The first line of any piece of writing is important in securing the interest of the reader in what follows. If you are still with me and who can blame anyone for not wanting to be depressed by the antithesis of a success story, I have a new theory.
Lincoln City have not matched the success of last season, but have recovered recently coinciding with the recruitment of John Marquis. They have been doing OK at home and they don’t need to be more than moderately competent to win. We have shown twice fairly recently, that we can score and hang on till the end against top teams and equally we have shown we can play as well as average League 1 sides. If the away wins had come against lower-half sides, it would be easier to grade the quality of Rovers performances. But by the success at difficult venues we are thrown into confusion as to what the potential is.
We can conclude that results are inconsistent. We do not know, but we might deduce that it is a lack of resilience which is at the heart of these failures. We seem to show more determination against those top teams than we did last Saturday against a moderate force like Portsmouth. GM tells us that following that loss he showed his anger at his players and implied that the vast majority have been disappointingly lacking in the necessary drive to carry them through setbacks. To lose heart after conceding the first goal should be a problem confined to Under 11s, not at this level. We seem to let it get us down irrespective of how good the opponents are, so is it right to conclude that they lack stamina and are not fit enough? Surely we should be examining whether they really exert themselves as much as so many PL players who you see breathless and dripping with sweat for 90 minutes and still in recovery 5 or 10 minutes after the game when they are interviewed?
So I wonder whether we are being too kind to the players, imagining that it will take weeks and weeks to get properly fit, blaming the previous regime entirely for effectively providing a comfortable billet for all but the self-motivators? Attitude is in the mind, not the legs, and most of the team are young enough to have turned around their fitness by now and show some courage and Esprit de Corps!
Perhaps we may only lose by 2 goals, so I’ll say 3-1 (Martin, Griffiths, Rowe).
DPL v Lincoln City
posted on 15/2/22
Second best in every department, unable to retain possession when they do get the ball. 31% possession and no real chances created.
Looking tired at half time…
They look out of their depth.
posted on 15/2/22
Smash and grab - not pretty, but I'll take it!
posted on 15/2/22
Happy to be wrong ⚽😊
posted on 15/2/22
We should play away all the time like Grimsby
posted on 15/2/22
I don’t think I’ve ever seen them play as badly and win. Why are the young strikers so slow on the ball? Our pass accuracy was 54% compared with Lincoln’s 80%. When we got the ball we could not hold on to it, so that would be another dreadful stat if it were logged.
Lincoln were totally and unbelievably incompetent in and around the box. So they have to take responsibility for their failure, but Rovers take away only very limited credit.
Dan Gardner seemed dreadful when he first played, but he is certainly emerging as one of the handful of triers in the side and is an example to many of them.
posted on 16/2/22
While in the first half it was amazing we could be so bad and stay 0-0, I think we should give a little more credit than Donaldo does to Rovers' defence's do-or-die effort in the second half.
At first I thought only if there was Velcro on the ball and Rovers' boots, the ball would stick!
I agree that the Imps' ineptitude was their downfall, some of it was caused by Donny's defending.
Dan Gardner is an interesting character; I originally thought he was useless, but when he started playing a couple go games ago I thought, at least, he had a footballing brain. In the first half today he gave away too many easy balls (as everyone did). but he then got much better in the second half.
I'll be happy with many more victories like this - onto Wednesday and demoralizing DM!
posted on 16/2/22
The first rule in football for Rovers must surely be to stop the other side scoring. With the skill levels of the players he's got GMs decision to play a 3-5-2 system seems the best one. Whilst it was torn apart by Rotherham it works against less skilful teams. Its not likely however to prevent our relegation or be enjoyable to watch. However if he sticks to it then the understanding between players should improve and hopefully our woeful stats on passing accuracy and possession will also improve.
posted on 16/2/22
Perhaps my perspective was slanted and it was a better defensive performance than I realised.
Having cleared the ball from defence our players were failing to find space, sometimes looking as though they could not match the energy of the opposition even when they had just come on to the field as subs.
posted on 16/2/22
If the 5-3-1 system is going to work the front 2 are going to have to work way harder to chase and keep the ball. I think he should stick with it for now but I fear Wednesday will have more fire power than Lincoln.
posted on 16/2/22
532 would be better! Doh!