Will it be a rare November to remember?

November is often City's worst month of the season, failing to win a League game in that month during four of the last five calendar years, but a new wave of optimism around the club, combined with the fact City face the three clubs immediately around them, mean City have an excellent chance to pull away from the drop zone.

November promises to be an interesting time for the Imps and especially the next three League games. City are in the middle of a group of four near the bottom of the table and City face the other three in that group over the next few weeks.

The general feeling around Sincil Bank is that the club are going to pull away from the relegation zone sooner or later, mainly due to the refreshing change of atmosphere that Steve Tilson has bought to this club with him. The stories that have come out in the month since Chris Sutton quit about how he ran the team, how he interacted with the players and various other aspects of his “style” make it very unsurprising that we have struggled over the last year, but now most fans, including myself, feel that this club is only heading one way, and it is not down.

The Wycombe game was a brilliant example of the change that the team and club have made over since Sutton left. Had Sutton still be in charge for the game against Wycombe, it would have been game over as soon as Wycombe scored that early goal, but it wasn’t and the team fought for each other, there was a real team ethic and the players wanted to play for each other. It make such a refreshing chance from the year Sutton was here, where incidents of a “team” were very few and far between.

Incoming personnel has definitely been much better than the majority of what Sutton bought in. Sutton took a side that had finished 13^th the season before and basically tore it apart, replacing it with a squad that only barely escaped relegation. The team again fell apart due to the loans expiring and contracts ending, he then somehow managed to compile a side that looked even less likely to score than the last. It was a truly depressing time to be an Imp.

Tilson has made four signings so far, three of which played against Wycombe, two starting and both of the starters had excellent games. Howell was excellent in midfield and it the box-to-box midfielder that Sutton and Pearce made us believe Josh O’Keefe was.....infact, the fact O’Keefe has been completely dropped from the squad tells it’s own story. Then there was Gavin Hoyte. You’d struggle to remember a defender who made a debut as good as Hoyte made and it’s just a pity that we won’t have him for that long.

Still undefeated under Tilson, we head into November still outside of the relegation zone....just. It is very important that we take advantage of playing teams around us. It all starts with a game against Northampton Town on Tuesday. The Cobblers have been seriously out of form recently and their win over Gillingham at the weekend was their first since beating Liverpool, then again, beating Gillingham at home is hardly difficult given that no-one has lost on their own patch to Gillingham since the end of 2008/9.

Northampton have struggled since losing Adebayo Akinfenwa in the summer and his replacement, Tadgh Purcell, certainly hasn’t lived up to the hype that surrounded him in the summer, failing to hit the net in six appearances since joining from Darlington. Having said that, Leon McKenzie has five goals in just nine appearances.

After that is the FA Cup game against Nuneaton and a game that City should realistically win given that we have defeated four teams from that level of football over the last twelve months,.

A trip to Morecambe’s Globe Arena follows and the Shrimps haven’t had a brilliant start to life in their new stadium. They’ve drawn five of their seven games there, winning one and losing the other. However, City have found them a hard nut to crack in the previous six meetings, winning just the one game, conceding the double last season due to two 3-1 defeats.

Then we get to the game at home to Hereford, a team who seemed like one of the definite to go down a few weeks ago. However, they have become resurgent recently and their 4-3 win at Northampton when 3-0 down shots that they are certainly not push overs. Strangely, despite being 23^rd, only Port Vale and Bury have won more away games than Hereford.

All of this will be followed by a very difficult home game against Bury,. Although the Imps do have  a half-decent recent record against Bury at home.

With City improving under Tilson, the three League games listed above will be massive and go someway to showing City where they will finish in the upcoming season. Realistically City can win all three, having said that, we know that City do have a self-destruct button and could just as easily lose all three. Not to forget that November is generally not a good month for City in the recent past. City haven’t won a League game in November in four of the last five years, 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2009 and even in 2007, they only won one of four League games.....infact, if you expand it then City have only won one League game from the last 18 games they’ve played in a November.