Imps lose at Rotherham. Nothing new there then.

We’re all proud of our fine up and coming city and I think we’re sometimes a little bit chippy about places like Rotherham but there’s one area where we can have absolutely no sense of superiority at all and that’s football. We never do anything there. Whether it’s the old Millmoor or the inhospitable (in winter) wide open spaces of the Don Valley Stadium and now the New York Stadium as far as Imps are concerned, abandon hope all ye who enter there.

So it proved last night as City, having negotiated the first half then put in a spirited display in the second, nevertheless exited the Carabao Cup at the first time of asking admittedly to a club who were playing in the Championship last season lets not forget.

When I was getting really serious about supporting Lincoln City they, for some reason suddenly swapped their traditional and time honoured red and white stripes and appeared in Arsenal shirts. Except they weren’t they were Rotherham colours. The chairman at the time was a Millers fan really so he did the next best thing to owning them, he turned City into a carbon copy. If only we were carbon copies now.

For many years the Imps were, I like to believe, roughly on a par with Rotherham United but like many others, Barnsley, Tranmere, Port Vale, off they all went leaving us behind in the bottom division and as we all know worse was to follow.

Now Rotherham are the sort of club we would like to emulate starting, as far as the club directors are concerned with a fit for purpose stadium like theirs and very fine it looks too although some fans complained of getting wet on an admittedly foul night. Should that happen?

So Rotherham on a bit of a slide and City on the up, surely time for that old albatross on City’s neck to vacate it? Not a chance. Well as City played Rotherham’s superiority prevailed and there is to be no League Cup run. Is that a good thing?

Better not let the manager hear that although it is one less distraction to the main business, establishing ourselves in League Two and accumulating points. The FA Cup potentially offers the opportunity of bedding ourselves in with the prospect of some nice easy non league opponents to progress at the expense of but as we all know football has a way of bursting your bubble. We’ll probably draw Rotherham.