By Nathan Jackson
January 21 2007

In what has been quoted by many fans as the worst game of the season, City were lucky not to leave Gigg Lane with a mauling. City's marking was absolutely shocking during the game, and it could have easily been 5 or 6 as the fans started to question the passion and effort of the players.

It’s hard to put into words just how irritating watching Lincoln City is in recent weeks. If this squad has serious ambitions of automatic promotion, or even just the playoffs at this rate, then they’ve got to grind out wins rather than draws. The last two away games have seen us done the hard work in coming from behind to take the lead, only to lose their bottle and end up with a 2-2 draw. You’ve really got to question whether these players are good enough to maintain a promotion push when they can’t even concentrate for 3 minutes.

 

The defending yesterday was ridiculous, and the two goals were very poor defensively to concede. For the first goal, all the players just seemed perfectly content to just stand there as Andy Bishop ran towards goal unchallenged, and headed into a net without a player even trying to breath on him. Earlier in the season we wouldn’t have conceded a goal like that but seeing as Schofield and Deehan seem oblivious to what is our best central defensive partnership (Moses and Morgan), we could easily keep on conceding the sloppy goals.

 

It’s not the first time it’s happened though, against MK Dons, their second scorer wasn’t even challenged and had all the time in the world to shoot, against Shrewsbury there were no Lincoln players within 5 yards of the goalscorer, and yesterday was the worst as we were fortunate to only concede two. Here’s a tip for the defenders, YOU ARE PAID TO DEFEND, in other words, you’re paid to tackle, mark attackers, and generally protect Marriott from the strikers. What you were doing yesterday was practically rolling out the red carpet for Bishop and Hurst to just run at goal,

 

Whilst we’re on the point of Lincoln giving a master-class in how not to defend, I would like to advertise “The Scott Kerr guide to how not to take free kicks.” In this school, you get the chance to get a free kick on the edge of the area before you boot it nearer to the corner flag that the goal. You will not just do this class once, but for several weeks in a row, wasting virtually every decent chance that the Imps get to score from a set-piece. Why chip a ball into a dangerous position when you could just as easily boot it as hard as you can over to the other side of the pitch.

 

You know what Scott, you can stare at me as evilly as you like out of your car as you’re driving past me, but maybe you should you time practicing free kicks rather than concentrating on people who don’t think you’re playing like Ronaldinho. Why don’t you watch what Frecklington does with his corners? By that I mean that Frecklington seems to know exactly where to play it, with exactly the right amount of power, and a few chances come out of it. Granted, we very rarely score from corners either but at least the delivery gives us a chance, the only thing your free kicks give us is a perfectly good chance to watch the opposition goalkeeper to boot it into our half.

 

Speaking of frustrating players, we move onto Jeff Hughes, or Jekyll and Hyde as he’s alternatively known. Sometimes Hughes is excellent and will do a lot for this team, other times he turns into one of the most selfish players on the side, seemingly unaware that there are players in much better positions than him. Take a wild guess which of those two he was yesterday. No don’t get me wrong, if a player makes a misjudgement once or twice then that’s fair enough, I can accept that, what you were doing yesterday was shooting from 30 yards out when we were 3 or 4 on 1. How hard is it to pass the ball rather than shoot from that distance?

 

Yesterday we were outfought by a hungry Bury side, the only team who seemed to want to win that match, and if it was another day then we would have been on the end of a right thumping. Their players had passion, believe and courage, our players had an overwhelming desire to not be there.

 

I’m going to end this report by making one simple comparison.

 

Elland Road, Oakwell, Keepmoat, and the Galpharm.

 

OR

 

Underhill, Saunders Honda, Field Mill, and London Road.

 

Which group of stadiums would you rather be playing at next year? I certainly know which I want to see the Imps playing at next year, but unless they pull their fingers out then we’ll be forced to make our first ever football league visit to Dagenham and Redbridge.