Imps Stag-ger at the last hurdle and lose at home for the first time in a year..

I didn’t know what to do at the end, we’re certainly not used to losing at home and didn’t deserve to lose in my view. Whether we deserved to win is debatable.

City weren’t at their best that’s for sure and neither was the referee although I’m loathe to blame the officials and aren’t doing but after a decent enough first half, better than decent to be fair in a feisty encounter at Sincil Bank the man in the middle seemed to be rather too consumed with letting the game flow and failed to spot some glaring fouls, most notably on Anderson in the build up to Mansfield’s goal.

City themselves, cheered on by an even bigger crowd failed to rise to the occasion and paid the price. I’d told myself on the way home I wasn’t going to comment on the Mansfield manager but he cavorted around the pitch as if Scotland had just won the world cup. I suppose that’s testament to his understanding of the gravity of his teams win and, to be fair, which I really don’t want to be but what would you rather have, a character, which he undoubtedly is or an accountant who never does anything newsworthy? I’ll make no further comment although I could but I had a word with myself and very nearly listened so that’s that on the subject.

I’ve said on a number of occasions in this blog I don’t pretend to be a tactician but I would like to see a different approach every now and then. Much though we love Matt Rhead I thought he had a, for him, lacklustre game although you can’t fault his effort.

Personally I’d like to see more of Elliott Whitehouse. I’d like to have seen more of Ginnelly but that was forced on us and I understand Nathan Arnold has been seen with some kind of pot on his foot. I thought Habergham looked exhausted, no surprise when he went off and clearly Waterfall is not fully fit although having said that Dickie was excellent in my view and maybe that was a tactical change and he was preferred. I’m generally an optimist but maybe the manager was not going on about a small squad just to irritate me.

Still, let’s look on the bright side, it’s only one loss in a year’s worth of home games, City played well but not well enough. Things could be worse, much worse.