By Nathan Jackson
March 9 2008

Lincoln City will travel to Notts County on Tuesday night hoping to gain their first point at Meadow Lane since 1998. However, this will be arguably the Imps best chance given Notts' poor form. Both sides won promotion back in the 1997/8 season but 10 years later and both have had serious questions asked about their Football League status this season.

March 28th will mark the 10th anniversary of one of the quickest promotions out of this division in history. Notts replaced City at the top of the division in December in 1997 and stayed there for the rest of the season. City would win promotion 5 weeks later with a 2-1 win over Brighton. 10 years later and both sides have found themselves at the wrong end of the League 2 table.

The Imps are near enough safe from the drop but Notts County are now in serious danger of being relegated. The second oldest club in the country have certainly fallen apart of over recent months and their performance at Sincil Bank really should have been an indication about how they would soon end up. Although they have Macclesfield between them and the drop zone, County are still in serious danger of the drop.

City's recent record on the road is fairly decent. The defeat at Chesterfield on Friday night was only the second away defeat this calendar year, the other coming against Rotherham just over 2 weeks ago. The performance will certainly have to better that of the half-arsed effort that some of the players were guilty of against Chesterfield. However, when the Imps beat County earlier in the season they had just come off of a poor away performance against Wycombe.

LJL is the only major doubt from those who started the game against Chesterfield. He went off early and was replaced by Ben Wright. Wright is likely to be the only change to the start line-up, meaning that the team will be Marriott, Green, Beevers, Hone, Brown, Kerr, Dodds, Clarke, N'Guessan, Forrester and Wright.

Notts County don't lose many games, but they don't win many either. They've lost only 4 times in 2008 but have only won twice, the other 7 have ended all square including their recent games against Macclesfield and Barnet. Worryingly for County, those 2 wins both came against a freefalling Chester and other than them, you'd have go back to December 8th for their last win in the League.

When they came to Sincil Bank they were sat on 18 points from 16 games in 19th place. 19 games later and they now have just 35 points in 21st place and are 5 points above the drop zone, although both sides in the bottom two have games in hand.

County have a lot of players who've spent part of their career in the local regions. and quite a fair few at Sincil Bank. Lee, Dudfield, Weir-Daley, Butcher, Mayo and Russell Hoult have all worn a City kit at some point in their career. Lee and Dudfield also played for Boston along with Cannoville, Silk and McCann. Pilkington and McKenzie (also played for Scunny) both played for Mansfield. Danny Crow and Strachan both played for Peterborough (as did Butcher). Edwards and Parkinson both came from Grimsby. So to say there are quite a few familiar faces at Notts County is an understatement.

Earlier this season County were unsatisfied with Steve Thompson seeing them comfortably above the relegation zone (in terms of points) and sacked him, replacing him with Ian McParland, a manager who has since guided them from relative safety to near the drop zone. He has won just 6 of his 26 games in charge at County, drawing 11 and losing 9. If they don't go down this season then you will be surprised if they aren't battling the drop yet again next season.