Morecambe boss: Wigan Athletic begin a difficult end-of-season fixture list

Tuesday’s 5-0 defeat at Shrewsbury Town kept the Shrimps third-bottom of League One after a run of only three league victories in 28 matches.

Their midweek loss made it 11 games without a win yet, because of other teams’ inability to pick up victories, they only remain a point behind sixth-bottom Fleetwood Town.

Adams’ players have eight matches left to secure their survival but face four of the present top six in that time, starting with tomorrow’s trip to second-placed Wigan Athletic.

“We’ve got a really difficult run-in and we understand that,” the manager said.

“We’ve got a lot of the top six teams to play – Wigan, MK Dons, Oxford, Sunderland – but we can’t just focus on those teams.

“We have to take the next game as it comes, which is Wigan who have done exceptionally well this season.

“We’re going to have to deal with the threat they pose and try to find opportunities to hurt them where we can.

“They are looking for automatic promotion, they have been on a very good run, they are vastly experienced and it’s a tough test for us.

“However, we’ve shown that we can compete well to take draws against Ipswich Town and Bolton Wanderers.

“We could have taken something against Plymouth Argyle but we didn’t deserve to take anything from the other night: we have to be better as a team.”

Morecambe go into tomorrow’s match with renewed attention surrounding their defensive efforts after conceding eight times in their last two outings.

That leaves them with the division’s worst goals against record, having conceded 75 times in 38 games.

However, they also have issues at the other end of the pitch with only six goals scored in the last 10 matches.

Adams said: “We’ve had difficult games in that spell, we all understand that the quality of opposition has been very good.

“We’re in that situation where Cole (Stockton) is the top scorer with 22 and the second one (Adam Phillips) has six.

“That’s quite a difference but, in saying that, we’ve still had opportunities in games to score goals.”

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