Tomorrow evening we face Huddersfield Town at Sincil Bank in the Vertu Trophy round of 32.
Usually, this stage of the competition is still a bit tentative in terms of who plays, but tomorrow is likely to see some big guns for both teams.
We don’t have a game at the weekend, which means Michael Skubala is likely to use some first-team players and go strong. Huddersfield do have a game, a 12:30 kick-off against Cardiff City.
They also played in a humdinger this weekend, drawing 3-3 with AFC Wimbledon, but will still come to the Bank strong. Their squad came through largely unscathed, giving Lee Grant some choices to make.
“I think we’ve come through unscathed, so we’ll have a fit and available squad to choose from, which is obviously helpful,” said Huddersfield boss Grant. “We want to make sure we get the balance right of selecting the team that we think can really go and help us progress.”
Their win against Mansfield in the final group game has sparked a run of just one defeat in five, and seen Dion Charles return to scoring form. With Joe Taylor and Sean Roughan unused subs this weekend, we can expect a strong side, even if it isn’t their full starting XI.
“For most part, it’s (EFL Trophy) been really good in terms of being able to give some air time to some of the group that perhaps haven’t had as much as they would have liked in the weeks leading up to those cup games,” added Grant.
“That’s been important for us, and we’ve also got to be mindful of the group that worked incredibly hard to get us to this point in this competition as well.
“We have to balance all areas, really — and of course, the most important area that we’re trying to balance is our desire to progress in the competition.
“So like I say, we will be fortunate that we’ll have some decisions to make, which is good. But as I said, we’ve really with an eye on going to Lincoln and really giving them a tough evening and progressing into the next part of the competition.”
This will be the first meeting between the two clubs in the competition since they eliminated us via a Golden Goal back in November 1994. While they have the upper hand in the overall contest between the two clubs, they did lose here earlier in the year, courtesy of Reeco Hackett’s 35th-minute goal.
In fact, you have to go back to May 2004 for their last win against us, 2-1 in the play-offs, although in that time we have met just four times.