I’ve been clearing up an old laptop for someone this week and have found a few articles I’ve penned over the years. This is one I wrote after the sacking of David Holdsworth, long before Danny and Nicky came to the club and even before Clive had invested.
This is how low we sank. April, 2013.
Get down to Sincil Bank this weekend, it’s time to save the Imps.
Only, isn’t it always? Surely if saving the Imps was simply about fans loving the club and shouting it out loud, we would be involved in a mid table clash with Exeter in League Two. Instead, we travel to a team we once referred to as obscurity (as in picking Simon Yeo from obscurity), and to make matters worse we are below obscurity in the league.
It’s sad to say that no matter how many people travel to Hyde full of good intentions, there are only fourteen or so men who can make a difference. It’s like two years ago all over again, or even May 1987 all over again. It’s last day madness with the consolation prize a trip into a league full of pub teams and local rivals once treated by us as feeder clubs.
The board are clearly to blame in the hearts and minds of most Imps fans. The board dispose with managers as regularly as new Mum’s dispose of Pampers, and in truth most times the content of the nappy would have done a better job on the touchline. They appointed Steve Tilson (a real nappy filler), although to be fair the sales pitch was fairly good. In his defence he did bring some good players to the club (Alan Power and Jamie Taylor) but his ability seemed to be restricted to playing children in goal and leaving Joe Anyon to watch from the sidelines.
His post match interviews were baffling, bizarre and at times incomprehensible. Bob Dorrian sacked him (correctly) and appointed David ‘Reg’ Holdsworth, a man very much maligned and misunderstood. Now I don’t feel this was a bad choice at all – he saved us from relegation before guiding us to within minutes of an FA Cup tie with Liverpool. However an injury crisis led to a collapse in results and those with very short memories campaigned for his dismissal, a campaign that was eventually effective.
So the circus rolled on and a former (dismissed) assistant to a former legend made his way to his former club, bringing with him the former fifth best centre back of his era along with him, in the fifth tier of English football. It’s almost poetic.
Now there are just two questions that remain: can we survive to live another day scrapping for points amongst the part timers and angry never-beens? Also, what ever happened to Rob Duffy?
Oh, and is it really time to save the Imps again? The story is getting more drawn out than the Rocky Marciano saga. How about instead of press release asking us to save the club, the people paid to win football games get told to do it?
So, let’s look at the positives. Firstly relegation would mean games against Boston and the Lincoln B side from the Northolme…. Oh wait perhaps I should think about us avoiding relegation? Perhaps I should imagine that for once we could emerge from a final day showdown with some dignity and respect, or at least with as much dignity and respect needing a point against Hyde can allow you to have.
What is the way forward? I know the popular consensus is to sack the board, but what exactly would that achieve? Is there a queue of people waving a squad changing cheque book in the air and declaring that red and white pumps through his veins? Does someone out there have a winning Euromillions ticket in his wallet that he’s waiting to pull out? Or in recession hit Britain is it the truth that no one with real money actually cares about the Imps?
Our problem is we don’t have a super fan like Liam Gallagher or Delia Smith. The best I have to offer when asked about famous Lincoln fans is John Inverdale, someone I doubt has a large stack of shares in the Russian Oil industry. In truth, a chicken farmer from the City with good intentions is the best we have, and we should be thankful for that. Maybe the BBC fancy doing Celebrity Football Fan to find us a sugar daddy or mummy to follow us.
Actually, I’d quite like to see that. Celebs could do challenges for the right to follow the club and invest their barely earned money. One episode could have them watching a sports hall full of wet paint dry, and then in another a cockney man can come in and promise you the world before delivering a slap to your face with a fresh haddock. The final could see if anyone can survive the cat food pies and cardboard burgers served up in the ground. I think the wrestler Hulk Hogan would make a good super fan, or maybe the one with a face like a startled fish from Girls Aloud.
In the absence of a super fan, the changes needs to happen on the pitch. The squad isn’t too bad, although if a team is as strong as its weakest link then we’d be best calling a Stockport bound cab for Craig Hobson. However the likes of Power, Taylor, Oliver and occasionally Fofana form the backbone of a half decent first eleven. If they were coupled with a competent defence and some flair from out wide there would be very little for us to fear from a majority of the division.
We’d need a fresh face at the helm though, because for all Gary Simpson’s good intentions he isn’t the man to take us forward. I’m not willing to put it to him personally though, he’s a big bloke and he’s a decent bloke. He just isn’t the man who can inspire us to climb out of this incessant rut. The man to take us forward is fairly apparent, and would be a bold but sturdy choice.
Let me elaborate. The man the side needs has to have experience of football management as well as having had a good solid professional career himself. This would bring contacts as well as football knowledge, and would be essential in attracting good backroom staff and players for competitive wages. Ideally the candidate would need to know about the club and it’s fans in order to form a bond with the fans and ignite some local pride. He’d need to be a bit outspoken and brash with a good personality in interviews and with the public.
If he knew a bit about the current side as well, then all the better…. If he’d been watching Lincoln every week for best part of a decade then I’d say that would be advantageous. A close personal friendship with a former England international and Imps legend could also be counted in his favour as an Assistant Manager. The dodgy tash and perm from the 1980’s isn’t essential.
Step forward Mr Steve Thompson.
So that’s how I feel that the Imps can really be saved. If Bob Dorrian wants to effect that change after we survive (bold) on Saturday, then he needs to get down to the Hunters Leap at Washingborough and buy Mr Thompson a pint. He could drop admission prices a bit as well, it can get offensive paying £17 to watch an accountant tear our professional defence apart.
Excellent read. When you think of what might have been it makes you shudder. Stockport County dropped out of League 2 with us. Look where they are now. Chester City another case in point. Though that Friday night at Sealand Road, will always irk me. Though we would never had that marvellous season under Mr Taylor. So those 6 seasons in Purgatory must never be forgotten as a warning of what could happen again. Not in the immediate future thankfully. Upward and onward. Up the Imps.
its not only Sky who dropped a clanger. It Was City’s 3-2 defeat at Southports Haigh Avenue We lost out to Chester City for promotion by that ridiculous 4./100th of a goal. I do believe it was that goal difference replaced goal average the following seaon. The daft thing was if we had lost by just 2-1. We would have been promoted. My apologise to anyone who thought that part of what I wrote before was correct. I really should stop having power naps. They really do not work for me.