“You can’t just make snap decisions on those things”: Morecambe boss outlines the reason for a delayed retained list

The Shrimps’ list was announced on May 15, a fortnight after Lakeland’s arrival as manager and almost three weeks on from the final game of the 2025/26 campaign.

Speaking at a fans’ forum last Thursday, Lakeland said: “At the end of the day, it’s players’ livelihoods: you can’t just make snap decisions on those things.

“We wanted to give ourselves enough time so that we could properly analyse everybody, we could speak to everybody – or the vast majority anyway.

“I think I spoke to all bar three players and you’ve got to make big decisions, decisions you think are right, and we felt a reset was necessary.

“We thanked everybody personally for their efforts and wished them well for their careers, but we know what we want.

“For us to bring in what we want, we needed to make space and quite a few players departed.

“That was why there was a delay on the retained list going out because we wanted to take that time and do it in as professional a way as we could because I really detest unprofessionalism.

“I think you’ve got to conduct yourself in a particular way, I think you’ve got to do the right things at all times and that’s why we took nearly two weeks to get that out.”

Morecambe’s retained list confirmed the departures of 18 players in addition to three loanees, while Miguel Azeez, Lennon Dobson and Liam Hogan were under contract.

Options were taken up on Adam Fairclough and Alfie Scales while a fellow youngster, Oscar Wright, was offered his first professional deal.

Negotiations were said to be ongoing with seven more players: Myles Boney, Jake Cain, Gwion Edwards, Paul Lewis, Jack Nolan, Lewis Payne and Ben Williams.

Nolan’s future is of particular interest, having ended the season as top scorer after flourishing when moved to a central striking role by Jim Bentley.

Asked about Nolan’s position, Lakeland said: “The situation with Jack is I met him a week ago, had a good chat with him.

“He’s loved being here last year despite the way the season ended. On a personal note, he had a very good season in terms of his numbers and we want to have the best players we can have.

“We’ve made him an offer and the ball’s in his and his agent’s court. If we can find a way to keep him, we’d absolutely love to keep him because there are going to be times next season, here especially, when teams will come here and sit in, will try and frustrate.

“In those games, you need players like Jack who can just come up with something out of nothing or who, when they get into the final third of the pitch, they have that execution, that quality.

“We’d love to keep him if we can and we’re going to try as hard as possible to do that.”