By Nathan Jackson
October 30 2008

Although extremely unlikely, a win against Port Vale could propel Lincoln City in the automatic promotion places. The Imps are on a great run at the moment and have one of the longest unbeaten runs in the Football League, but we haven't had a lot of luck against Vale in recent seasons, losing two of the last three meetings.

Lincoln City's opportunity to move third comes with a lot of sides above the Imps having tricky games. Brentford and Rochdale face each other, Bury go to Notts County, Dagenham face Accrington, Exeter face Chester and Darlington go to a Grimsby side desperate for a win. A win would almost certainly send City into the Playoff places, something that would have been unthinkable this time a move ago.

The Imps have come out leaps and bounds in the past few weeks and our dominance of games has turned into wins, infact it's playing out a lot like Huddersfield Town's 2003/4 season. They started that season badly and then kicked on in October, eventually losing out on automatics on the final day of the season. Whether the Imps can replicate that run is very much open to debate, but there are certainly enough reasons to suggest that they can.

However, the Imps look set to be without three of their key midfielders for the game as Stefan Oakes (again), Lee Frecklington and Scott Kerr are all facing injuries that could easily keep them out of the game on Saturday. That would be really disturbing if all three missed out as Freck and Oakes have been in spectacular form. More to the point is that we don't really have adequate players to replace them. Shane Clarke has done well so far and Aaron Brown could move to left midfield, but other than that it's anyone's guess.

However, the other positions are likely to stay the same. Burch will be aiming for his third clean sheet in a row, the first time the club will have achieved that feat since the 2006/7 season. He will have Beevers, Green, Hone and Kovacs in front of him with LJL, N'Guessan and Patulea up front.

Saturday's opponents are Port Vale and when I predicted them to finish 14th in League Two, their fans claimed I knew absolutely nothing about football, they currently sit........14th......appears I know more about football than they do. Also, I said that it wouldn't be a surprise if Sinnott was the first manager to pay for his poor managerial record with his job.....Sinnott was subsequently sacked in September.

Port Vale are simply average. They have no outstanding players and no player I would potentially pick out as a potential match winner. They have many strikers who will score every once in a blue moon for you, but they'll never threaten the League's top goalscorers charts....Louis Dodds for example.

City aim for automatics against Port Vale

Discussion started by theimps.tk (IP Logged), 30/10/2008 22:36

theimps.tk
30/10/2008 22:36

City aim for automatics against Port Vale

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