By Nathan Jackson
December 25 2009

September was arguably the biggest month of the year for the Imps as Peter Jackson was sacked early on, being replaced by Chris Sutton at the end of the month. Losing five games out of the six during the month left the Imps near the bottom of the table.  

September 1^st 2009 will go down in history as one of two things, the first being City going out of yet another cup competition, the other reason being Peter Jackson's last game at the club. The Imps travelled to Darlington in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy and given that Darlington hadn't won a game yet, City were favourites to win, but a first half goal from ex-Imp Lee Thorpe, supplied by another ex-Imp, Kevin Gall, saw City exit the competition. The few City fans in attendance had no clue how accurate their chants of "You're getting sacked in the morning" were.

Peter Jackson and Iffy Onuora were sacked around midday on September 2^nd and Simon Clark took charge of the first team. The names started flooding in and the rumoured names that were generally mentioned by the fans were Gary Brabin, John Pemberton, Keith Alexander and Simon Davey, the names kept coming in, but more on that later.

Simon Clark's first game in charge was also ironically against Darlington, this time in the League. However, City had an easy take of the game this time, with a Rene Howe double and Chris Fagan completing a 3-0 victory. Simon Clark also declared his interested in the role at this point, but his chances would take a serious dent over the next month.

City were comprehensively beaten 3-1 at Bournemouth with Chris Fagan scoring what remains to this day as the last permanent striker at the club to have scored from open play in the League. Torres joined on loan from Peterborough, but it didn't get much better as his first game saw a 2-0 defeat at Sincil Bank, this time Shrewsbury doing the damage.  To show how bad City were playing, we also became the first side to concede a Bury's Gigg Lane this season, conceding two late goals for a third straight defeats.

Then it was time for the new manager to be announced. It was widely believed that Simon Clark's chances had been destroyed by those three defeats, and the race was between Gary Brabin, Simon Davey and John Pemberton, however, the job went to Chris Sutton. Sutton's name hadn't even been mentioned until the morning of that day and the appointment came at a massive surprise to most as he had no coaching or management experience. He would be joined by Ian Pearce as manager.

He wouldn't take charge until after a home game against Notts County and that game must have given him the real indication of how hard his job was going to be, watching City concede after just 14 seconds and eventually go on to lose 3-0 to a Luke Rodgers hat-trick.

2009 : Another year, more disappointment : September

Discussion started by theimps.tk (IP Logged), 25/12/2009 01:58

theimps.tk
25/12/2009 01:58

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