Jim Bentley Re-Appointed Morecambe Manager.

Let’s wind the clock back to October 2019:

“The Seventeen Year Itch.

Until today, James Graham Bentley was the longest-serving manager in the entire English Football League. No longer. He has left the Globe Arena to drop down a division to take charge of National League strugglers AFC Fylde…

This was the man who Manager Jim Harvey clearly had marked down for greater things once Stewart Drummond moved to Pastures New after Morecambe’s failure in their first Play-Off experience against Dagenham & Redbridge during the summer of 2003. He became team Captain; then Club Captain and finally – to quote team-mate Barry Roche’s description of it at the time, he `went over to the Dark Side’ – as Player-Coach and Reserve Team Manager under Sammy McIlroy. He was clearly being set-up to replace Sam as Manager – and this duly happened on 13^th May 2011.

Since that time, he has managed to keep the most poorly-supported and under-resourced club in the EFL in League Two. In doing so, Jim has never been afraid to call a spade a spade. In an era when some footballers sound more like politicians (you can tell when they are lying: it’s whenever their mouths are moving), Jim eschewed the Dark Arts and told it like it was. Even that being a football Manager was interfering with his own sex life: perhaps a bit too much information, Jim Lad. He did this in the teeth of poor leadership more often than not in the Boardroom and in situations where neither he nor his staff were reliably paid on more than one occasion. Throughout his tenure, the very existence of the club itself has frequently been in doubt. To repeat something I wrote just over a year ago:

“One of the things I personally admire tremendously about our former Club Captain and centre half is that he never complains: to use his own words,

“It is what it is – you just have to get on with it.”

However, I think a couple of choice quotes speak volumes about the character of this man and the enormity of the struggle he has faced on a virtually daily basis.

On the budget for new payers, for instance. Rather – the lack of any budget for new players:

“It’s like looking at a nice red wine or expensive vodka and then checking your pocket and you’ve got nothing in the wallet, so you go home and you have a cup of tea.”

On the training facilities. Or – again – the lack of training facilities:

“We ended up at Morecambe High School, with an area big enough for two pitches, two grids and a goalkeeper area. They had one pitch with drainage installed, so it was a case of improving it. When we got there, it wasn’t fenced off and there was loads of kids playing on it. People took their dogs for a walk on it and there were barbecues all over it. Every time we went down to training, you had to check for cans and everything.

The biggest problem was dog poo. I couldn’t have players sliding through dog poo so every morning, me and the staff set up then scoured the area just to make sure there wasn’t any. I remember doing one session where a dog ran on the pitch and starting getting its teeth into the ball while we were trying to use it.””

…It must be this continued uncertainty and the lack of resources which have bedevilled his time at Morecambe which have led Jim to accept a move. Who can blame him? Many if not most National League clubs have better resources; bigger budgets and larger fan bases than can be found at Morecambe. Personally, I wish Jim and whoever he takes with him to his new club all the luck in the world. I’ve no doubt that the majority of my fellow Shrimps fans would think the same. That small minority who have been calling for him to go for ages have finally got their way. Only time will tell if our club will prosper in his absence.

Whatever happens, though, Jim Bentley has become a legend in his own lifetime at Morecambe Football Club. In my opinion – and I have been supporting the club since the 1960s – he has been the outstanding individual to have been associated with the Shrimps in all that time. The majority of fans both appreciate and love Jim Bentley – that’s why they collectively paid a £1000 fine for him on one occasion in the past; that’s why there’s a bar named after him at the Globe Arena. Whingers may say that leaving the club at a time when they are bottom of the Football League is not a good thing to do. But it is unrealistic to expect anybody to continually make silk purses out of sows’ ears: he will almost certainly inherit a better quality squad and have a much easier life at his new club. A Bentley is a luxury brand – and in my opinion, we have been extremely lucky to have had one of our own for so many years.

Well done Jim for sticking with us for so long. Good luck to you mate.”

A lot has happened since that time both for the club and Jimbo himself. We will come back to Jim’s experiences in a moment.

I am a member of a Whatsapp group with a few other Morecambe fans. Last Thursday, one of our number posted this:

ASH HAS GONE.

Along with this message were two photos:

Funny? Silly? Clever? Pointless? – you decide. But the very next day, the same message appeared again, from a different member. At the time, I was updating my pre-amble to the Altrincham match which will be played tomorrow but should have taken place early in January. This is how far I had got.

“Today, Morecambe started the game under even more of a cloud than was the case just a month ago. Unconfirmed rumours suggest that members of the coaching staff came to blows after the latest pathetic display against Solihull Moors when a Shrimps’ team which was simply out-played was lucky to lose at home to only a couple of goals. Other reports had recent loan signing Timothy Akindileni playing for the QPR youth team last week. It seems that he might have been recalled by his club but – typically – there has been no official statement about either of these subjects. There is no doubt, however, that another very promising former loanee from Arsenal – Maldini Kacurri – has been lent by the Gunners to Dave Artell at Grimsby where, it can be assumed, the London club think he will receive a better footballing education than he was getting at Morecambe.

The culture of secrecy at the club has shown itself again in the way the Chairman: Kuljit Singh Momi – yes the same man who promised us all recently that we would `see us more; you will hear from us more and you will see improvements quickly’ has failed to publicly address even one of the twelve points put to him in an open letter from the Shrimps Trust just over a week ago.

So much for his obviously completely meaningless promises…

I am indebted to one of my Shrimps-supporting pals for pointing-out that Ash has a brother. His name is Jasbir and he is in charge of Oadby Town FC, a team based in Leicester that competes in the United Counties League Premier Division South. Oadby have played 23 games this season; won just three of them and lost 16. They have accrued a mere thirteen points; have a goal difference of -32 and are rooted to the next but bottom place in the division. Let’s compare that to Ashvir’s performance at Morecambe so far: 28 games played; just 21 points won out of a possible 84; next to bottom place in the league with a goal-difference of -27.  Is it a family competition to be the absolute worst football Manager in Britain or…”

I stopped at this point as the latest Whatsapp message appeared on my phone last Friday, which I then checked.

To my considerable delight and – frankly – utter amazement because I thought it would never happen – the club announced this on their official website:

“Morecambe Football Club can confirm that the Club and First Team Manager Ashvir Singh Johal have mutually agreed to part ways with immediate effect.

Assistant Manager, Lee Tomlin and First-Team Coach, Neil Wainwright will take joint charge of first-team affairs on an interim basis while the Club undertakes the process of appointing a new manager.“

Well, well, well… I’ve nothing against Ashvir personally – I’ve never actually met him – but I cannot find the words to express my sheer relief that he has finally been shown the door.  From Day One, he has shown that he is tactically naive; technically incompetent and an absolutely hopeless motivator or man manager. With him in charge, relegation was just a question of when and not if… My hope is simply that the owners haven’t left it too late, given the predicament Mr Johal has left the club in: in my view, he should have been sacked as early as last November when his repeated earlier promises of improvements in the club’s league position and performance remained completely unfulfilled. Instead, we as fans have had to endure another two months of bad performances by a clearly demoralised team; defections on a regular basis and a retreat into a fantasy world by a Manager who should never have been offered the job in the first place.

Over the weekend, the Panjab Warriors and the Board at Morecambe left no time in contacting; interviewing and then appointing a new man to the hot-seat. So Jim Bentley has returned, however temporarily.

It was interesting that Jim said in his first interview back in post that this would be `one last pop at it’ and that his main priority could be summed-up in two words: “Stay up”. This is part of what he added:

“I don’t think, at this present moment, I’m the medium or long-term Manager of this football club. But I do think that I’ve got a lot to offer for the next three months to try and get us out of this sticky situation. The people of Morecambe will never walk away from their football club. It’s massive. It’s important that they put away their disappointments (and) negativity. I just want them to really bottle all that and put it away for another day. Just bring the energy; the enthusiasm – bring the backing and the support. Get behind the players; get behind everyone at the football club.  We’ve got eighteen cup finals in three months and the crowd has got a massive, massive part to play.”

Jim also made it clear that he had not sought this job and that it had arrived right out of a clear blue sky as far as he is concerned. He said – on the eve of becoming 50 years of age – that his life had changed a lot in the last six years. He experienced a Christmas at home for the first time in 33 years just over a month ago, for instance, which was `a bit weird.’ He has spent his Saturdays watching his beloved Everton with his mates at their new ground and is actually booked on a train to travel to Fulham to watch them there next Saturday. Now, he will be leading the Shrimps at home against Truro instead. Jim said he hadn’t been actively looking for a job in football. He said he’s received other offers – `management; bits and pieces’ but `they didn’t feel right’. But when Morecambe Football Club comes calling, that’s a whole new ball game as far as he is concerned…

So – for the first time this season – we’ve had some straight talking from a Manager who has played the game; knows what he’s on about and isn’t afraid to acknowledge the particular `ups and downs’  including `a little scare’ involving his heart in the years since he left the Mazuma Mobile Stadium – or Globe Arena as it was still known in 2019. This is what Jim’s Wikipedia tells us about his managerial career:

“After the departure of Paul Tisdale from Exeter City in June 2018, Bentley became the longest serving manager in the top four tiers of English football, until his resignation in October 2019 to become the new manager of AFC Fylde. In March 2022, Bentley was sacked by the National League North club, which was in fourth place, fourteen points off top spot.

On 29 August 2022, Bentley was appointed manager of League Two’s bottom club Rochdale on a two-year contract. On 27 March 2023, Rochdale sacked him; under Bentley, the side had won just six out of 32 league games and were still bottom, 10 points from safety with eight games remaining.

On 29 August 2023, exactly a year after his appointment at Rochdale, Bentley was appointed as manager of National League North club, Southport. At the time of his appointment Southport were at the foot of the table with only 1 point after 6 games. Having overseen a turnaround in form, he was awarded the Manager of the Month award for November 2023. He was sacked on 12 March 2025, the club sitting seventeenth in the league, eleven points clear from safety.”

However, Jim Bentley is part of the DNA of our club. He has three months to weave his own particular type of magic there. I wished him all the luck in the world when he left. I even sent him a Get Well card – as a fellow heart surgery survivor myself – when he was in hospital a few years ago. I’m sure we all wish him even more luck now that he has returned to the fold. As I said earlier, Bentleys are rare beasts and the only one we have seen at the club recently was driven by a chancer. This, on the other hand, is the real deal…