Three Things The Imps Need To Do To Beat Hartlepool United

Ahead of tomorrow’s match at home against Hartlepool United in the Second Round of The FA Cup, I asked the Vital Lincoln City members what three things they think The Imps need to do to progress.

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Here’s what sedgleyimp said:

1. To start it off on a very obvious point. We need to be clinical and make sure decisions in the final third of the pitch are spot on. Tuesday night showed exactly what our season has been up to now. Chances made were not taken and wrong decisions made when it came to the final ball. Crosses didn’t hit their targets. I still believe that on Tuesday we played pretty well, accepted against very limited opposition, but we didn’t win because we failed to take chances. Being in a position of infrequently scoring will always put a team under pressure and we simply got knocked out because we gave them one chance to score and take the match to the lottery of penalties. That can’t be allowed to happen on Saturday. If a chance is there it really needs to be taken.

2. Concentrate at all times. This is very much linked to the first point. Tuesday night’s game wasn’t won because we switched off defensively and allowed their left-back to have an unchallenged run on goal. This came from a throw-in to them virtually on the halfway line at a time when we made a substitution. Some players switched off and we were punished. There were other examples of players just momentarily switching off on Tuesday and that just cannot happen in any level of football let alone in the professional game. Keep switched on at all times.

3. Be patient. A home match against a team in a division below us would normally be considered to be possibly the perfect draw. You don’t have that massive threat of an unknown non-league side playing in their cup final and you know that you have players that man-for-man are better than the opposition. But we come into this match in pretty poor form. They also have just appointed a new manager in Graeme Lee, a former player of theirs. This is his first managerial appointment and as such exactly how his teams play and what formation he prefers is something of an unknown. My recollection of Lee as a player was of a pretty uncomplicated defender. One whose primary aim was to stop the opposition from scoring. So we have to assume that his teams will use this philosophy as an initial base. They will defend in numbers and make themselves difficult to break down. So we will have to be patient in our play and keep to the plan.

Three Things The Imps Need To Do To Beat Hartlepool United:https://t.co/SLgGAB8IWO#ImpsAsOne #Pools #FACup

— Vital Lincoln City (@VitalLincoln) December 3, 2021