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After their play-off success and promotion into League One, Morecambe will want to survive in the third tier and secure a stable finish away from a relegation dogfight.
The Shrimps will be looking to get off to a positive start in League One, but it won’t be easy and they must stay away from the drop zone from the off.
Manager
There’s no better place to start when discussing Morecambe after the past few months. Just days after the Shrimps’ triumph at Wembley, the board of directors were searching for a new manager after Derek Adams handed in his resignation to drop back down into League Two with Bradford City.
Understandably, it did feel a little bit like everything was collapsing, but the board made a swift appointment, putting the lumbering and chaotic managerial searches of Tottenham, Everton and Crystal Palace to shame.
The man appointed was Stephen Robinson, someone who came as a little bit of a surprise after names like Keith Hill, Phil Parkinson and other EFL ‘merry-go-rounders’ had been initially banded around by the media and bookmakers. It’s worth saying that there’s no factual evidence to back this up.
Robinson’s CV impressed the board, and it’s easy to understand why once you look into it. The Northern Irishman has an impressive coaching background and faced similar challenges as Motherwell boss to those he’s likely to face at Morecambe.
The Steelmen have one of the lower budgets in the Scottish Premiership, and Robinson had some fine achievements while working within these constraints. He took them to both the Scottish Cup and League Cup finals, as well as a third-place finish in 2019/20 which saw Motherwell qualify for European football.
There’s also a good track record of youth development to help the club make money, with the likes of David Turnbull and Jake Hastie being bought by Celtic and Rangers respectively after Robinson had introduced them to his first team.
Losing their manager in the circumstances that Morecambe did was incredibly tough, and has somewhat understandably made people doubt the Shrimps’ ability to survive in League One.
Those doubts should be quietened to a degree by the appointment of Robinson. He looks like a good fit for the role and while it’s too early to say for certain if his appointment will definitely be a good one, the early signs are promising.
Departures
A lot of players did leave, that is correct. For almost all of them, this is because they weren’t offered a contract. Robinson has gone on record to say that he was able to keep all the players he wanted to keep.
So let’s put this down on the record now, the Morecambe promotion squad was not plundered. A new manager with new ideas and methods came in and decided that a large amount of the squad wouldn’t suit those ideas.
The only minor exception to this was the departure of Carlos Mendes-Gomes. His departure, however, has been imminent for a long time. It’s highly unlikely that Robinson would ever have expected to have Morecambe’s top goalscorer from last season in his squad. Selling players is ultimately a necessity for generating good income, and Robinson knows this well after his time at Motherwell.
As it turns out, there was no exodus to Bradford with Adams. Yann Songo’o went there and the only other player strongly linked was Cole Stockton, but the forward turned down another season in League Two to stay with the Shrimps in League One.
Adams has a few players he likes, none more than Songo’o, no doubt, but he’s a good enough manager not to have to sign all the same players everywhere he goes if doesn’t need to.
The Bantams already had a decent core of players and a favourable budget, so it was unlikely that Adams was ever going to transplant the entire Morecambe team into West Yorkshire.
The only departing Morecambe player to have stepped up a level is Mendes-Gomes. The rest have either remained in League Two or gone into the National League.
Arrivals
With a lot of players being let go over the summer by Robinson, the former Luton midfielder has had a big job on his hands to recruit a full squad and he has done this in a pretty speedy fashion.
The Shrimps quickly bolstered their squad with a large series of arrivals in late June, before a few more players were added at a steadier rate throughout July. Some of those arrivals give cause for a great deal of optimism.
Robinson has been able to land highly-rated Leeds United youngster Alfie McCalmont on a season-long loan, after his impressive spell with Oldham Athletic last season. There’s also the signing of Josh McPake on loan from Rangers, another player arriving following a promising League Two loan spell after the winger spent time at Harrogate Town last season.
Anthony O’Connor and Ryan Delaney are both solid signings at centre-back, while Jonah Ayunga will bring a different skill-set up top to those of hold-up target men Jonathan Obika and Stockton.
Ryan Cooney has been brought in on a permanent deal after hugely impressive loan spells with the Shrimps, while Greg Leigh joins to provide good competition at left-back.
Wes McDonald and Arthur Gnahoua bring pace and direct running to the attack as well as McPake, in what looks like a purposefully put together Morecambe side.
Midfield is a particularly strong area for the Shrimps. Not only has Robinson got a deal done for McCalmont, but also for promising Hull City prospect Callum Jones and the returning Adam Phillips. The latter could provide some real extra quality for the Lancashire outfit.
Shane McLoughlin arrives from AFC Wimbledon as a solid and hard-working League One midfielder, on top of the already solid base the Shrimps had with the services of Aaron Wildig and Toumani Diagouraga being retained.
Will they stay up?
While we’ve talked about all the positives of this Morecambe side, there are no guarantees over their safety. They will have to work incredibly hard in what is looking like an extremely tough iteration of League One, but they are far from the relegation fodder that many seem to wrongly interpret them as.
This side isn’t some broken remnant of the Adams’ promotion-winning team that Robinson has tried to cobble together. This is an entirely new-look side, and it will be exciting to see their progress over the course of 2021/22.
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