Following the 2-1 defeat at home against Burton Albion in League One, I asked the Vital Lincoln City members what three things they learned from the match.
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Here’s what sedgleyimp said:
1. You have to make the right decisions as a player during a match. There has been some discussion on here and elsewhere concerning the team selection and fingers pointed at the management as a consequence. But the reality of last Saturday was the wrong decision being made whilst the game is being played. Such things cannot be micro-managed from the sidelines. There were a number of very promising attacks which broke down simply because the wrong decision was made. I will make reference to one specific example which showed the difference in the on-field play in the win at Plymouth and the loss against Burton. In no way should this be seen as pointing out an individual player as he who is about to be named played perfectly fine. In the second half at Plymouth Anthony Scully broke away and played a peach of a ball into Marquis who scored. On Saturday the ball fell to him in space on the right. At the time we had three attacking players in almost perfect positions in the box covering the near and far posts and the centre of the box. He inexplicably chose to shoot from an impossible angle. This is just one example of on-field decisions which just have to be made and if you get them wrong, as we frequently did on Saturday, you can easily lose.
2. Football can be a simple game. Burton deservedly won on Saturday because they played to their strengths. They were pretty limited but knew that if you stick the ball into the box you just might get a chance. We overplayed our attacks so very often. They lumped it in and got the benefits. We actually made a couple of similar chances, but they were blocked or in one case very early on three of our players just got in each others way. I don’t mind that as we too often look to score the perfect goal and a scrambled one scores you just as many as a sublime eight-player passing move.
3. Wind is probably the most levelling of weather conditions. Being up in the Upper Co-Op you couldn’t feel the effect that the wind had on this game, but looking at the horizontal flag poles in the corner flags it was clearly having a huge affect. One block which looked like it was going out managed to blow itself back into the area. The reality is that we didn’t adapt well to the conditions whereas Burton, especially with their long throws in the second half, did. The big learning curve for our young players again comes down to those on-field decisions that just have to be correctly made.
Thank you to Graham Burrell and Lincoln City Football Club for the photograph!
Have a go at our Lincoln City versus Burton Albion Quizzes, published last season (they were all correct at the time they were published).
Lincoln City 1-2 Burton Albion:
Three Things We Learned:https://t.co/hw9cHyENKk#ImpsAsOne #BAFC
— Vital Lincoln City (@VitalLincoln) February 5, 2022
