FAN’S VIEW 22/23 – NO.7: MORECAMBE AT HOME

Our opponents and other musings

Many times we hear “there are a lot of big teams in League 1”. We’ve probably thrown that into conversation ourselves when discussing our division with people who are in to football but don’t really have much of an understanding of what tier 3 is all about. Sunderland may have gone but we’ve still got Sheffield Wednesday, Ipswich, Pompey, Charlton and Bolton.

Whilst focussing on these big boys it’s easy to forget that there are many little clubs in L1 as well. The first one that springs to mind is Accrington Stanley, much admired for punching above their weight year after year. To be honest I wouldn’t have put Morecambe much above them in size. I was therefore surprised to find that last season the Shrimps had a bigger average home gate than Cheltenham, Burton and Fleetwood in addition to Accy.

I think the gap in size of clubs between top and bottom is larger in L1 than the other three of the top four divisions of English football. Taking average size of home crowds for 2021/22 – the bottom six in L1 was only 18.2% of that of the top six. In L2 it was 28.7%, the Premier League 38.9% and the Championship 47.1%. Okay, size of crowds isn’t everything but I think it does give a very good indication.

It is totally wrong to write off the smaller teams with tiny budgets compared to the massive hitters. I’m glad they can compete otherwise a large proportion of matches during a season would be almost a waste of time. That said we should be beating such teams on a fairly consistent basis, shouldn’t we?

It’s not just what a club’s playing budget is though that is the key ingredient to success – it’s how that budget is spent. Spaffing a considerable percentage of it up the wall on known injury prone players, hamstrings (see what I did there) a club from the start. Under Karl we have not learned any lessons on that front and here we are again.

I have huge amounts of sympathy for the young men who are on the treatment table knowing their careers may be in the balance, or wondering if they do come back what level they’ll be able to return at and being worried about it all happening again. It’s not their fault they are offered deals. No-one is twisting the arms of OUFC to sign them as far as I am aware.

Even with so much talent out we should have enough to win this. I told myself the same against Lincoln though.

The strategic report in Morecambe’s latest accounts to y/e/ 31/05/21 shows the extent of their ambitions. A “performance on the pitch” target was “avoid relegation from league two”. Actual performance was “won league two play-off final, gained promotion to L1”.

Morecambe first played in the Football League in 2007/08 having got promoted from the Conference via the play-offs. Fourteen seasons followed in L2 with the only season before 2020/21 that they remotely threatened to go up being 2009/10 when they were hammered by Dagenham and Redbridge in the play-off semi-finals.

Targets are supposed to be meaningful, challenging but also achievable. Given their 2019/20 finish of 22^nd their survival target seemed sensible and how good is it to massively over-achieve with that play-off final win over Newport?

Another on pitch target was “to generate income from cup runs”. They did. They got to round three in the EFL Cup and the FA Cup. Target achieved. They played Chelsea away and Newcastle at home.

Morecambe are not obliged to produce full accounts given their size but they do. It helps with openness and transparency. OUFC don’t produce full accounts. Shareholders and fans don’t get to see a strategic report.

It’s interesting how Morecambe portray themselves in the accounts. They see themselves as a small club who are growing “brand awareness”.  There’s a section in the strategic report titled “Maintaining and enhancing our reputation and brand” which includes the following:

• The club’s performance against the odds throughout 2020/21, rounded off by victory in a Wembley Final enhanced awareness of the brand both locally and nationally
• Increased coverage of the club in League One has raised awareness and publicity of the brand and with that comes both opportunity and risk, with the Board conscious that the club needs to seek out the former but not at the risk of damaging the club’s deserved reputation for fair play and dealings.

Aren’t we supposed to be using the Oxford brand to grow our club? Not a clue how or where we’re at with it. Just waiting for Stratfield Brake perhaps? And where are we with this change of majority share ownership. It has dragged rather hasn’t it?

Morecambe actually made a profit of £725k in 2020/21 and had £4.5m on the balance sheet. Wages and salaries came to only £2.2m and that was for all staff. Probably a very low budget even by L2 standards.

Peter McGuigan became the owner of Morecambe in 2000 and put the club up for sale in 2016. It then all went a bit strange as these things tend to do when a certain type of character sniffs around a football club and attempts to buy it. A report in the Lancaster Guardian in January 2017 stated that G50 Holdings Limited bought McGuigan’s shares the previous September and that Diego Lemos, a Brazilian football agent who lives in Quatar, was the new owner. However the companies register at Companies House showed him as having resigned as a director of G50 on 11 January 2017. A day earlier tax consultant Graham Burnard became a director of G50.

Lemos reckoned he owned the club and in May 2017 requested an injunction against Burnard and G50 Holdings to prevent a sale of Burnard’s shares to Italian businessman Joseph Cala. That sale never happened. A statement from Morecambe confirmed that Burnard was the sole director of the club and said they “can now confidently focus on next season”.

Weird then that in May the following year the sale of Morecambe Football Club to Bond Group Investments Limited was announced and that Morecambe chairman Peter McGuigan said: “We are very pleased to confirm this transaction and look forward to a period of sustained stability and growth within the club”. Seems McGuigan never properly sold to G50.

The Bond Investment Group is a property investment broker, with a focus on sourcing HMO (House in Multiple Occupation) investments, student property investments and buy to let investments. They now own 80% of Morecambe’s shares.

You know when the crowd gets on at a goalie “dodgy keeper” and a player cocking up gets the “w**ker, w**ker” chant, well I wish we could subject certain owners/potential owners to similar and much worse if possible. “You’re not fit to own a club”. “Ownership, you’re having a laugh”. And throw in a lot of expletives. Football clubs can very easily and very quickly be ruined by “wrong ‘uns”. Bury. Macclesfield.

Oxford United 1 Morecambe 1

Josh Murphy took the ball neatly and fed the rapidly advancing Yanic Wildschut who burst past the full-back before whipping a wicked cross into the box. Marcus Browne cleverly got a touch which was read by Sam Baldock who took it on his chest, swivelled, sent the keeper the wrong way and bagged Oxford’s fifth. Then I woke up.

I’d set the alarm which I don’t usually do for home games but having reasoned watching my team at present is quite painful, a few pre-match beers would help. Also as away days are generally much more pleasurable than trips to Minchery Farm why not do as we do on our travels and get to the pub early for a home fixture?

The Plough at 38 serves alcoholic drinks from 11:00 and whilst I can’t say it was anywhere near the best pint I’ve ever had it was pleasant enough to sit outside, listen to the busker opposite and watch the world go by.  On quality of beer the Royal Blenheim always delivers. The usual football crowd was absent which I believe was due to the train strike. The pub was full though of trendy young wedding guests. Their conversation was loud to the extent it was difficult to hear ourselves talk. Fair play, they were going to have a good day. The Chequers was fine too and then it was a walk to the Chester Arms because the Magdalen Arms is closed until September. This was the first time I’d been in the Chester for a few years. On that last visit one of our party had been told off like a naughty little school boy for having the temerity to move a chair from one table to another so he could sit with the rest of us. This time no such nonsense and I will add that the beer was back up to the standard it had been when the pub used to be in the Good Beer Guide.

We had a lift from the Chester to the ground and although it was quite late there was no problem getting into the car-park. That tells me the Oxfordshire public has no genuine belief in the team at the moment. Confession time, nor have I. The gate was 6813 with a miserable 130 from Morecambe. Before Saturday Swindon had the same number of points as us but in the division below. 8327 turned up to watch them beat Rochdale who had even fewer travelling fans than Morecambe. Again, “Championship, we’re ‘avin a laugh”.

We’re just not very good. We’re dropping points by the bucket load to not very good teams. A team with realistic ambitions would comfortably be beating Morecambe who arrived here with no wins and only one goal scored in four games. They were pretty poor.

We were the better team early on but being the better team counts for nothing when finishing is lacking.

Empty seats, folded arms, the look of boredom as JH is about to take a dead ball. Photo Simon Jaggs

James Henry, who was one of our better players, put one wide from distance after neat build up play.

Connor Ripley in the Morecambe goal was well positioned to keep out a low Cameron Brannagan shot before our no.8 was kicked from behind by Farrend Rawson as he went for the rebound. Referee Ben Speedie waved a finger, Brannagan beat the ground in frustration. 100% a penalty. I would say that if we had VAR at our level we would have got the deserved spot kick but VAR is operated by incompetent dicks like Speedie so who knows what the outcome would have been. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a direct view of the incident in real time from not far away.

Goalless at the break and with the home fans underwhelmed by what they had witnessed, at least we were kicking towards a stand with our supporters in during part two and not a bloody fence. Roll on Stratfield Brake as quick as red tape, jumping through hoops and finances will allow.

So what happened in part two? Just three minutes in a goal arrived. For bloody Morecambe. Down their left Ousmane Fane slipped the ball inside to Dylan Connolly. We had our opponents outnumbered 4 to 3 in the area of the pitch where this was taking place but were not tight enough to stop them doing what they wanted to. Fane then played a clever ball into the box which was expertly flicked to the unmarked Jensen Weir who scored from the edge of the D. Should Simon Eastwood have saved it? My answer is yes he ****ing should have. Has our goal-keeping issue been solved? My answer is no it ****ing has not. Anyone who reads these FVs will know I didn’t think Jack Stevens was the answer and what little I’ve seen of Eddie McGinty, which included watching him closely in the warm up at Bristol Rovers, I don’t think he is either. Only fair to add “yet” as far as he is concerned because it is very early days for him as a L1 player.

To be fair we did immediately go about getting an equaliser with some purpose. Henry side-footed just wide and then we did score just eight minutes after going behind.

The goal came from a corner taken by Henry. Massive credit to Matty Taylor for producing a good jump and winning the ball. Sam Long, Ripley and a defender all went for the ball which ended up being lashed home from a couple of feet out by Kyle Joseph.

This gave us plenty of time to go on and win the game and prove that we were after all a decent football team who had for some unknown reason been hiding their talents. The season would start for real from here. Did I truly believe? No not really.

That second goal never came. We went close but we’re not clinical. Slavi Spasov put one just wide. It was a very presentable chance. “Put one just wide”, how many times do we see that? It can’t all be down to bad luck can it? Are we going to see the day when we keep putting one “just in” and win by a big margin?  The stats show we had 27 shots in total and that 10 of those were on target. They are large figures but I don’t recollect us having that many or that those on target were really testing. 15 of the 27 were from outside the box. Probably very wasteful and ended up giving the ball away? We did though have two thirds of the possession but at no time did I witness the free-flowing football we often produced last season or think we’ve got total control of the game with it only being a matter of time before we got our noses in front before going on to win.

This so called defensive improvement I’d talked myself into believing might not stand up to scrutiny. Last season we kept nine clean sheets, i.e. in 19.6% of games played. Thus far in 22/23 it is 1 in 5 (20%) so not much change there, although average goals per game conceded has dropped from 1.28 to 1. I’m not going to get carried away with that latter stat as we’ve so far not played the top teams, Ipswich, Peterborough, Pompey, Wednesday etc. Restricting an opponent to just a single goal isn’t much use when you’re almost totally misfiring at the other end. Four points and three goals from 5 games given who we’ve faced is a pathetic return.

On a brighter note, Marcus McGuane once again played very well. Whether that will be enough to inspire us to better things with other players following suit is open to conjecture. It wasn’t that any particular player was dreadful it’s more that nothing is really clicking and I’m not sure what it actually is that the management wants to click. Playing young Joseph was fine and any partnership with Matty Taylor up top will take time to come together. KJ could be a bit of a nuisance and get a few goals but whether or not he’s got it in his locker to win long balls and hold up play is something else that remains to be seen.

I can’t remember Matty ever looking like scoring but he contributed with that header for the goal and when coming out from the box had a few neat touches. Again, what’s the game plan, what’s our strategy for winning football matches? The main reason we have MT on our books is to score goals isn’t it? He does though have spells when he scores regularly so let’s hope such a spell arrives very soon.