Rampant City turn on the style: Imps 4-0 Southend

We controlled the game after that. I thought Jorge Grant had his best afternoon in a Lincoln shirt, his merciless nutmeg of sub Lloyd Nkwudu will surely have the Southend man waking up at night in sweats. Grant has a trick in him and thus far, they’ve all come off. His delivery is telling as well and right now we’re getting far more out of him than Mansfield did.

That penetrative creativity we have behind the forward is frightening and, dare I say, as potent as any set of players I’ve seen in Lincoln City shirts. It might be possible to draw a parallel with the 2006/07 season, but even then we didn’t have this sort of threat on hand. As fans, we genuinely don’t know which player is going to pop up where and, when we do get the ball in a position of danger, any one of three players can be offering the man in possession an option.

Southend didn’t have that, because not long after the penalty they had their last real chance to get into the game. Simon Cox drove forward through the centre, Isaac Hutchinson took the right-hand flank in acres of space and the former West Brom man fired a shot at Josh Vickers from nigh on 25-yards. Wasteful, selfish and perhaps reflective of the lack of cohesion in the second half.

They had their moments, Ethan Hamilton will be a big asset once he settles in, but half time of a game they were comfortable being beaten in was not the best time to introduce him to the fray. He tried a couple of long-range efforts too, but we weren’t truly troubled at all. I think it’s telling that both Jason Shackell and Cian Bolger had good games, but you couldn’t put them forward for Man of the Match because all the real danger came at the other end of the field. Neal Eardley was excellent too; in fact it was yet another game where not one Lincoln player could have been considered a weak link.

As a spectacle, the game began to lose its competitive edge. We made a change, Mickey for Bozzy, which was clearly done with fitness in mind., Tyler Walker got a great chance to make it 4-0, his vicious effort got parried away for a corner and he was almost immediately replaced by John Akinde. One danger of our current situation is the reliance on certain players and Tyler Walker is a player we need to make everything work. Taking him off when a game is seemingly won is without a doubt a tactic we’ll see plenty of.

The final 20 minutes or so were all Lincoln. Grant rolled out the stepovers, Payne got everywhere, like flour when my missus does baking, big John caused a different problem in and around the area and Harry Anderson also came close.

I haven’t mentioned Harry much through this report and that’s doing him a disservice. At the beginning of this season I called Harry as a player we’d see develop quickly and that’s certainly been the case so far. He had a couple of shots blocked before he came off for Bruno and I stand by my prediction of ten goals before Valentine’s Day for the former Posh man.

Before the fourth goal came a classic example of self-deprecation that I had to comment on. The 617, a fine spectacle when sat across in the Selenity Stand, began to sing ‘we are top of the league’, but Southend responded with ‘You’re nothing special, we lose every week’. I feel for those 600-odd supporters, travelling all this way knowing with more certainty than we do that they’re going to get beat, yet retaining their humour even when all was lost. Fair play to them.

Their song was drowned out not long after by our fourth, Big John feeding in Bruno who slotted past the keeper. Much was made of him not celebrating the goal excitedly; he certainly seems a bit despondent at the minute. I didn’t see the celebration, I was tapping away on the keyboard in the press box, but perhaps we do have a worry there. Mind you, players who are unhappy don’t perform and in two cameo appearances at home, he’s won a penalty and scored a goal.

I’m not sure Southend had a touch in the last five minutes, Lincoln passing the ball around as though they were playing a team on ‘beginner’ difficulty on FIFA. It’s hard for both sides when a game goes into the last ten at 4-0; the visitors weren’t getting anything from it and they just sank deep, almost sulking in their 18-yard area determined not to see it become five. Jack Payne was determined to get something past his old club and waltzed around the defence for a late effort, the final one of the game.

The last time I saw us win 4-0 at home was Southport way back in August 2016, but this was different. There was a swagger late on in the encounter, a belief in our play we haven’t seen before. Sure, we’ve always been competitive at Sincil bank under Danny and Nicky (Crewe and Colchester aside), but have we genuinely played with such self-confidence? Those players out there yesterday we not cocky or arrogant, but they were good. Very good.

After the game, Danny did his best to play down expectation, which he must do, something you can read here courtesy of my Football League World report. We’ve had a decent start to the season, but the fixture list has been kind to us; only playing Bolton in the opening two fixtures would have afforded us more opportunity to impress. Yes, the wins at Huddersfield and Rotherham were impressive but in context, both sides have failings we exposed.

The next two matches will be a huge test. MK Dons is a game we know we can win, much of their recruitment came from League Two and Danny knows Paul Tisdale’s approach almost as well as his own. Doncaster got a decent win yesterday, but again it’s a game that affords us a chance for at least a point.

Southend fans sang that we were nothing special, they lose every week. Perhaps they should have considered that right now, we are something special; we win every week and don’t concede goals. That will change, there are challenging times ahead, but after just three games it could be said we’re only 13 wins from safety, more or less.

After that, with this set of players, who knows? We need a bit of luck; a bit of football fortune and we might just be the dark horse everyone outside the club seems to have us down as.

It’s hard to keep preaching caution when every time we do, the players go out and perform like that.