Reaction to the Hartlepool game

By Nathan Jackson
March 10 2007

Please be aware that you are about to be a rarity, a match reaction by myself that is quite literally full of optimism. City almost ended Hartlepool's amazing run, but a last minute penalty denied that, but at least the Imps are back to their footballing ways and back in the automatic race again.

It’s amazing what 90 minutes of football can do for your confidence about the rest of the season. I’ll admit that just before kick off I was thinking athat anything less than a win could potentially end our interest in the automatic promotion hopes, however, after a performance like that I am full of confidence, and ready for the final 9 games of this season. Saturday’s results also helped and even though we’re 3 points behind Swindon in third, we now have a great chance to make a final push for that automatic promotion place.

Friday night was a great return to what we had been playing previous and it finally saw the end of our countless hoofballing tendencies. It was just like all of our previous away games against the top sides, taking a lead and then failing to create many chances afterwards but eventually holding on for a result. It is a shame that City couldn’t win for just the 4^th time this calendar year, but there was definitely many reasons to be optimistic about, especially considering that it only took a stupid penalty give away for the most in-form team in Europe to deny us a victory.

As soon as the goal went in, City were on top of the game and the defence were actually doing a great job for once, the only major disappointing things were the lack of opportunities and the same old problem of taking shit set pieces. We broke through several times and really should have made more of the great chances that we created for ourselves and on any other day they would have been put away, hopefully we can do that next week in what will be hopefully be a repeat of the 5-0 hammering we gave Barnet earlier this season.

It says a lot that we can go to the best side in the division, and be rarely threatened from them until the final 10 or so minutes. It was easy to see why Hartlepool have put together such a decent run, a run that we might have to replicate to win automatic promotion, but I am highly confident that we can win at least 6 of the remaining 9 games.

By the way, small message to the two John’s, can you possibly superglue Nat Brown’s arms to his side, because before that penalty Hartlepool were barely getting a shot on goal, ironically mainly down to the superb defending of Brown and Moses. Infact there wasn’t a single player that didn’t play badly and that is a huge boost after having at least 7 out of the recent start 11s playing badly. It certainly raises questions about who Schofield should start with against Barnet, will regular first teamers Beevers, Stallard and Morgan be able to get back in the side for the next game (injury and illness providing)

Let’s cheer the Imps on to automatic promotion, we deserve it and we WILL get it.