The Current situation at Morecambe.

On the field, Morecambe Football Club is in a virtually unprecedented crisis. They were not only knocked-out of the FA Cup by two goals to nil by lower league part-time Chester last Tuesday night, they were humiliated. This is a posting from the Chester Fans’ forum – deva-chat.com:

“Completely deserved that, fantastic night down the Deva. Thought first half was quite even but you could tell if we pressed them we’d get some chances attacking the HM.

Morecambe were a mess, not by NLN standards as you could tell they had some tidy players. But their insistence to play out from the back wasn’t working, had lots of the ball but mostly in their own half. Even when losing it was their CBs and keeper having most of the ball. You’d be furious if you watched them do that every week when it’s not working. I’d be shocked if their manager survives after that.”

In a few sentences, this acutely accurate observation – from someone who might have only watched Morecambe once – and twice at tops – really succinctly sums-up our season so far.

We try to play the ball out from the back – but we can’t do it. This is either because our players aren’t good enough or because they are not being coached properly – or possibly both. Even in losing positions, we tend to play the ball backwards instead of forwards. Holding onto it but not threatening with it may clock-up really positive possession statistics as the game is slipping away from us. But all that matters at the end of the day is how many points are on the board; not how pretty or well the patterns his team have created fit into the theoretical patterns the current Manager apparently expects his players to weave and he probably analyses on a screen afterwards.

Famously, one definition of madness is to continually repeat the same action in the hope of a different outcome each time. But Morecambe Manager Ashvir Singh Johal sticks to a script which league results alone tell everyone isn’t working.

Morecambe have now played twelve games this season and won just two, losing eight of them. They have scored sixteen goals but conceded a staggering 36: three on average per match. They are bottom of the table. And without a change in the managerial arrangements at the Mazuma Mobile Stadium, they will stay there. A third relegation in four years is staring a club that had not been relegated even once during the first century of it existence squarely in the face at this moment in time.

As his former team was being outplayed in Cheshire, Morecambe’s former Manager Derek Adams was being interviewed by Radio Lancashire last Tuesday night. It was a very insightful interview and you can hear it here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002kct1

Asked to speak about how he felt about being sacked by Panjab Warriors, King Derek chose his words very carefully. But he reviewed the situation leading up to his summary dismissal thus:

“I spoke to the players on a daily basis to try and keep them updated and the news that came out was difficult at times because we couldn’t give them all the information that was required and I had to keep a group of players together that weren’t being paid. They were coming in every day to train and they trained ever so well. That was togetherness; a show of dedication to their job; a dedication to their football club and also a respect for me – that I was trying to get them through this situation and I appreciate wholeheartedly the way the football players went about that. But not only that, the supporters that came to the games; the supporters that supported me in all that time. I think that they have been hugely helpful but on that occasion, it’s difficult because I was able to try and keep that football club going: I quite easily could have turned and gone the opposite way but unfortunately for me, that is not in my nature. I’m a very loyal person and I look after people – rightly or wrongly – and I’ve done it over time: I’ve been very, very loyal.”

The same can’t be said of the new owners of the club and as I wrote at the time, however much of an obligation all Shrimps’ fans will always owe to the Warriors for saving our club, the way they sacked Derek was both really disrespectful and frankly stupid. Putting a rookie Manager with no experience of being a boss at any level of football was always going to be a risk. And that risk has not paid-off. Even though he’s too smart to say it, we all know that if Derek Adams had been given even a fraction of the money that has been spent on players by our new regime this season, Morecambe would still be in the FA Cup and they would very definitely not be bottom of the National League today.

One of the stark differences between Derek Adams’ time at the club and today is that the current Manager is slow to face the media however good or bad the situation at the club might be. Even in adversity (such as when we were beaten at Chesterfield last season but Derek called-out the Board for having no plan for the future), Mr Adams never avoided the media – and he never held back either.

These days though, it seems as if the new owners and the Manager have chosen to present a face to the public in which they prefer silence to facing-up to the things which we can all see are going really badly wrong at our club.

If you look at the official website, for instance, you won’t find any explanation from Mr Johal as to how the disaster at Chester came about in the Match Report (or anywhere else); nor will you find even a single word about what he intends to do to remedy this.

It is as if it didn’t happen.

But it did. And the new owners really need to Get Real about this. 

I think we all understand that what the Panjabs are trying to achieve with our club is as much to do with the visibility of the Sikh community in our society as it is with football. Only the racists among football’s ranks – or extreme adherents to other religions in Mother India – would wish them ill in this endeavour.

But the ownership needs to wake-up to the reality that what is happening at Morecambe makes them all look like they simply don’t know what they are doing: which is surely the absolute polar opposite of what they are trying to achieve, isn’t it?

They should never have let Derek go, let alone sacked him in the actually appallingly dismissive way that they did: this man (in the absence of a Board which had effectively Jumped Ship) almost single-handedly held the club together and gave them at least a skeleton of an organisation to take over.

Kirat Karni anyone?

No – this is not current Strictly Come Dancing star and iconic England soccer star Karen’s long–lost sister. It is the Second of the Three Pillars of Sikhism.

If anyone has fulfilled Kirat Karni (basically truth, reliability and steadfastness), Derek Adams was that man. The Warriors should have offered him a deal for this reason alone in which he could mentor their currently failing star Ashvir when they saved our club.

For me, what they should do now – however belatedly – is get on the phone to him and beg him to come back to the club, even if it’s only on a short-term deal.

Derek will get them out of the mess they are currently in – Ash, very sadly, won’t: he’s either simply not up to it or he’s not ready yet. 

Either way, he needs help. Ashvir made a rod for his own back when he started saying several weeks ago that the team’s fortunes would turn around at the end of this month.

Last Tuesday, they went backwards.

The end of the month is just two weeks away and this team’s form is getting worse, not better.

I’m writing this prior to the Southend game and obviously am not privy to the result at this juncture. But if we beat them, I will be amazed. Delighted – but amazed: the way they are playing at the moment, Morecambe wouldn’t succeed in the National League North, as was made so obvious during mid-week.

I’ve never advocated the sacking of a Morecambe Manager during the two decades I have been writing stuff like this. I don’t think it’s realistic to see Ash sacked now: he is integral to the Panjab Warriors’ Football Adventure. But he clearly needs help – and he needs it now…