Column : Why I don't think the Imps will go up

By Nathan Jackson
September 11 2007

Over the weekend I've been trying to contemplate if I still think that Lincoln City will finally win promotion during the 2007/8 season, and my conclusion is that the answer is no. There are several aspects that contributed to my lack of faith at this time and in this lovely column I will explain them all to the best of my abilities, and then try and reflect on the very few positives.

I know that people seem to think that I'm always mood that involves negativity and that I'm a pessimist. However, every Saturday I am always trying to look where the Imps will be if they win, I never look at who's behind us and could overtake us if we don't win. However, I've recently been starting to look towards the latter as I see the teams below us slowly starting to catch up and City slide down the table.

I am always a pessimist when it comes to set pieces. Our set pieces are woeful these days and if Freck somehow manages to beat the first defender from a free kick, it is either caught by the goalkeeper or goes out for a corner. The problem from our set pieces is that our attacking players are too narrow, how many times this season have we had a completely free back post area. The image on the right shows this and shows the space that could be used to increase the chance of scoring.

The 10 Imps players (the redish balls) are so narrow when Freck kicks the ball in and that bronze square is representing the unused space that City could use. If just one City player made a clever run into that space then he would be practically unmarked and would have a great chance of scoring, alas this seems to blantently obvious to those who aren't stood on the pitch or in the dug-outs.

City have scored just once from a set piece so far this season and that was Friday's game against Bradford, even that was fortunate as Bradford had plenty of chances to clear the ball. Last season we only scored 8 times from a corner situation, but I suppose one way to create a scoring opportunity from a corner would be to get it over the first defender, wouldn't it Freck?

Another major problem at the moment seems to be certain players being ball greedy.....when I say certain players, what I actually mean is Dany N'Guessan is ball greedy. Again on the right is a diagram of a situation City have found themselves in many, many times this season, when N'Guessan is running at defenders with 3 completely unmarked with free runs on goal. Now the logical thing to do at this point would be to simply pass to one of the others, but Dany seems to think he can beat anyone and always runs at the defenders, more often than not getting tackled and losing the ball completely.

Granted Dany isn't the only player guilty of this but he is the main culprit. I've lost count how many times we've gotten into these situations this season, and yet every single time the player with the ball has been greedy.  It's tremendously reminiscent of when Derek Asamoah used to play for the Imps, run at defenders, lose the ball, then moan at everyone else as if it was their fault.

Next is when we are defending, the next example happened against Bradford on Friday and twice in the final 15 minutes against Bristol Rovers in the playoffs.

The attacking side are running 3 on 2 against our defence....but the 2 defenders are so pre-occupied in the two in front of them that they can't see the man behind them who is running completely unmarked on goal. He has been set free through the right footed centre defender moving out of position, as well as both the left back and right back going walk-abouts somewhere in midfielder.

The two attackers on the wing means that the defender on the right hand side of the picture will think that the ball is going to be played from the first attacker to the second attacker. This means that he is inching back towards the goalline preparing to defend an attack down the wing that isn't going to happen. This leaves an even larger gap for the ball to be played through the two defenders, and the first that they know about the other attacker is when they turn around and see him one on one with Marriott.

Next is Hoof Brown. This example of Hoof Brown's suicidal version of defending was last seen against Shrewsbury, although for the purpose of this example we won't be using that game, just a general example. Basically it involves the cross coming in and despite there being many defenders to help him, he just wildly swings a boot at it and sometimes it will spin behind and and land right in the path of an attacker.

He is the only defender who constantly hoofs it. You're as likely to see Hoof Brown keeping the ball on the ground as you are to see Graham Norton appointed to play James Bond in the next Bond film.

And even if Hoof does connect with the ball properly, he only hoofs it up the other end of the pitch and straight back to the opposition to launc another attacker. Hartlepool away for example, hoof upfield, defender, midfielder, cross, hoof upfield, defender, midfielder, cross, hoof upfield....etc. If he could actually keep it on the ground, or at least hoof it upfield when there's one of our players there, then we'd be laughing.

Speaking of passing it upfield to the wrong location, we get to Alan Marriott's distribution. In the many years of watching City, I've very rarely seen Marriott choose the easy option. The diagram on the right is the perfect example of the odd choices Marriott will make. You can see the player at the top who is completely on his own, yet Marriott will try and get the ball to the player who has 3 defenders within 5 feet of him.

Unfortunately he's not the Imps player to have this problem. Say for example if the bottom right redish blob had the ball, he would ignore the player with the whole pitch at his mercy, and pass it again to that attacker with 3 defenders around him.

Obviously from these stands we can see more of the pitch than the players can, but surely the player's visiion isn't restricted to the half of the pitch they are on. I quite literally lose count on how many of this situation we get into a game and not once do we capitalise.

Finally, we get to John Schofield's mystery substitutions. In the Playoffs 2nd Leg Mark Stallard was easily the best Imps player on the pitch, and right after he creates a chance for another player, he's substituted....WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING JOHN??? We're 2 goals down on aggregate and you're taking off the only player who looks threatening??

On Friday night it happened yet again. We go 2-1 down and he takes our best player on the night off. Am I missing something here? You're taking off our best player for someone who has barely even played for us? I'm not trying to sound funny John but if you think taking our best player off will get us into a game, then you are very much mistaken.

I could go on forever about John Schofield's tactics and how they could fit onto  a post-it note, but unfortunately I don't have all the time in the world to go into every single thing that's going wrong. However, those are the major issues that I personally feel need address, unless then we'll just be "also-rans" this season, not even making the playoffs.