Grimsby Town 1-2 Lincoln City: Three Things We Learnt

Following the 2-1 win away at Grimsby Town in the EFL Trophy, I asked the Vital Lincoln City members what three things they learnt from the match.

You can discuss what has been said in this article HERE!

Here’s what sedgleyimp said:

1. The EFL Trophy is still a very difficult competition to get enthused about in its early stages. Last nights game had the feel of a pre-season friendly. Mass changes to starting XI’s coupled with playing in front of a crowd of around 10% of capacity just doesn’t lead to the kind of game that’s going to be played with the kind of intensity you’d expect from other games. This can make it difficult for fringe players to make that impact which could lead to starting places for league games. It’s still very much a competition which only starts to peak supporters interests by the last 8. I do wonder if the Premier League clubs remove their U21 teams to concentrate on whatever that competition with the National League is, this competition will end up going the way of the Watney’s Cup or the Anglo-Scottish Cup and become defunct.

2. Competition for places is now fierce. Last night we had the delightful sights of Ethan Hamilton and Reeco Hackett getting some much needed game time following their long term injuries. Lewis Montsma also managed to get through a full game for only the 2nd time since his last ACL injury. Hamilton and Hackett are both quality players at our level and add to the team, but neither are guaranteed starting places in every league game now. You would expect Hackett to be very much pencilled in for the LWB role long term, but Jefferies has certainly not let us down in that position and could consider himself very unlucky if he gets dropped now. It’s the same with Hamilton. Probably our best three players in the centre of the park would be him, Erhahon and McGrandles, but you could argue that all three are very similar in how they play and having one of Bayliss, Moylan or McKiernan instead of one of them would add something different to that part of the pitch. One things for certain:- there will be some very good players not making the 18 on match days.

3. Don’t expect a change of tactics when we play ‘inferior’ opposition. There’s an interesting piece on line analysing how we play and the fact that we are 24th in League 1 for possession stats. That article explains how we are using this to our advantage and you could see last night even when we play against teams in a lower division, the game plan of high press, low block and direct football will remain. You might expect last nights game to have been one where we looked to have more of the ball. The reality is that we have adopted a way to play which doesn’t really factor this in, but factors in how to maximise our 30-40% during games to get the results we have been getting. I honestly don’t think this will change in the near future, but whilst we are getting the wins, do we really need it to?