Reaction to the 4-1 defeat at Chester

By Nathan Jackson
December 9 2006

Tuesday's win became irrelevant as the Imps lost 4-1 at Chester in a game that Lincoln had controlled for long spells. City were dominant in the first half and most of the second half but goals against the run of play in both halves saw the Imps fall out of the automatic promotion places.

It seems to be a common trend in Lincoln games that we will dominate the early exchanges and then concede a very sloppy goal and then fall apart. Today was only slightly different in the fact that we didn’t completely fall apart and it was only after Chester scored their 3^rd that they took control of the game and up until then, it had been a game that the Imps had controlled. The scoreline definitely flattered Chester who created little if you exclude the goals they scored.

The one puzzling thing is that the management team knew before setting off that Jamie Forrester wouldn’t be fit for the game and yet they chose to not go with another attacker, filling up the bench with defenders and a single midfielder. Now even taking players like Ollie Ryan wouldn’t have been a bad thing because although useless, he is still a striker and might just fluke a half decent perforamnce but when you’ve just gone 2-0 down, bringing off two attacking midfielders for two defenders seems a very curious decision to make.

Now I know a few of you think that I only ever try and find scape goats but as you’ll see from the video when it’s posted, I’m not the only player who doesn’t think Shane Nicholson should be playing. How the hell he was just allowed to waltz into the team in place of inform Paul Mayo, was just a joke because in the 3 games he has played, he hasn’t actually done anything in those games and has more often that not just watched as the ball zipped past him to opposition players. The other two loan signs have been fine but Nicholson has done absolutely nothing to justify just being able to walk into the squad.

As for the goals, I haven’t seen the highlights of any of these yet so I’m doing this from memory but to me, the first wasn’t an error by Marriott but more a case of the player who bumped into (who appeared to be a Lincoln player), forcing him to drop the ball and let’s face it, catching and holding onto a ball has never been Marriott’s strong point. As I said however, I don’t blame him for that go........I do blame him for the 4^th. As I said, I haven’t seen the goals since being at the game but he just appeared to be completely disinterested and just watched the ball in despite not appearing to be off his line. As for the 3^rd goal, 7 damn defenders on the pitch and not a single one was marking the goalscorer and from a defensive point of view, was by far the worst of the 4.

We need to start winning regulary again soon because 9 defeats in 15 has taken us from being comfortably inside the automatic promotion places to barely staying in the automatic promotion race and although we’re only 2 points off of 2^nd place, we won’t stay there much long unless sometime changes.