City Out Shrimp Morecambe

Morecambe FC 1 – 2 MCFC Reserves

City’s reserves’ stepped up a couple of divisions when they met newly promoted league two members, Morecambe FC at Christie Park yesterday. The ground has proved quite favourable for City by gaining favourable results against Blackburn reserves and Morecambe in another pre-season friendly as well in the past. So a fortunate victory was not such a surprise as Morecambe were by far the better side, but City blocked determinedly and Kasper Schmeichel pulling off a couple of good saves. Perhaps City fans would wish that Channel M still had their weekly round up programme so they could see the top class goals that Paul Marshall and Ched Evans scored.
The first ten minutes saw City start quite brightly with a good header on target from a corner and a short corner played in that fell to Garry Breen who put his shot over the bar from ten yards.
Five minutes later saw Morecambe win two corners in succession with the second one being cleared of the line by Javan Vidal from a header by Dave Artell.
Within two minutes of that scare City took the lead when a strong burst from Curtis Obeng on the right laid of a good ball to Paul Marshall who was twenty five yards out and took one touch before lashing his shot in thunderbolt fashion into the bottom corner of the net.
City then seemed to sit back on that lead and Morecambe continued to pressure which led to more corners and free kicks which both Artell and ex-City youngster, Jim Bentley should have done better with, but Kasper’s flapping antics at these dead balls did not help the situation either.
Morecambe were the ones to make the changes at half time with goalkeeper Steven Drench making his first appearance since dislocating his elbow against York in the semi-final play offs.
Within ten minutes of the re-start Morecambe were level when the defence were static from a Adam Yates cross from the right to allow Wayne Curtis to sneak in at the back post and head into the bottom corner, Kasper was able to get a slight hand to it, but ultimately not enough to stop it creeping in.
Morecambe’s lead only lasted four minutes as a quick free kick by Breen just outside our penalty area when most players were inside the City half, found Ched Evans who turned to goal and saw Drench off his line and sent a delightful forty yard lob into the top corner of the net to send Evans celebrate quite energetically.
Morecambe continued to press and Curtis went close with a twenty yard drive and Kasper pulled off a tremendous point blank save from Carl Baker; but City held out to record their third win out of four games of this pre-season.
I thought we would have seen a slightly older line up than previously because the opposition was a step up, but apart from Marc Laird, who was more of a hindrance in the Centre of midfield and Kasper who looked shaky for most of the match and his rush of the blood distributions, it was the same under eighteen line up that looks a lot more solid than ten days ago at Hyde United.
I am sure it will be an even younger side however when City face new pontin’s league members’ Morecambe next month, lets hope for the same result.


Morecambe: Davies(GK)(Drench 46)(GK), Yates, Adams(Howard 46), Artell(Grand 70), Bentley(Capt.), Stanley(Mclachlan 87), Baker, Sorvel, Curtis(Newby 77), Twiss, Burns(Hunter 62).


City: Schmeichel(GK), Obeng, Vidal, MacDonald(McDermott 58), Breen(Capt.), M Daly, Clayton, Laird, Evans, Moore, Marshall.

Subs: Mentel(GK), Ramsey, Kay, D Ball.

Att: 1155.