Improved season ahead for City?

By Nathan Jackson
July 28 2010

Lincoln are now the joint-longest serving team in League Two and the last few years have been rough on City fans. John Schofield produced excellent football before results went against him, Peter Jackson had the hype but not the results and Chris Sutton will now try and improve what is a relatively poor win percentage during the coming season.

echo red middle coop During the summer my prediction of where the Imps will finish has fluttered. At first I struggled to think of two sides in the division with less capability to finish outside of the bottom two, then we made some impressive signings and I got a bit more optimistic. The signing of Delroy Facey deflated me a bit, it wasn't Facey himself that was the issue, I could handle the prospect of him or Broughton, but not both. I was also set to predict us for around 16^th, but saw enough in the Celtic friendly to see that our signings are decent.

A lot of people are questioning Anyon after his performance against Celtic, but people forget how Rob Burch started. Some have even said he would never replaced Burch adequately, but to be honest Burch wasn't as good as soon people make him out to be. Don't get me wrong, he's good, but when you don't keep a clean sheet in 25 games, you're not quite the shot-stopping machine that some fans make you out to be.

Player : Carayol I am very excited by the prospect of Mustapha Carayol. He was Somma's only rival for the best player on the pitch during City's 3-2 win at Torquay United in March, being the only realistic attacking threat that Torquay carried. The pre-season has seen him play well and I think he'll easily be judged to be the best player we've brought in during the summer. People are saying that he's like N'Guessan, but again a lot of people forget that N'Guessan did precisely sod all for his first two years at the club and was about as inconsistent as, well, I can't actually think of an example, that's how inconsistent he was.

However, as generally impressed as I am with Sutton's signings, some of Sutton's signings during his time here have either been truly shocking, or rarely played. How Sutton had the nerve to suggest that it wasn't his fault that there was no money to spend on wages was beyond me. How can you justify having Michael Gordon on the wage bill from November onwards and only play him four times? I'm not trying to sound funny but you can't moan about a lack of money in February/March when you've got several players that YOU brought to the club who aren't even getting on the bench. TheLincolnBench

Sutton's signings to date have been very hit and miss to say the least. For every Davide Somma there was an Anthony Pulis, for every Chris Herd was a Khano Smith and for every Adam Watts was a Michael Uwezu.

With a losing percentage of nearly 50%, my jury is definitely still out on Sutton. Everyone said that last season that he had Jackson's players and no-one else, but that's a bit misleading as by the end of his sixth week there we more of his players in the starting XI than there was Jackson's ex-players. Much like Jackson however, Sutton only realistically achieved survival last season due to a small winning streak in winter and the bottom two being utterly useless.

Not to forget the fact he kept playing Paul Connor, Shane Clarke and John-Lewis when it was blatantly obvious neither were any good. Infact I was absolutely amazed when Sutton came out and said he thought John-Lewis was a good player. I saw every match that John-Lewis played for this club and could count on one hand how many times he played well during his 70odd games.

There were times where City would take the lead and then just sit back, not venturing forward. Who remembers the Rochdale game at home last December? We took a deserved lead through Chris Herd and we could have easily been two or three up by then, but bizarrely we just sit back and allowed Rochdale to come onto us. As impressive as Rochdale were that day, our players stopped at 1-0 and hoped it would be enough, which is obviously wasn't.

I do also find it strange that some say that we ended the season well......we lost 5 out of our final 10 games, winning just three.

One thing I will give to Sutton though is that he certainly makes his mind up quickly about players. Within weeks he had seen that Janos Kovacs was the weak link in the defence, and that Howe, Clarke, Butcher and Fagan simply weren't good enough. And to be fair I agreed with him not playing Hutchinson. The young striker may have had energy but rarely made an impact in the games he played.

So after reading all that, you're probably wondering why I think we'll finish in midtable. Well for a start we know what we're getting with all our strikers, unlike last season. Virtually no-one had heard of Chris Fagan or Jamie Clarke last summer, whereas we know plenty about Facey and Broughton. As I mentioned earlier, I would have been content with one OR the other (preferably Broughton) but both does worry me, however, given that the likely partnership is Broughton and McCallum, I am quite content.

Player : McCallum As one of the 100 that saw McCallum face us at Hereford, I certainly know what he is capable of. He hasn't really hit form in pre-season but then again, very few strikers score for fun in pre-season. He may have missed a few sitters during the pre-season, but at least he has been in the position to miss them. Fagan or Clarke would have been nowhere near those positions last season.

With McCallum, Carayol, Jarrett and Hughton, we have something in the side that we haven't had for a long time, pace. It's been a while since we've had anyone truly prepared to run at defenders, as in properly run at them. Frecklington would often go on long runs but didn't actually have many/any players to beat. Forrester, Stallard and Wright were more methodical, stopping and assessing the situation, whereas Patulea was just a guy who happened to be in the right place at the right time. No-one has properly run at the defence for a while.

However, other than McCallum and Carayol, my main point of optimism is due Player : Keltie to Clark Keltie. Some of you will have just read that and said "Clark Keltie?!?!?!" Keltie was yet another example of a Sutton player brought here who rarely played, but when he did he was excellent. His passing was excellent towards the end of last season as much as Somma took credit for the goals, Keltie was there supplying them and the two became a deadly partnership. Keltie's passing has always been amongst the best in the division.

I think for the first summer in a long time, we have a realistic mix of both good and bad things. The inclusion of the wingers should mean we are more of an attacking force during the coming season, but I am still not comfortable with the "score and sit back" tactics that Sutton showed last season.

I think a good season for us will be a midtable finish and that's what I'm going for. We're certainly not good enough to challenge at the right end, we still have far too much deadwood at the club for that, however, I certainly think that all the players Sutton has brought in as good as, in the majority of the cases better, than the players they have replaced.