I did an article on Tom Bayliss yesterday, statistically one of the best holding midfielders in the division and a key part of our current push towards the top half of the table.
Recently, there has been some criticism of Tom, ranging from him not being creative enough to not being strong enough in midfield. Interestingly, he has won 62.7% of his duels, averaging 5.5 per game, whereas (for instance) Michael Bostwick won 57.5% of his 6.5 per game in 2017/18, suggesting that the eye test isn’t all it is cracked up to be.
Anyway, that debate is already out there, so please feel free to head off to Facebook or Twitter and put your opinion across (as long as your opinion is about Tom Bayliss and not just ‘Gary is talking rubbish’, of course).
This article is for entertainment, rather than debate, I suppose. I wondered which Lincoln City players might have been received differently, or treated differently, had social media been a thing when they played. I appreciate that there were internet messageboards, but for those, you had to have a degree of dedication, which usually led to decent debate.
It wasn’t just a case of opening up a phone and spouting whatever came into your head at the time.
Still, I strongly suspect these six players would have had different Lincoln City careers, or we’d certainly have seen some stronger opinions, had they played during the social media explosion.