Season Review 2006/07

Another season, and another play-off defeat for Lincoln City. A 7-4 aggregate defeat to Bristol Rovers consigned us to another season in League Two. Five play-off defeats are surprisingly easier to get over than you might think. Once you get used to losing it doesn’t seem so bad, perhaps it was the inevitability of defeat against Bristol Rovers that has quickened my mourning of another failed season. This season hurt the most though.

Our glorious start to the season in which we played the kind of football not seen since the Alan Buckley days, but unlike under Buckley the incisive passing moves actually won us points. We looked sharp, fit and in control in every game we played. Jamie Forrester was on fire, fourteen of his 18 goals this term came in the first half of the season, including four goals at Mansfield and hattricks against Barnet and Rochdale, whom we beat 5-0 and 7-1 respectively. Not to forget his strike-partner Mark Stallard, never a great goalscorer at any club, who bagged 17 goals.

Lee Frecklington has been a revelation. He has been billed as League Two’s Steven Gerrard. The home town player has been at the centre of the Lincoln midfield all season, his clever passing, shooting and charging runs and goal saving tackles, coupled with 10 goals has definitely deserved him comparison with the Liverpool captain. We topped the league with a smash and grab 1-0 win away at Swindon, capping an unbeaten October in which we scored 15 goals, including the aforementioned 5-0 and 7-1 defeats of Barnet and Rochdale, earning John Schofield the Manager of the Month Award. Then the alleged “curse” struck, as we lost all four games in November, dropping us down to third place.

The fans thought we’d bottled it already, but the Imps bounced back in December, ignoring the 4-1 defeat at Chester it was an excellent month for the Imps. We reached the peak of our mountain when we beat Walsall 2-1 away live on Sky Sports, then began the painful tumble back down the league and our eventual defeat in the playoffs. In the second half of the season we took 12 points from a possible 39 – not promotion form at all. So where did it all go wrong? Personally, I point the finger at Nottingham Forest who recalled in-form Spencer Weir-Daley, then immediately sent him on loan again to Bradford City. It seems a bit bizarre that they would recall him, then send him on his way again – depriving Lincoln of an in form striker in a time of rare goalscoring.

However it is naïve just to point the finger of blame at one source, teams had definitely got our tactics sussed as the season went on, perhaps earlier in the season teams who had expected us to play hoof ball as in previous encounters were blown away by our passing moves, for example, Hereford, whom we beat 2-1 at Edgar Street on match day 2, came in the winter and stuffed us 4-1 in our own ground. Some fans have been pointing the finger at the management for not shelling out on new players in the January transfer window, like Hartlepool did, who signed Richard Barker from Mansfield. Barker then went on to score 9 goals for the Monkey Hangers which contributed to their promotion.

One argument against the idea that it is the management’s fault for failing to strengthen the side is that teams like Hartlepool and Bristol Rovers needed to bring in players because of their respective poor starts to the season, whereas Lincoln were in the top three and didn’t feel the need to strengthen the squad any more than Dany N’Guessan and Paul Green, and it probably cost us, who could see that we would crash so miserably and end up in the play-offs again, becoming once more Grimsby fan’s only light in another dark season? The truth is, however, that we have an excellent base to build on for next season, we need to ship out the deadwood and make some shrewd signings, and perhaps next year could be ours.