Jim Bentley full of praise for Morecambe veteran Kevin Ellison

Posted Sunday, February 25, 2018 by PA

Jim Bentley joked that Kevin Ellison will be attracting the interest of other clubs after the veteran striker scored twice in Morecambe’s shock 4-2 victory at high-flying Wycombe.

One day after his 39th birthday, Ellison, in his seventh season with the Shrimps, was the star of the show to help his side to their first win in seven games against the previously in-form Chairboys.

Bentley said: “He’s into double figures now. He always gets written off, he’ll get a move like the others now, won’t he?

“The likes of Paul Mullin, Ryan Edwards, Tom Barkhuizen, Jack Redshaw, people like that, who have done well with us in the past have moved on, so I’m really pleased for him.

“You can’t shut him up in the changing room now, but that’s Kev; two cracking goals.

“I thought as an attacking threat, with Aaron Wildig going back into No.10 with a slight change in formation, we were really pleasing with the way we hunted down and played good football at times.

“There was one goal where Adam McGurk popped it back, (Gregg) Wylde crossed to Kev at the back stick, cracking goal.

“I’m really pleased for Kev – although he was 39 yesterday, he’ll always get written off, but he’s just turned in another big 90-minute performance and on another day, he could have had three.”

Morecambe led after three minutes when Nathan McGinley’s loose flick gave McGurk an easy header into an empty net before Ellison’s wonderful half-volley doubled their advantage.

Ellison doubled his tally with a thumping header from Wylde’s cross before McGurk’s individual effort made it 4-0 to the Shrimps after 52 minutes.

Wycombe managed to pull a couple of goals back, through Nick Freeman’s daisy-cutter and a crisp volley by Luke O’Nien.

Wycombe manager Gareth Ainsworth said: “It was a shock to me, but not as big as you would think because this league is tighter than people think.

“You look at some of the other results today and you will know what I’m talking about.

“Sometimes you’re just not good enough on the day – there isn’t a rhyme or reason to it because you’ve set up with the same team, we’ve trained the same and you ask them to go out and do the same things.

“Sometimes the other team are better and that’s football, but we were rubbish in the first half today, we weren’t at the races at all.

“People looked off it, we made individual errors, team errors and Morecambe came with a nothing-to-lose attitude as well.

“In the second half we gave it a go, but it was a mountain to climb and I’ll be doing my utmost to put it right for Tuesday [against Coventry].”