It has been a pretty decent start to Lincoln City’s fifth consecutive season in League One, as seven games into the current 2023/24 domestic campaign, we have already picked up three wins and three draws, only suffering one loss and our form is very much on the right side of wrong as we have already built up a positive four goal difference. With 12 points to our name at this early stage of the season we are sat in ninth place in the table as I type, and we are after all, only four points off top spot and joint leaders Exeter City and Port Vale.
Sadly, as we enter a new week following on from Saturday’s score draw with Carlisle United at our LNER Stadium, Lincoln gaffer Mark Kennedy had to reveal to massive injury blows to the squad on Monday as he met with the media for is usual briefing and with both of these lads out, West Ham United in the FA Cup will definitely be premier league favourites when we meet them in the fixture list.
Describing himself as ‘heartbroken’, he admitted that both Ben House and Tyler Walker had now been sidelined with long term injuries, and it of course means that we are now a bit short in the front line and our attack.
24 year old striker House, last played for us in our unexpected League Cup victory over Sheffield United back in August, and following on from further tests and investigations, it has now been determined that he will be out for ‘between three and five months’ having suffered a reasonably significant hip injury.
Fellow striker, 26 year old Walker, last featured for us back on August 26 in our 3-0 victory over Blackpool, and Kennedy has now confirmed that he will be out for a further eight weeks with a hamstring injury.
“They are both a long way from playing in Lincoln shirts. They are both very long-term injuries. It’s heart-breaking, for them first and foremost, because they want to be playing football – it’s a job they love.”
Former Reading, Eastleigh and Scottish Under 21 international House, was our top scorer in the 2022/23 campaign, having netted 13 league goals in his 35 starting appearances and three substitute showings and his performances saw him pick up our Players’ Player of the Season award, and the club handed him a new contract extension over the summer keeping him with us until 2025.
Former Nottingham Forest Academy graduate Walker, has been with us before back in the 2019/20 season where he made 29 league appearances, scoring 14 goals. Having been released by his former club, Championship side Coventry City, at the end of the last campaign having only scored ten goals in 68 appearances, he returned to us as a free agent over the summer.
Their combined injuries do reduce our numbers at the top of the pitch, but neither have so far found the net during the 2023/24 campaign, but they will naturally be an unexpected loss, as gaffer Kennedy freely admits.
“They are very different players, but are equally outstanding. It is just so, so unlucky that we have lost two Grade A, top, top strikers. It’s a bitter pill to swallow.”
Onto Derby County in the EFL Trophy later this evening, and then we see what we can do about Portsmouth at the weekend, before an incredibly tough clash with West Ham United and manager David Moyes in the third round of the FA Cup next midweek.
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