By Nathan Jackson
December 16 2006

For the third time in 11 days, the Imps dominated a game and this time came out as deserved winners against Grimsby Town. It was a great recovery from Chester's 4 shots/4 goal haul of last week as the 2-0 win made sure the Imps kept up with the automatic promotion fight.

You probably won’t believe this but the performances against Chester and Grimsby were almost identical, this week however we weren’t facing a team that somehow managed to fluke having every single one of their shots resulting in a goal. So far this month, we haven’t been outplayed by anyone and if last week’s score reflected the game then we’d currently be celebrating getting our 9^th point from 3 games tonight, however, I did say that if we want to still be challenging for automatic at the end of December, we have to get at least 10 points out of the 6 games and with 3 games left, 4 points is definitely achievable.

Today’s game seemed to be about the talents of one man, Lee Frecklington, he did an excellent job of running the midfield and was unlucky not to score several more but for once the match sponsor got it right. Without trying to disrespect the other players, Frecklington was just a class above today and showed exactly why he’s been scouted by higher league clubs and we may have a job holding on to him in the January transfer window. It’s just a shame that he’s going to be suspended for next week’s game.

Another player who deserves praise is Paul Morgan, it was a flashback to what Morgan used to be before all these injuries held him back. He had the Grimsby strikers in his pocket and kept one of the best strikers in the division completely out of the game and hopefully he’ll repeat this performance in coming weeks. His defensive partner, Lee Beevers, also deserves a lot of praise as he has arguably been the most consistent performer this season and was unlucky not to add to his goal tally this season.

One thing I have to complain about is kicking off at midday, it just doesn’t feel right. Finishing a game before a time where you would normally kick off just feels completely stupid. The only decent purpose it served was to give us the opportunity to go home and watched the other results fail to go our way....again. I certainly hope that we don’t have too many midday kick offs in the near future because it’s just not football, you can keep it in the Premiership, we’ll stick to the good old 3pm kick off.

I was quite surprised how poor our visitors were and the lack of passion that was in some of their players, especially considering that it’s a local derby and in all honesty, were lucky not to leave Sincil Bank with another drubbing. I was personally looking forward to seeing Peter Bore play, I’ve heard a lot about him and heard he is similar to Frecklington................the only time I noticed him was when he was being substituted off.

Grimsby seemed to resemble Lincoln under Buckley, pass and move but with very few ideas going forward, hoping that one of the strikers would chase onto the lost causes that the midfield created. They were quite anti-Buckley at times though and the ball spent more time off the ground than you’d expect a Buckley team to do. Overall, I think Grimsby will be more than safe from relegation but unless they improve soon, midtable is the best they can hope for.

As for Lincoln, well we’re starting to find our form again at a vital time because all the other teams around us are winning on a regular basis and 2 of our next 3 games are against teams just below us. Next week we have the small matter of Peterborough and if we can repeat the performances of the last 3 games, then we should get at least a point (which would be our first since August 19th).