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Bentley only boss left in Lancashire
Stewart Drummond.
Morecambe player-reserve team boss Stewart Drummond has paid tribute to the way the club backs its managers.
Preston’s sacking of Graham Westley on Wednesday means that The Shrimps are the only club in Lancashire not to change their manager this season with Jim Bentley secure in the Globe Arena dugout.
Drummond said: “I think that’s the way football’s gone.
“You see at the highest level in the Premier League you don’t get much time nowadays and that’s filtering down in to the lower leagues unfortunately.
“And it’s testament to Morecambe as a football club, I think over the last 20 years they’ve stuck by managers, given them a chance and to be fair to Jim he’s doing a great job with the finances he’s got at his disposal.”
Tuesday night’s 2-1 victory over Aldershot means Bentley’s side are now 12 points clear of the League 2 drop zone with Drummond admitting The Shrimps are edging closer to League 2 safety.
The veteran midfielder said: “It wasn’t pretty on Tuesday night and people might say we played a little bit better against Exeter (a 3-0 defeat last Saturday) than we did against Aldershot.
“They came with a game plan to play the long ball and work for second balls but we combatted that and at times played a little bit of football and created quite a few chances.
“Every year for a club our size the first target is to get relegation out of the picture and I think we’re getting close to that now.
“You always look at 50 points as your cut off mark when you can guarantee safety and we’re edging towards that pretty quickly.
“Once we get to there we can start looking up the league to see how much further we can push.”
Having seen off the struggling Shots on Tuesday night Morecambe face a tough test at top of the table Port Vale on Saturday, but Drummond doesn’t see why The Shrimps can’t get a result against Micky Adams’ high-fliers.
The 37-year-old said: “It’s been a funny season as there’s not been too many teams that have battered us or have been a lot better than us.
“It’s a pretty level league and when we played Port Vale at home they weren’t terrific I didn’t think and we were disappointed to be losing that game 3-1.
“We won’t go down with any fear but obviously we respect them being top of the league so it should be a good game for us.
“The win on Tuesday does take the pressure off with us 12 points clear of the bottom two and not many people will give us a chance going down to Port Vale but as we proved last season we can go down there and get a result.”
Robbie Threlfall will miss Saturday’s trip to Staffordshire due to a persistent thigh problem and Andy Fleming remains a doubt with a bruised leg.
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Weather for Morecambe
Monday 20 May 2013
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 11 C to 16 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 8 C to 15 C
Wind Speed: 20 mph
Wind direction: North west
