”

I would like to reinforce another part of Tarnia’s statement and respectfully suggest to people currently taking advantage of social media platforms to get their pennyworths in to either stop doing so altogether or contact the negotiating team in private instead of shouting from the rooftops all the time.

Instead of haranguing our team, we all need to get behind them. We need to appreciate that these good people have given up their very precious time – and their incomes – to try and deal with the impossible in the shape of Jason Whttingham with his constantly changing party line and string of broken promises.

I hope they all have a chance to recharge their batteries over the weekend. I also suspect that the silent majority of Morecambe fans really appreciate what they have done so far.

So good luck – and thankyou to each and every one of them. No-one could ask for more – and nobody could do any better…