Saturday was something of a new low in the long and not always distinguished history of Lincoln City and, for those not at Sincil Bank, things got a bit ugly at half time and security was in evidence towards the end as, presumably board members feared for their eardrums if not their safety. Amusingly, for us regulars, there was quite a bit of noise in the Echo stand as, not being allowed in their usual end some of the Stacey Westers decided it would be fun to liven up us old codgers and livened up we were although we would have preferred it to be as a result of exciting play rather than fans venting their fury at perceived failings at boardroom level. That’s the way it seemed at the half time rumpus, later David Holdsworth was to find out the chaps and chapesses are not too happy with him either what with all the chopping and changing.
Talking of chopping and changing, that would be ok if there was some dramatic improvement of the teams prospects a la John Beck who you may remember and it is becoming a bit of a memory now, carried out wholesale team rebuilding and after a short time the team was unrecognisable but so was the league position. The trouble is, the team is becoming unrecognisable but what we are seeing seems to us uneducated proles, if anything worse than what we were seeing before. Are Gowling and McCallum REALLY inferior to their replacements despite the manager’s words on the radio?
On to the cup tie and it pains me to even recall it to be honest, it started well enough but it didn’t take long, I was going to say didn’t take long for City to descend to Carshalton’s level but that would be grossly unfair to our opponents who put up a spirited effort to win the tie albeit by employing tactics designed to stifle City. Why shouldn’t they? We’re the home team after all.
I expected City to try to pass pass pass and eventually tire out the part timers. Well if they were trying to pass the ball I didn’t see it from where I was sitting and soon enough we were lumping it anywhere as we made Carshalton look like, well not world beaters but you know what I mean. Even when they hit the post City seemed unable to raise their game and frankly went from bad to worse as Carshalton scented blood and, for them a major scalp. I don’t know about you but I didn’t feel like we deserved that giant status afforded us on the opposition’s website. It was just embarrassing.
That’s the problem. Most of us turned up hoping, expecting even a nice relaxing afternoon as City got amongst the goals and eased through to the next round drawing hopefully another easy tie, mugs that we are. Back to where I started, the board. If I were them I would be very fearful that this debacle will turn even more fans away from supporting City. They can always come back when things improve, or can they? We’re constantly being told that things are very tight at the Bank (that was Bank with a capital B but it might also be the other one) in fact I’m fed up to the back teeth of hearing it. Things are very tight with a lot of families yet the club expect fans to turn out and pay league prices to watch football that wouldn’t be out of place at Carshalton’s level. After all, they certainly coped well enough with anything we could throw at them didn’t they?
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