Morecambe remain rooted to the bottom and up in the air
Sitting at the very foot is a statistical anomaly at a club which has been badly wrong for too long.
At the very foot of the EFL, clinging onto a place by the width of its fingernails, is a very curious statistical anomaly indeed. Morecambe sit at the very bottom of League Two having become 1-0 specialists in the worst way possible. Played five, lost five, scored none, conceded five. Four of these goals have come in the first half, and each has been enough to win the game.
Is it any great surprise that Morecambe find themselves in such a ragged condition, going into this new season? After all, the club has been at war with itself for several years, with vultures circling above, licking their lips to see what they could gain from it all.
Long-time readers will already be fully aware that I’ve done Morecambe on these pages before, in June 2023. At the time, our principal person of interest was Sarbjot Johal, a “tycoon”, the source of whose wealth has long been a subject of intense speculation. Johal has been busy since June 2023. In September, a big noise was made over him buying the Birmingham-based car wheel manufacturer. It must be pretty sweet to see headlines like this being written about you.
At their peak Rimstock had 230 employees, but this had fallen to just 74 by the time that administrators were appointed in the summer of 2023. It was reported that Sarb Capital had bought the company out of administration for £200,000, but then something strange happened, or… didn’t happen. The deal to purchase the company out of administration had not included leases on three of the company’s buildings, and these were put up for sale by the administrators.
By the end of February, no-one had been paid, no work seemed to have been carried out at the site, and then the story gets still stranger. The company is still listed with Companies House as being in administration. No reference to a purchase of the company (which according to the records was £28m in debt) is made in the initial progress report made at the end of August 2023, which concludes that the most likely outcome of this administration is dissolution of the business. No reference to a takeover is made in the update report which was published at the start of August 2024, either.
The reason for this is that Johal didn’t “buy the company out of administration” at all. He bought the holding company Rimstock Holdings Ltd from the previous owner. The previous company was dissolved and a new one formed, changing its name from its special purchase vehicle name at the end of August 2023. Enough to get some photos taken with some tyres. Perhaps enough to use the name at some later, undefined point in the future, although the insolvency practitioner dealing with the dissolution of Rimstock may have something to say about that. But this was not “buying a company out of administration”. Further changes to his increasingly byzantine array of businesses came during the summer. Whether this means a return to football in any sense remains to be seen.
Meanwhile back on the Lancashire coast Morecambe’s team had if anything been out-performing expectations, though it should be added that most expectations at the start of the season had been pretty apocalyptic. By the end of October 2023 they were on the fringes of the play-off race, but they eventually dropped to 15th place in the table. This was probably unsurprising, considering the rumbling sounds that continued to emanate from behind the scenes.
The accounts released in February confirmed another £1.2m annual loss, their second in a row. At a fans’ forum held at the end of that month, co-chairman Graham Howse stated that “One (Johal) has put money in and bought shares but he won’t be buying the football club”, and that there were “genuine people”—which sounds like the absolute bare minimum that one would expect from such a purpose—interested in buying it.
There are believed to be interested parties, and it was reported that a year earlier a substantial offer had been made for the club which had been rejected by the owners. It is exactly this ambiguity which raises so many questions about the motives of those involved. In April they were deducted three points for failing to pay players and staff on time following previous EFL rules breaches. The good news on that front is that at least a transfer embargo was lifted after the club successfully argued an appeal.
Come the end of the season manager Ged Brannan left the club and sixteen players were released. Supporters started fundraising in order to try and buy a stake themselves. Directors of the club put an exasperated open letter on the club’s website which urges Bond Group, the company under which the ownership of Morecambe is managed, to accept “one apparently serious offer on the table from a US-based potential buyer which, based on what we know, is the most credible which has been made since you placed the Club up for sale over 20 months ago”.
The club’s new manager was Derek Adams, back for his third rodeo as manager following a two year period which ended with him going to Bradford City in the summer of 2020/21. With Bradford having not worked out, he returned in February 2022, only to leave again in November 2023 for a third managerial spell with Ross County, which lasted barely two months before he quit the following February.
It’s difficult to make much of a case that this season is going to be anything much beyond an uphill battle for the club. They also fired blanks in the EFL Cup, going down 3-0 to Huddersfield Town and having a player sent off into the bargain. If we’re scraping the very bottom of the success barrel, they did win 2-1 at Wigan Athletic in the EFL Trophy. After one game they sit atop their group, above Nottingham Forest Under-21s. So, well, there’s that. But it doesn’t feel like much.
There is a way of viewing this through a glass that is half-full. Each of their defeats came by a one-goal margin. That’s not an insurmountable obstacle to turn around, and it can hardly be said that Derek Adams is either wet behind the ears when it comes to club management or even this club in particular. A new buyer could be found and the club sold as quickly as anything, should the will be there to do so.
But that’s the big reason why it’s so easy to continue to view the club through a half-empty lens. Why was the offer to buy the club rejected? What’s the plan to actually get this club back on its feet? When Morecambe FC were relegated from League One in 2023, it was the first relegation they’d suffered in the 103 years since their formation in 1920. Something needs to change, if this isn’t to become two in three years by the end of this season. A league goal would be a start.