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“I expect us to finish there again this season.”

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During their first season back in the Football League, The Imps picked up four points against tonight’s opponents Yeovil Town. The first meeting of last season between the two sides was played on Saturday 9th December at Huish Park, in front of a crowd of 2,472. The Imps won 2-0 that day, with goals from Matt Green (50′) and Matt Rhead (69′).

The meeting at Sincil Bank took place on Saturday 5th May, in front of a crowd of 10,004. Jordan Green put The Glovers ahead in the 10th minute. In the 30th minute, The Imps were given a penalty after Bevis Mugabi handled in the area. Matt Green stepped up and his effort from the penalty spot was saved. It was another nervy ending, but Tom Pett showed his class in the 77th minute with a superb right-footed finish from just inside the area. The match finished 1-1.

Fast forward to this season and Yeovil away, which was played on Tuesday 22nd January in front of a crowd of 2,486. The Imps won 2-0 that night, with Danny Rowe scoring both goals (27′ and 45+1′). It was a very long journey there and back on a cold and wet Tuesday, but it was well worth it. It was a very comfortable victory for City that night.

Anyway, time for the Q&As!

Thank you to Yeovil Town supporters David, Jay and Jamie for answering our questions! The answers have been published on three pages. To get to the next set of answers, simply click “click here for the next set of answers!” at the bottom right of the article, or click the names above!

How long have you supported Yeovil Town?

The 1991-92 season was my first proper season, albeit I’d been to a few matches in the seasons prior. We finished 15th in the GM Vauxhall Conference that year – I had to look that up, I was only 11 when that season finished!

Where did you finish last season?

19th in League Two.

What do you think of your Manager?

When he was appointed (December 2015) we were headed out of the Football League in freefall after relegation from the Championship and League One and managed by Paul Sturrock (the wrong man and not a well man).

Darren Way, who was on the coaching staff after an impressive playing career, was undoubtedly the cheap option and did a good job to keep us up (we finished 19th) by sheer force of personality.

The two seasons which have followed we’ve finished 20th and 19th due largely to the fact there were two worse teams than us in the division, and I expect us to finish there again this season – if we’re lucky.

Based on this the manager that taken us precisely nowhere and yet unfathomably he was given a new contract at the end of 2018 which tore opinions apart among our supporters.

I think he’s not up to the job. He’s is tactically naive, makes the same mistakes repeatedly and has a personality which is at best Marmite and has an endless repertoire of excuses albeit nothing ever appears to be his fault.

He was a decent player though.

What were your hopes and expectations at the start of the season?

Probably what we’ve got, another scrap against the drop.

Our start to the season was fantastic and seven games in we were looking great – playing open, attacking football, scoring goals and looking solid at the back, which gave me optimism that maybe we’d cracked it and this season would be better.

In the 28 games that have followed, we’ve got the worst form in the division, five points worse than Port Vale who are second worst. So much for optimism!

One(s) to watch?

I’m an exiled fan living in Lancashire, so my last match was at Oldham almost a month ago during which time a few recent arrivals have shone.

I’m a big fan of Nathan Baxter, our young keeper on loan from Chelsea, a great shot stopper who I think has a big future in the game.

Tristan Abrahams, on loan from Norwich, for a couple against Morecambe last weekend and has looked lively, so he could be worth a watch.

Who do you think will finish in the top 7?

Lincoln City, Mansfield Town, Bury, Milton Keynes Dons, Exeter City, Swindon Town and Carlisle United – though not necessarily in that order!

Who do you think will finish in the bottom 2?

Hopefully not us. I’d go with the current bottom two, Notts County and Macclesfield Town.

What are your thoughts on Lincoln City?

I put a fiver on you to win League Two in July and have seen nothing to prove me wrong yet. Saying that I put a fiver on Liverpool to win the Premier League as well!

What do you think the score will be?

3-0 to Lincoln.

Random fact about your Club?

Ron Manager, the nonsense-spouting pundit from the Fast Show, was based on our former manager Alec Stock, who took us to our most famous Cup win against an all-conquering Sunderland side in 1949 which were known as ‘the Bank of England club’ because of the amount of money they spent.

Also, we once had Ian Botham, who grew up in Yeovil and obviously played cricket with distinction for Somerset and England, play for us in the late 1970s (17 matches, one goal) before he went on to play for Scunthorpe United.

If you could steal one Lincoln City player for your own team, who would it be and why?

Akinde. Always thought he was an absolute beast at Barnet and would love to be able to see someone who could do something with our aimless punts upfield.

What are your proudest and most embarrassing moments as a Yeovil Town Supporter?

Proudest has to be winning the League One playoff at Wembley in 2013. Most embarrassing would be losing at Walton & Hersham in the Cup in 1994-95, sticks in my mind as a really humiliating result.

Who would you say is your most underrated player?

I’d say, Carl Dickinson, our full back who has been around quite a lot of clubs and joined us having been released by Notts County at the end of last season.

He’s got huge desire, loves a tackle and is one of the more experienced heads in our side, so he knows when to hand out a bollocking to his team-mates.

That said, he’s been dropped for the past couple of matches and we’ve won them both – so what do I know, eh?!

Do you have a Supporters Trust and what role do they play at the Club?

We do, The Glovers’ Trust. It has only been established for a couple of seasons, so it’s still finding its feet/voice/membership.

I’d describe it as a critical friend of the club, but possibly more critical than friendly, but with good reason of late.

Which was your favourite match involving Yeovil Town?

Our League One play-off semi-final, second leg at Nottingham Forest back in 2007.

We’d lost the first leg 2-0 at our place and I remember turning up at the City Ground and being asked “why are you even here?” by someone selling pin badges with a Forest badge saying ‘Wembley 2017’.

We went 1-0 in the first half, but they equalised soon after half-time and with eight minutes left their fans were in celebration mode.
Then we scored again and with three minutes to go Marcus Stewart (remember him?) scored again and took it to extra time – we scored twice in extra time, they scored once and we won 5-4 on aggregate.

An unforgettable night which totally over-shadowed the final where we lost 2-0 to Blackpool and basically failed to show up.

The story goes that you couldn’t get a train ticket from Nottingham to London the weekend of the final because Forest fans had booked them all immediately after the first leg.

Which was your least favourite match involving Yeovil Town?

Friday, September 5 1997. The night before Princess Diana’s funeral and our match got shifted to the evening before – away at Halifax Town.
It was our first season up from the ICIS League (what they call the National League South these days) and we got thumped 4-1 by a Halifax side which went to win the title comfortably.

It was cold, wet, miserable, we stood on a crumbling piece of concrete and got abuse from Yorkshiremen for 90 minutes and got home sometime around 4 am.

Do you have a Former Players Association at Yeovil Town?

Not that I’m aware of.

What’s the best thing about Yeovil?

As someone who’s lived 250 miles away from the place for the past 18 years, I may not be the best person to ask!

Where has the wonderfully titled Cider Space forum gone?

It became one of a long chain of web forums where the perpetually angry folk won and the forum owners decided to do something better with their time instead.

Ciderspace still exists as a thriving place for independent club news and comment and there’s a Facebook page where the perpetually angry folk hang out these days!

Are you nicknamed “The Glovers” because you’re handy or because you play like Brian Glover in “Kes”?

Definitely, Brian Glover, I hear he was a big fan. No, glove-making was a big industry in Yeovil in the 18th Century, so that is where the nickname comes from.

Do you still have the famous sloping pitch?

No, it’s a Tesco these days – minus the slope. The club relocated from Huish to Huish Park back in 1990. They took the name from the road the old ground was on, even though it’s nowhere near where the current ground is.

With hindsight would you substitute that one season in the Championship for ongoing mid-table security in League One?

No. As a football fan, I think you have to live for the moment and, even though we knew we didn’t have a cat in Hell’s chance of staying up, the Championship season was fantastic going to some great stadiums.

Why do so many managers come back to the club? According to Wikipedia, five managers have had two spells and Steve Thompson has had four.

Well, two in my time never actually left. Steve Thompson was an experienced player for us when our then manager quit and he took over as caretaker and then got offered the job permanently in November 1999. However, he only held the job until March 2000 when David Webb took over and Thommo became a player-assistant manager.

That was around the time the club was transitioning from part-time status to full-time, so Thommo stayed on as an assistant under Webb and his successors Colin Addison and Gary Johnson, and was appointed manager again after Johnson left for Bristol City in September 2005.

He went back to coaching at the end of that season when Russell Slade came in. Thommo had a fourth and final spell in charge as caretaker when Slade got the boot in 2009.

Funnily enough, his successor, Terry Skiverton, our Captain Fantastic when we came out of non-League, took over as player-manager and kept us up and got the job.

He did the job for three years (2009-2012) before stepping down to become Johnson’s assistant when he returned for his second spell and then took over as caretaker again when Johnson left in February 2015.

Still with me?! So, in summary, Thompson and Skiverton never actually left during the many times they took charge and stood down. The better question might be why did our board stick with managers who weren’t really that good for so long?!

Have any of the returning managers been more successful/liked on their return?

Gary Johnson is widely considered the greatest manager we’ve ever had with the possible exception of Alec Stock who is mostly revered for his FA Cup exploits.

Johnson joined us having left managing Latvia as an unknown and took us out of the non-League after 108 years there and then (after one season in League Two) up into League One, playing some of the best football I can remember.

When he went to Bristol City nobody begrudged him the opportunity, but when he returned to rescue us from a shaky season in League Two he was the returning hero without a doubt.

He then rebuilt us and ultimately took us into the Championship, cementing his legendary status at the club and therefore as successful and popular the second time around as the first.

Obviously, we only stayed one season in the Championship and they were on a downward trajectory in League One the following season and we were bottom of the table when he left in February 2015.

By his own admission, he could not pull rabbits out of the hat any longer and the time was probably right when he left.

How does a team beat Newport 6-0 away and then win only four of their next 29 games? Quite how did the wheels fall off?

A very good question! The critic in me says the team which were playing some great stuff for the first seven matches got the chance to fall under the spell of our manager, who I don’t believe is up to the job of taking us forward.

However, another school of thought is that we got some injuries to important players at that time, results dipped, confidence dipped and things spiralled. Take your pick of one of those reasons.

What has happened to Francois Zoko this season and will he ever score again?

Zoko was crucial for us last season, scoring 15 goals which were the difference between us staying up and going down, but he picked up an injury this season and has not really been the same since.

He’s still capable of doing something but at 35 years old he’s not really up to 90 minutes of football any longer. Let’s hope he scores tonight!

Of your many loan players, who are the ones that stood out?

I’m a massive fan of Nathan Baxter, our young keeper on loan from Chelsea, who I think has a big future in the game and Alex Pattison, a creative midfield player from Middlesbrough who we’ve really missed when he’s been out through injury.

I haven’t seen a lot of Tristan Abrahams, a winger/striker on loan from Norwich City, but he scored twice against Morecambe last weekend, so hopefully, he’ll be a good find.

How big a loss was Jordan Green?

Not massive and his departure was a bit of a surprise to a lot of our fans. On his day he was unplayable, but he blew hot and cold a lot of the time.

Do you think the referee made a real howler not sending off Toffollo at your place for the high challenge?

I am told decapitation is legal in Lincoln and therefore Toffollo thought it was alright! But, yes, I think he should have walked for that.

Why is your home record at Huish Park so poor this season?

As someone who lives 254 miles away from Huish Park I’m not the right person to ask, I’ve not been to a home game this season, but I have heard the atmosphere is not great.

Posted by Vital Lincoln City on Friday, 8 March 2019

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