By theimps.tk
August 17 2009

Lincoln City's tradition of not winning games against poor opposition continued as Accrington Stanley scored the only goal in a game where Jamie Clarke still can't lift the ball of the ground, City rarely got near the goal and the old doubts with Jackson have resurfaced. As I touched upon in my match report, I think that based on the first three games it is evident that other than the defence, we are pretty poor and lacking in that extra spark. We now have a half decent defence that won't concede an overwhelmingly large amount of goals. It's nothing even close to the 2002/3 defence, but it's far, far better than those seen in recent years. However, the rest of the squad is lacking in so many ways that it's hard to put your finger on it.

The one midfielder who has looked really good so far this season is Oakes. The creativity he brings to the side is immense and Saturday showed exactly why we struggle when he does play as Kerr, Butcher and Clarke are not players that can change a game, especially the latter. Kerr wasn't exactly great, but it was his first game back from injury so I'll lay off him, but Richard Butcher 2009 is nothing but a mere shadow of Richard Butcher 2002-2005. I desperately want him to do well but in his three games so far, he's looked nothing more than mediocre.

I mentioned Clarke during that little midfield round up and I'm still convince that he is a very poor player. To be rated by Accrington fans as "the worst player to ever pull on an Accrington shirt", especially by a team who are widely regarded as one of the worst in the division, says it all about him. In his three games he has shown that he is not only a flop when it comes to crossing, but he quite clearly thinks he's better than he is. The amount of times that he's tried to beat four players at the same time....and fail, reminds me of N'Guessan, but the defence was the N'Guessan actually has skill and the ability to kick a football correctly.

The attack were probably just victims of the midfield's inability to create chances. Howe was feeding off the scraps fed to him by the midfield and Fagan's one chance saw him get a sudden rush of blood to the head, unleashing a pretty poor effort well wide of the net.

This squad is still missing players capable of changing matches. It says it all that Kovacs, a defender, has scored the only goal so far and that Howe has had the only other chance over all three games that looked like having a reasonable chance of going in. We still have around two weeks of the transfer window left, but the chances of us bringing anyone in are slim.

However, the one case in point that I must bring up is Jackson's poor use of tactical knowledge yet again. City were poor, fair enough he goes to make substitutions and to be far, he does take off the worst player on the pitch (Clarke), but he replaces him and a player who is not only come back from injury, but is also has a reputation of being a bit rubbish. Even when it's still obvious that City won't get anything without any points, he changed nothing. There were countless players having bad games and yet after the initial double substitution, not one other player warmed up.

Overall it may have just been one of those days, but City have "one of those days" more times than they have decent days, a worrying trend and it doesn't look like changing as, despite one of our defeats coming against a team two divisions above us, we have still lost more games than we've won this season and it's something that looks like it's not going to end until we get a new creative midfielder, or at least play the only midfielder we currently have that can create anything.

Unofficial THEIMPS.TK ratings

Rob Burch - Didn't really have a lot to do but couldn't do anything about the goal, especially due to the poor marking of the defenders. 7/10

Cian Hughton - Looks a bit out of his depth and gets out of position on many occasions. Could possibly be a right midfielder but there's no point having him in defence as he never actually stands there. 4/10

Janos Kovacs - Not great, not poor, just plain average. 5.5/10

Moses Swaibu - See Kovacs. 5.5/10

Joe Heath - Almost scored from distance but was otherwise a bit average. Didn't put a foot wrong but did nothing out of the ordinary. 6/10.

Richard Butcher - You could have been forgiven for not realising he was playing. Barely looked interested and you'd be hard pushed to find a positive contribution of his this season. 4/10

Scott Kerr - Returning from injury so I'll let him off, but he shouldn't automatically get back into the first team just because he is the club captain, especially as the player he replaced was playing very well. 5/10.

Aaron Brown - Decent deliveries from set-pieces but was otherwise pretty poor and was often found of position. 5/10.

Jamie Clarke - Enough said, 1/10.

Chris Fagan - Still looks out of his depth at this level, once again tried to hard to score from distance and ended up wasting a chance. 4/10.

Rene Howe - Almost scored once or twice but you could tell by the look on his face that he was thinking "How did I end up here?" However, he is the one player who actually looks like scoring. 5.5/10.

Andy Hutchinson - Put in a lot of effort but rarely touched the ball in his 30 minute appearance. 5/10.

Lenny John-Lewis - Has put on a lot of muscle over the summer but still doesn't appear to have worked on his footballing skill as his first touch near enough always goes out of play.

Reaction to the Accrington defeat

Discussion started by theimps.tk (IP Logged), 17/08/2009 21:02

theimps.tk
17/08/2009 21:02

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kevin6
17/08/2009 22:07

I wasn't there but from what I heard on the radio they dominated our midfield.
We lack a decent creative player other than Oakes.

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countygump
18/08/2009 20:22

Told you Butcher was cr@p didn't I .

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