Morecambe (A) Match Preview

The U’s hope to continue their winning start to the league season when they travel to Morecambe tomorrow.

After Tuesday’s League Cup defeat at Newport we expect Bonner to revert to a similar team to what we saw against Carlisle. Question marks still remain over the fitness of Harry Darling and Liam O’Neil, so we expect Cundy and Taylor to line up in front of Mitov, with Knoyle and Dunk as wing backs.

We’d be surprised if we went with anything other than Digby and May in central midfield, and after a poor performance from Knowles (hopefully a one-off) on Tuesday we expect Hoolahan and Hannant to be the wide men, with Mullin and Ironside the preferred frontline, although Knibbs could be due a start if there’s fitness concerns with either of the front two.

Bonner has spoken about needing to see some more creativity from the squad and we’re strongly rumoured to be looking at ex-loanee Idris El Mizouni to join the squad from Ipswich. Whether we can get him in the team for tomorrow remains to be seen, and there’s no guarantees he’ll be match fit if the deal is done today.

Morecambe have beat Cheltenham 2-1 in their sole League game this season, and are on a bit of a mini cup-run in the Carabao Cup, having despatched Grimsby on penalties and Oldham in the last round to set up a tie with Newcastle on Wednesday.

Our first meeting with Morecambe came in 2000 with a shock 2-1 FA Cup defeat, Tom Youngs getting our goal. We had to wait fourteen years before we met again, as we both suffered widely different fortunes, the U’s languishing in the Conference whilst Morecambe established themselves in the Football League. Highlights of our past meetings include a 4-2 win up there in 2015, thanks to Leon Legge, Sir Ryan Donaldson, Cameron Gayle and Ben Williamson, as well as a 7-0 thrashing at the Abbey a year later, with Luke Berry scoring two penalties, Harrison Dunk getting a brace and goals from Ben Williamson, Mark Roberts and Zeli Ismail. Last season saw a 1-0 win at the Abbey thanks to a Jack Roles long-ranger and a 1-1 draw at the Globe Arena (now renamed the Mazuma Stadium).

Familiar faces lining up against us include striker Jordan Slew, whose most notable achievement whilst at the Abbey was to be caught speeding at 150mph on the A14, former Norwich loanee Adam Phillips, and a name we’d probably all rather forget, Nat Knight-Percival, part of that bothersome Histon side of the late 00’s.