Derek Adams believes there is no pressure on his Morecambe team as they chase a first-ever Football League promotion.

The Shrimps have only secured one top-10 finish in League Two since going up from the Conference in 2007.

But Adams’ team now sit sixth in the table after John O’Sullivan’s first-minute goal secured a 1-0 win at Harrogate despite Nathaniel Knight-Percival’s second-half red card for deliberate handball.

The former Plymouth boss said: “Over the last number of seasons Morecambe have been fighting relegation but I’ve told the players to forget that. We are fighting for automatic promotion now.

“There is no pressure on ourselves, because there are quite a few big clubs that we are competing with, but we have to go for it.”

Adams also felt the margin of victory should have been more comfortable, declaring: “We probably should have been 4-0 up at half-time with the chances we had.

“We played some scintillating football in the first half in terms of the way we passed and moved but, with the areas we got into, we were unfortunate to only be leading 1-0 at the break.

“In the second half, the wind made things harder and we were defending going up the slope as well.

“They were also putting in throw-ins all afternoon that were more like corners. That was their main threat and I thought we dealt really well with it.”

Boss Simon Weaver was disappointed with 13th-placed Harrogate’s efforts at both ends of the pitch and admitted the loss of on-loan Forest Green forward Josh March to a season-ending knee injury has blunted his side’s attack.

He said: “It was frustrating to concede such an early goal almost straight from the kick-off after all the defensive preparation we had put in throughout the week. They could have driven a bus through us, so maybe we need to do even more work.

“All the players are good individual defenders but we’ve got to do better collectively to stop recurring things from happening.

“With our pitch being so young, it’s not conducive to the passing style we would like to play either and it often comes down to who is the better team in both boxes – and we were lacking in both.

“Aaron Martin will be disappointed he hasn’t scored with the chances he had and, even though we were in the ascendancy during the second half, there was never that feeling of inevitability that we were going to score.

“Josh March was providing that for us when he was winning penalties and sniffing out goals but we haven’t had that threat for the last two games.”