City capped off a truly magical Christmas with yet another three points, this time putting five past a half-decent Peterborough United side.
The game broke a little record – this was the Imps third win on the spin against Posh, a run that we have never seen against our not-rivals. Last season we got our biggest ever win against them (5-1), this season we got our biggest win at London Road (3-0), and now we get the third in a row. This is after seven matches against them without a win, including a run of four without a goal.
In January last year, many fans wrote off our win against Posh, saying it was against a poor side. That makes yesterday’s win even better, as for the first part of the game, they were anything but. With energetic wide players and an expansive use of our pitch, they were the better side.
That was a view shared by Michael Skubala as he gave his post-match interview to John Helm on Imps+.
“Really pleased with the performance,” he said with a deserved smile on his face.
“Probably after the first 20, I didn’t think we started the better team. I thought they started the better team. But when we tweaked a few things when the ref went down, I thought we got on top of them and looked back to ourselves.”
One defining moment came when the assistant referee went off injured. It meant a break in play, and that allowed Michael to gather his troops for a briefing. From that moment on, the Imps took control of the game and our head coach admitted they needed that time out.
“We were talking about whether we needed to try and get George down and think about how we could tweak our press a little bit, and we did that. We added a few things, made sure we reminded them of the game plan, and I think it just calmed the team down, because we weren’t clean enough with the ball when it was turning our way. After that, we got on top of them.
From there, City bagged five, with Tendayi Darikwa and Adam Reach getting three between them. For two full-backs playing in a 3-4-3, having switched from our usual 4-2-3-1 against Huddersfield, that felt like further vindication of how we got it spot on against our rivals.
“The full-backs have been brilliant, haven’t they? Tendayi today was just unbelievable. Reeco, pushing up there as well. Both full-backs have played nearly all the minutes through these five games and we’ve had some really tough games.
“To go through this period with the games we’ve had, and they’re a good team. They’re a really good team. The form they’re on, you can see how they can go and really hurt teams and open teams up. So it’s a really big result for us today, but it is just another three points. That’s all it is. But in the end, a really good performance.”
City now have a 12-day break before the trip to Kenilworth Road to face Luton on January 17th, a chance to get some bodies patched up. Reeco took a knock yesterday and would have come off had we got subs left, while Adam Jackson is back on the grass and may be available for the Hatters game.
Oscar Thorn, Tom Bayliss, Ben House, James Collins and Josh Honohan are all expected to miss out.