“It’d bore me to tears being as negative as that.”

Views from Luke Imp following Friday night’s 0-0 draw at home against Shrewsbury Town: “You’d not be happy if you’re a Shrews fan who travelled over here on a Friday night and your manager goes 5-4-1 in damage limitation mode for most of the game (even if he’ll pass it off as 3-5-2 come 3-5-1-1) as though they were playing Man City. Not that it was too much of a surprise, Ricketts had the same ‘do not lose’ mindset at Wrexham as he did tonight. It’d bore me to tears being as negative as that. Not a wonder they hardly score.

Too many not quite at it tonight for us. Shrewsbury defended well and were organised but didn’t commit bodies forward anyway until after the sending off and tried to steal the win so in that respect it was difficult to get though them.

Grant and Payne didn’t look after the ball well enough and kept giving it away, the full-backs didn’t have many options when it went out to them and Walker was being marked by 3 albeit we got though them a handful of times.

Subs made no impact either.

Perhaps slightly slow on the ball and too many sideways passes but what can you do when the opposition set up like that? I’m reluctant to use the word predictable because you could see patterns of play that have been worked on that didn’t quite work – and that’s just a learning curve for us at the minute with new management.

Going to contradict myself and say that I called the Bolger red as it happened but only because of how it will have looked to the ref/linesman rather than what it actually was. He’s put his arm across him but given that their guy was about 2 foot shorter than Bolger, his elbow did go into his face but it wasn’t a swing it looked more of a natural ‘easing’ him out that you see 5 or 6 times a game when a ball is played into the channel.

Nothing to be overly concerned about. I’d be amazed if we came across a side any lesser interested in winning, or even scoring, this season than tonight.”

Did you go to the match on Friday night? Don’t forget to Rate The Players, Vote For Your Man of The Match, Rate The Ref and share your views on our Match Thread!

More views from the Match Thread:

Merthyr Imp: “Well, we had three decent opportunities in the first half but all shots went over the bar. The only real one in the second half was Akinde’s shot – a pity Walker was too eager and went offside.

We found it difficult to get past Shrewsbury’s three centre back formation.

As sedgleyimp says, couldn’t really judge the sending off incident on iFollow.

Glad to come out of it with a point in the end.”

UnbelievableJeff: “Unfortunately it was a case of Shrewsbury successfully dragging us down to their level by parking the bus.

Sadly we didn’t arrive with our A-game and were frustrated to hell.

A very soft red card, thanks to am-dram acting from their No. 11. The ref looked at the linesman for assistance and it seemed that old lino was duped.

The golden rule of football is that if you can’t win….don’t lose.”

Snats: “I hope the red card – and in real-time, it certainly seemed like a red card – doesn’t distract from a truly dour Lincoln performance. I’m glad that we’re still trying to play some nice football but a more direct style has its place and we need to add more variety to our game if we want to break teams down.”

"It'd bore me to tears being as negative as that.":https://t.co/KHDlKqQp5N#ImpsAsOne #ProudToBeImps #Salop

— Vital Lincoln City (@VitalLincoln) October 20, 2019

https://www.facebook.com/VitalLincolnCity/posts/2472139189488978

Lincoln City				Shrewsbury Town
Vickers				O'Leary
Eardley				Williams
Bolger				Pierre
Shackell				Beckles
Toffolo				Love
O'Connor				Laurent
Morrell				Goss			86'
Andrade				Norburn
Payne			85'	Giles
Grant			69'	Okenabirhie			70'
Walker				Cummings			60'
Substitutes
Chapman				Murphy
Connolly			85'	Golbourne
Smith				Edwards
Melbourne				Whalley			70'
Anderson				Walker
Hesketh				Thompson			86'
Akinde			69'	Udoh			60'

Game Statistics
6	Goal attempts	12
1	On Target	5
1	Corners	3
10	Fouls	17
0	Yellow Cards	2
1	Red Cards	0
51	%	49