Morecambe players challenged to improve their defensive work

The Shrimps’ defensive frailties came to the fore again in a disappointing 3-1 home defeat against a Cheltenham Town side who had not won away for four months.

It extended Morecambe’s winless run to 10 matches, keeping them in the League One relegation zone, but only a point from safety with nine matches remaining.

The first of those is this evening when they travel to Shrewsbury Town for a rearranged game after last month’s scheduled meeting was postponed.

Adams said: “We need to be better defensively, I think we have been in recent games against Ipswich, Plymouth and Bolton, but we conceded really poor goals in the end.

“It is a really disappointing result. If you look at the goals from long throw-ins and a deflection in the first half, it is disappointing.

“As everyone knows, we know what the problem is all season: we have conceded too many goals.

“We’ve conceded 70 goals in the league, second worst in the league, we have to get better at that.

“We had some good chances in the game and we failed to capitalise on them. We are in the relegation zone for a reason and that reason is that we are conceding goals.

“We have to be solid and we have shown this season that we can score goals. We gave it a good go and we really wanted the three points against Cheltenham but we weren’t good enough to get that. We have to go again on Tuesday night against Shrewsbury Town now.

“We will have to see what players we have available as a few players took knocks and we have to see if the players that were out can come back in for us.”

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