From Brazil to Guam, why did City fall apart?

We're not going there
By Nathan Jackson
May 18 2007

2006/7 saw City start off playing like Brazil and Italy, to eventually start to cave in and play like the Guam's and San Marino's of this world. So how did it go from being so good to so terrible? In this report I look at my own personal theories as to why it fell apart, including dropping in-form players, playing the players in the wrong positions, and October getting to everyone's head.

At the beginning of the season most Imps fans were less than optimistic about our chances this season, whereas I was relatively confident after seeing our pre-season friendlies and speaking to John's Schofield and Deehan about their plans. We brought in several excellent and experienced signings and the fixture looked bright for the Imps.

The electric and goal-filled start was more than even I had hoped for and it looked like we were going to walk away with promotion at the 5th attempt. Such exciting young talents such as Jeff Hughes, Lee Frecklington and Lee Beevers all integrated well with the more experienced members of the squad and we created a thunderous attacking force. We were conceding a few goals here and there but the Manchester United mentality of "You Score 3, We'll Score 4" seemed to be the dominating feeling at Sincil Bank.

Life was good early on as we brushed aside promotion contenders Wycombe, Swindon and Hartlepool within the first few months of the season, whilst also giving out some hidings at the same time. Although a bit shaky, the defensive partnership of Moses and Morgan were doing a great job before Moses got injured at Barnet in October and that's when it all started.

All of a sudden the goals started to dry up, the 7-1 victory over Rochdale was the final time in the regular season that City scored more than twice in a game, but the goals were now flying in at a consistant rate in the other goal. November saw us lose to several mediocre sides and then players started to get played out of position. Lee Beevers was shoved to left back despite being right footed and we conceded a fair few goals from that side.

The ultimate sign of our struggling defending capabilities came in the game at Port Vale in the cup. City dominated the opening period and then a lack of closing down allowed Danny Whittaker a free run on goal as he put Vale into the lead. If the first goal was sloppy, the second was just a joke as the Imps had 5 or 6 opportunities to take the ball of the goalscorer, but he managed to get past all of them and round Marriott.

December saw a relatively good return to the previous results as City won 5 of the 6 games, including that game at Peterborough which was more about pride than anything. Victories over Grimsby, Boston, Wycombe and Bristol Rovers seemed to put City back on track for automatic promotion.

Then we get to January, the time when it all started to go wrong. Several players left the club whereas only a small handful came in, none seemed to be any better than what we already had. Our performances in that month were more disappointing than anything, but we still had a great chance of automatic promotion.

February started quite poorly with a very tired display against Notts County, but then victories over Torquay and Walsall left the Imps just two points off of top spot. Everyone at the club was on a high, with several players going to the media and saying that they thought that the title was a highly achieveable target, that quickly turned into worries as within 8 days of beating Walsall, we were thrashed 4-1 at home by Hereford and only got a draw at Accrington, arguably the week that destroyed the season.

It just wasn't the same after that, the same players who had looked so confident just before that week suddenly had worry stricken faces and the season looked in real danger of collapsing. All confidence disappeared and the Imps won just twice more all season before the eventual failure in the playoffs.

So, what went wrong? Why did the Imps suddenly turn from world-beaters to whipping boys? I think the first turning point was when Schofield won manager of the month and the Imps got a lot of media coverage. Maybe it made the players big-headed and gave them an over-confidence that they could beat anyone. Performances certainly weren't the same after that, only the odd game here and there did we replicate the early season performances.

The change in the defence early on also seemed to put us in a bad stead. Our final 3 games on Sky showed how poor our defence had become, players left unmarked, City players kicking the ball straight into the path of onrushing strikers and not getting the ball clear on the first attempts. Maybe this is because John Schofield strangely prefered to play a right-back at left back.

Paul Green took over at left back in recent months and I don't think I saw him use his left foot once, and having to switch foot everytime he got the ball gave the attackers extra time to come and win the ball. I would leave to see Green play in a right-footers position next season just to see the difference. With Eaden likely not to come back, it would be the perfect opportunity for Green to move into his position.

Another theory for our collapse has been that John Schofield's seeming reluctance to criticise his players made them soft because they knew that they wouldn't be told they were playing poorly. I'd be prepared to bet anything that Schofield and Deehan didn't bring them in once for Sunday-training.

Then the strange thing was that after embarrasing defeats, John Schofield would always say he was proud of the lads. A strange thing to say after a defeat that had seem yet another tired and futile attempt to win a game. He's already said he's proud of Thursday night's frustrating performance against Bristol Rovers, it'd be interesting to see if he actually ever told the players that they played crap.

The odd thing this season was that players would play a few games and disappear all together. Ryan Semple is the forgotten man at Sincil Bank and hasn't made a first team appearance since August, on loan Matt Birley was playing well but just disappeared after 2 games whilst Shane Nicholson somehow managed to stay in the first team. These sorts of players could have made the difference.

Then we get to Spencer Weir-Daley, scoring for fun in February and is then dropped all of a sudden for no reason what so ever for the game against Accrington, very bizarre. He was easily the best striker at the club at the time, and yet he's just dropped to make way for a striker who hadn't performed for quite some time.

It's a similar trend to the constant dropping of in-form players, the most recent of which being Paul Mayo. He was immense towards the end fo the season and then was dropped for no reason for the playoffs, again it makes you wonder if we would have stopped a lot of the goals if we had played out most inform defender in the playoffs.

Another thing that stopped the Imps going up was Forrester and Stallard, no, not because they were rubbish because they weren't, but because neither had a decent rest throughout the season when they weren't either injured or suspended. There was never any serious competition for them up front with the exception of Weir-Daley and this hasn't helped the Imps at all.

So what have we learn from this season? It's that you can't expect to defend like we have done and get away with it. My friend who supports Swindon has told me that if you make a defensive mistake in League One then you will get punished 99% of the time, it's not a much lower perfectage in League Two and we will have to make a significant improvement if we are to finish in the automatic promotion places.

Whether we will go up automatically obviously depends on a lot of variables, but this division is getting weaker next season so we should hopefully avoid the playoffs, you hope so anyway.