One thing I always say is people rarely give credit to the opposition. There’s often thought that they’re just faceless baddies, henchmen from a superhero film there to be ploughed through, or AI from a video game that can always be beaten if you’re on it. Well, credit to their manager, he shuffled his pack a little and changed their setup in the second half, as we did against Sunderland last weekend. The result? Same as against Sunderland last weekend, it changed the balance of the game.
If the first half just belonged to us, the second was entirely the home side, with Jordan Wright making a couple of decent saves, and almost throwing one into his own net. We began to give the ball away poorly, sloppy passes heading straight to a yellow shirt. When they attacked it was in numbers, using the width, when we attacked it was slow, laboured and ultimately doomed to go backwards or sideways. Now, part of this is due to the opposition, but not all of it. Not at all.
We suffered another blow when Cohen Bramall, the only Lincoln player with the pace to cause problems behind, pulled up as he drove into the area. Hamstring gone, possibly season over (another one) and yet another enforced reshuffle. Okay, it was Jamie Robson coming on, a player impressing in the SPFL until he moved to us, but yet again we were hit with a blow. Having seen the two injuries happen, you can’t go to the ‘training methods’ blame here, Jackson’s was an accidental collision and Bramall’s was overstretching to beat a man. I’m personally glad I saw him try it because there was no fear of one or two others overstretching.
That brings me to Morgan Whittaker, the punchbag of the fans and one I understand got a bit of stick on the radio. I thought he played well; if anything, he was as close to a Man of the Match for City as anyone. I saw it given to McGrandles, a lonely figure in midfield and utterly swamped by yellow shirts in the second period, but Whittaker actually looked like he wanted to make things happen. Everywhere else, desire seemed to ebb away. Lasse Sorensen wasn’t one I ever had down for lacking effort, but he had a second half he will definitely want to forget.
Ted Bishop did too; he was decent in the first half, but when Jackson went off he went to right back and disappeared from view. His fitness came into question late on, coming off for Sanders, Sorensen going in at right back (never again, please), but Walsh was down with cramped quads too (both of them, why have one injury concern when you can double down, right?). We were falling like horses at Cheltenham, but the harsh truth is one or two would have been put out to pasture long ago if they’d been horses.
Still we battled and…. on, no, wait, we didn’t, that wasn’t us, we showed little fight at all. Sadly, the last 20 minutes or so were just poor. We looked like a team resigned to getting a point, but not willing to fight for it. I felt the home side had run out of ideas, but they kept trying anyway, and Udoh got a break. It came from our attack, a sloppy pass giving away possession, and a half chance developing. There were still four players between Udoh and the goal, plus a keeper, and yet they scored, 1-0 and as we know, that always means game over for City. Score the first against us in the opening them minutes and you’re sure to win. Score against us with five minutes left and it’s goodnight, God bless, don’t let the bed bugs bite. At least if the bed bugs have teeth like our attack yesterday, we’ll be fine on that final point.
Our best, and only chance of the second half came towards the end, a good ball across goal should have been turned in by Chris Maguire. It wasn’t (we weren’t playing Sunderland) and the game rightly ebbed to its conclusion. My problem, and I know some of you will be saying ‘it’s been like that all season’, was the complete lack of urgency to get the ball forward in the final minutes. We’re 1-0 down away from home, with nothing at all to lose. We’ve got at least four attackers on the pitch (Cullen, Maguire, Marquis and Hopper), and yet we were still not willing to just get the bloody ball forward. My real gripe, my ‘get me out of here’ moment, came in the dying embers. There were six minutes of stoppage time, a hopeful ball over the top looks to be running out of play and Aaron Pierre follows it. He’s got Lasse Sorensen sniffing, looking to get in behind, but is he chasing? No. Is he running? No. He jogs, in a forlorn manner, and Pierre doesn’t even have to shield it. Goal kick, pressure gone, urgency never there. It was as if their goal was just accepted as the end of the game, and that was that.
I don’t think we were woeful yesterday, not throughout. In the first half, we played a bit of neat football here and there, had a couple of efforts at goal that could have brought something on another afternoon, but in the second we were utterly devoid of attacking intent. Tom Hopper and John Marquis ran a lot, but there’s no understanding there, no partnership as such. I get why we’re playing them together, and it does work at times, but not in a Cole and Beardsley way. It’s two things for defenders to think about, rather than one.
I also don’t really know what the formation was yesterday, and it was a lot like Gillingham in that respect. In the second period, did we have a left winger? I know Whittaker and Poole started on the right, but was it just Bramall on the left? Was Bishop on the flank until he moved to right back? Who filled in for him after that? And where, precisely, is Chris Maguire meant to be playing? At head of the midfield? On the left with Bishop central? I just didn’t get it. I’ll be honest, whilst Maguire’s pass created one of the early first half chances, I felt his input in the second period was more of a hindrance at times, rather than a help. Maybe I’m being harsh, I don’t know, but fans have got Whittaker pegged as a scapegoat, and there are multiple reasons I left that ground knowing that a sly Burger King was going to be the highlight of my trip. Morgan Whittaker was a long way down the list of those reasons.
I get that we were not at full strength, losing two first team players to international football. I know that once again, injuries are biting hard, whether that’s TJ or the lads who came off during the game. Seriously though, it’s beyond a joke now. We’re limping to safety, and I’ll take that, but Michael will know (and has already intimated as such) that we cannot carry on like this next season, because 42, 45 or 48 points might not be enough in a campaign not blighted by so many awful teams. Gillingham, Wimbledon, Morecambe, Doncaster and Crewe have been so poor (and taken 17 points from us); the fact Shrewsbury, Cheltenham and Cambridge (8 points from us) are above us without ever having outplayed us proves the quality of this league. People say it’s the best in ages, but MK Dons are challenging for promotion, and we’ve scored three goals past them, from open play, and should have six points. This isn’t a good League One; Rotherham are going up and we battered them for 45 minutes the other week; Shrewsbury put three past them! No, this is not a strong League One, not in terms of performances and consistency, and that’s why we’re going into the final seven games full of belief that we’ll stay up, despite having 42 points. Next season, we cannot do that.
Next season, if we’re 1-0 down in the dying minutes, I want to see players putting the ball high into the box for Hopper to look to head down (he’s our best player in the air). I want to see players chasing every ball in the dying minutes, even if they’re easily outmuscled as Lasse is. I want to see players putting the same effort in as the near-500 who travelled 260-odd miles round trip did to get to an out-of-town ground with (and I mean this respectfully) little soul or appeal (how I miss Gay Meadow). I can handle our style for 70/75 minutes, I could have taken a 0-0 draw yesterday and been happy, but I cannot, and will not forgive any player who simply surrenders on 84 minutes, whether things have gone against us or not.
Next season, if we do stay in League One, perhaps we’ll try the M6 toll services if Roy doesn’t miss the turning. They might not smell like urine, as the Coventry ones did, although the Burger King was good. Don’t worry about my health kick either; I had a diet Coke. After all, it wasn’t like my nerves, and in turn, my heart, was put under any stress during the 100-odd minutes of football, was it? That said, my heart rate might have been higher than a few in red and white in the final few minutes, and that’s not good enough.
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