Managing Morecambe, arguably the smallest club in League Two, is an unenviable task but Jim Bentley does not want sympathy. “We’ve had transfer embargoes, late payments of wages, ownership problems,” he says. “There’s been a lot to contend with.”

On the pitch it is two weeks since an opening-day 6-0 drubbing led to Bentley delivering a few sobering home truths. He said his players played as if they had trudged straight off the plane and to Gresty Road on the back of a week-long stag do.

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The affable Scouser is no longer a pub quiz question in waiting, after taking over Paul Tisdale’s mantle as the longest-serving manager in the country in June. “At 42, it’s a bit mad and it just shows you how the game can go,” he says. “I’ve come up against clubs who have had eight or nine managers since I’ve been at Morecambe. You see some clubs doing cartwheels because they have stayed in the Premier League but for Morecambe to stay in the Football League is a massive achievement.”

By the time they travel 26 miles down the M6 to their Championship neighbours Preston North End in the Carabao Cup first round on Tuesday evening, they will have not scored for 112 days and not tasted victory in a competitive game since mid-March. But when things start stacking up against them, more often than not Morecambe rise to the challenge. Since spring the club hope they have established a sounder footing under their third owners in as many years, the London-based Bond Group Investments Limited, after the tumultuous and rudderless reign of Diego Lemos. After seasons of uncertainty the Shrimps are navigating calmer waters at least, wages are being paid but a dose of scepticism is understandable.

“You had to sit your players down at the end of the week and tell them you don’t know when they are going to get paid,” Bentley says. “At our level, as soon as it comes in it goes out and I had chats with some about concerns about being able to pay for childcare and even petrol to get into work. But, we had to be honest, pull together and no one was getting paid at the time, so everyone was in the same boat. I had to try and keep my staff and players motivated to do a job on a Saturday afternoon.

“We’ve stayed in the league for 11 years and that’s an unbelievable achievement for a club of our size. Hopefully the new owners will put certain things in place; they won’t throw large amounts of money at things but things are stable and there’s a little bit of positivity. There are a lot of things to sort out because the club has been a mess, but you can’t expect things to go from one extreme to the other straight away.”

Bentley, who initially joined Morecambe as a player in 2002, is fast approaching eight years in the job. He has worked miracles keeping the club afloat in the Football League. It was a close shave in May, avoiding the drop on goal difference on the final day of the season. Sean Dyche was among those to get in touch to congratulate a job well done and it is staggering that, under Bentley, they have only been in the division’s bottom two once.

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Every week Morecambe are the underdogs. They have the smallest average gate while Bentley has never paid a transfer fee for a player. He previously compared his budget with a trip to the supermarket. “It’s like looking at a nice red wine or expensive vodka and then checking your pocket and you’ve got nothing in the wallet, so you go home and you have a cup of tea.”

Bentley must bleed red and white. When supporters clubbed together to pay a £1,000 Football Association fine last year, he was reduced to tears. That summer he accompanied a fan who had fallen ill at the club’s gala dinner to A&E until 4am. In his 16 years at the clubhe has rejected admiring glances along the way. As with many clubs, they do not have their own training base – they lean on school facilities and a local college’s 3G pitch and, in bad weather, getting players out on the grass can prove difficult. They trained on grass in Morecambe once in four months during snow, though Wigan’s Paul Cook offered a helping hand last season.

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The last time they beat Preston, Bentley set them on their way, opening the scoring in 2007. “My centre-half partner, Dave Artell, who’s the Crewe manager now, scored the winner. It was a tasty cup tie, our first win as a Football League club after promotion and we had a decent run.”

Tuesday will not only provide Morecambe with another chance to upset the odds but also reunite Bentley with the striker Tom Barkhuizen, who was sold in 2016. “He was like someone in a dogs’ home who no one believed in but we stroked him, cut his claws and hair and got him going. He’s now shown what a pedigree player he is and it’d be great to see him in the Premier League, hopefully with Preston.”