Pompey out-Lincoln City.

We’ve seen our team do this to other sides of course, particularly away but last night Portsmouth did the sort of job on Lincoln City that used to be our forte. City didn’t get a pasting, far from it. Pompey got a goal with the last kick of an unfathomable four minutes of injury time. I’m not sure where that came from, ironically probably mainly for Pompey making a meal of everything City did when anywhere near them, then, as the Imps chased the game, they gave away a penalty that even the most ardent fan in red would not take issue with. It gave the score a gloss that wasn’t really there but, to be fair, you could only concede that the best team won.

Did Pompey look any good? I was surprised at their approach, dishing out the sort of treatment that John Beck would approve of. Were our players overawed, bullied even? You could make a case for that.

City aren’t a big side this season, Portsmouth are, big and strong but they move the ball about well. Even so it wasn’t easy on the eye. The problem with a smaller side and the problem with favouring youth is that you have to pass the ball around your opponents. Last night City couldn’t pass a Reliant Robin.

It’s tempting to say oh well, we don’t have to play Pompey every week. Indeed we don’t and I realise were not comparing like with like here, last season we were competing with the ilk of Forest Green Rovers but we are where we are, in league one and every team I see at the moment seem to have a history of much greater things.

All very well, I hear you say. It’s Southend at the weekend, a chance to put things back on track. Indeed it is but play like that and I’m not at all sure we will. Then it’s Rotherham. You know, the team we humbled in their own back yard at the beginning of the season. I was there, it was a great performance, virtually the last good away performance before the rot set in, the managers left, I’m not at all sure the two aren’t connected, and City embarked on a new direction.

I remain convinced, eventually, that direction will once again be upwards but we’ve got to put performances like that to bed and do better. I’m not expecting to win every home game and I’m not saying City should never lose at home but we’ve got to do better than that. The number of fans leaving early, whilst understandable should serve as a reminder that patience only stretches so far. Thankfully I didn’t hear any boos. After the run City have been on at home lately that really would have been too much.

Akinde goes, City lose away. What did you expect?

I just realised that sounded like John Akinde has been sold and we have therefore lost. That’s not what I meant but it might have got me a few more readers. I’m not a site dependent on clicks, I’d sooner have readers so there you are, you’re in now so you may as well read on.

Akinde going, well I suppose you could say that’s put us all out of our misery, no one more than the player. I can imagine what the next chapter in the story is, given that we have not yet played Gillingham at home. Personally I liked the player. Did we get value for money? In terms of goals scored no, in terms of contribution yes.

I don’t really know what people expect from a player for whom we paid, for us, big money. For a start we don’t know what we paid and I’ll say now that annoys me. Why is it always an undisclosed fee these days? I want to know.

Secondly it’s not big money is it? I thought I’d heard £150000. the Gillingham papers stated getting on for £400000. We get similar with the Peterborough hacks. I’d be surprised if it were the higher figure, I’ll say that. Whatever it is, it’s not much. A big figure even at our level is a million plus. When, if ever, are we likely to pay that?

So what did we think we were getting? 20 goals a season that’s what most of us were expecting and we didn’t get. Boo hoo. I thought he was worth the money for the penalties alone but he wasn’t an Appleton player so we might as well get on with it. I’m not sure Harry Toffolo’s value was anything other than the money Appleton could get for him if I’m honest and he’s gone. As far as I can see, Appleton has come in, finds a team struggling with life in league one, unbalanced squad, not playing the football he wants. Solution, to use an expression much used by the beloved Keith. If they’re not doing the business, I’ll get a team that can.

Which brings us nicely to our away form. Keiths teams, famously got most of their points away from home, most wins, that’s for sure. The reason? We fans were too quiet. Well I think we’ve disproved that theory. City are now, to a degree reliable at home and nearly men away.

They’re all close results though and once Appleton gets to grips with that. Well better fasten your seat belt that’s all I can say.

A manager’s not a man for all seasons.

I was going to entitle this a managers just for Christmas, not for life, the sentiment is the same whatever the headline. I’ve been thinking, after all this upheaval. Are there any lessons to be learned from our recent travails?

Well there’s always a lesson to be learned and for us, I think is it’s important to bear in mind, just as players come and go, so do managers. In our case we’ve had both but of course that often happens and as the saying goes, only the fans are constant.

Except that’s not the case, or all of it at least. With a bit of luck the board of directors and other senior staff members remain. It helps if those people are the level headed leaders every business needs if it is to prosper. I’ve often rather admired those clubs that have managed to achieve boardroom stability and with it the hope that football stability can also be maintained. I’m thinking Norwich City?

Now the Canaries are a good example as they’re a club that usually fluctuate between the Premiership and Championship although it doesn’t seem that long ago they we’re in league one. Anyway, throughout it all there is Delia and her directors at the helm, trying to stay out of the limelight (not always succeeding eh Delia?) and I can’t help feeling, by hook or by crook, we’ve managed to arrive at a situation whereby the people at the top, along with us, the fans are in it for the long term. I’m not of course suggesting we can get anywhere near the Prem but is the Championship such a distant dream?

We should, I believe be eternally grateful to Clive Nates, or rather that some football God has sent Clive to us. Now I do know occasionally Clive reads this blog and I’m certainly not writing this to ingratiate myself. Just to underline this I’ll also say that the process of recruiting a really focussed and expert board began or possibly was continued by Bob Dorrian but either way the board as well as ourselves are in on a permanent basis, or as permanent as this life permits.

Like you, I suspect, I fretted over the loss of our management team. What have we got now? Potentially an even better manager. I mourned the losing of Harry Toffolo only to be delighted by the start our new young players made in the victory against Blackpool.

So my new years resolution is, don’t worry when people move on. It’s going to happen. Trust the club and support the players, through thick and thin. It’s all we can do and it’s all the club ask of us.

Lifes a beach. A pleasure beach.

Be honest. If someone had offered you, in the immediate post Cowley era, 12th in the league, 4 points from the playoffs and 15 points from the relegation places you’d have snapped their hands off wouldn’t you? I know I would. If you’d also said, whisper it quietly, the football would be better and more purposeful how would that make you feel? That goals do not have to come from well engineered free kicks and corners, that our team can create goals and convert them from open play with skill, guile and energy. You’d take that wouldn’t you?

If the answer to any of the above questions is no I’d advise you’re supporting the wrong team but it would be wrong to say things can’t get any better because all the signs are, it can.

Way back in the days when the city boasted a football echo the nearest thing City have to a national treasure, Mr Chris Ashton, wrote a column entitled The Oracle of Optimism. In it he once said he didn’t see why anyone would get on the train to watch Forest struggle in the championship when they could watch City battle to leave the fourth division behind. I didn’t agree with him. I had my first job and my first car and myself and a mate toured the area watching football. The nearest First Division side (premiership) were Derby County. You could just turn up and go in. Forest, Leicester, Both Sheffield sides, I think, were in the championship as it’s now called, Notts County were in League One as it is now as were Grimsby.

So I used to go and watch them all although when I saw the Mariners it was at Meadow Lane where we were accused of being closet Grimsby supporters. I still have very hot showers to scrub away the thought of that.

Now Leicester are the local bigwigs. Personally I wish them well but would I go and see them or any of our local sides, when City are at home, no I would not.

It’s been a tough week to be an Imp yet the team has garnered another six points to underline a really strong home record. These are uncertain times and yet, with every home game we see more of the future and the more I see the more I like.

I comment less and less on City’s performances because you can read about them in many outlets but I will say the signs are good. The new players acquitted themselves well. Particularly in the second half. Michael Appleton has promised we will be watching fast, skilful play from energetic young players. Not for us players signing lucrative three and four year contracts and the club paying out million pound fees. Fast exciting energetic play from our young team with a winning mentality, particularly at home.

I think I could live with that, couldn’t you?

No news is merely a postponement.

I was feeling a little bit out of sorts on Tuesday. I don’t know what it was and it’s gone now but I just didn’t feel my usual self. On the face of it, last Tuesday’s game was one of the results, if not the performances of the season.

I didn’t feel it was the sort of game people were talking about though. Given the weather conditions and I suppose we should say the state of the pitch which I keep hearing about but I have to say looks decent enough to me, I was entertained enough.

I find myself saying “if this is the future” quite a lot these days but if this is the future I suppose a lot more investment is going to go into the pitch as City finally ditch any last vestiges of long ball Lincoln. I always thought a lot of this was in the minds of opposition players and managers who had not done their homework to be honest. I don’t think we’ve been long ball for some time and one person’s long ball is anothers long pass.

Anyway, Tuesday and after I got home I read a tweet from a lady Imp, one of my favourite tweeters. Trust a woman to hit the nail on the head. “That felt like a defeat after the news about Toff”

Ah yes, the news about Toff or rather the lack of news. Like most I saw the shirtless Toffolo applauding all four sides of the stadium. That was why I felt a bit low.

And yet, what are we to expect following a team like the Imps? We’re a trading club like all the rest. We try to pick out gems, give them a bit of a polish and sell them on. If we’re going to prosper and flourish at this and even a higher level there will be a lot more of this. I don’t believe this board and this manager, in an ideal world, see Lincoln City as a league one club. They want more, I want more, you want more. How do we do it? Finding, improving, trading players.

I keep harping on about Peterborough but that’s what they do. That’s why they’re a bigger club than us. That’s the model we’re trying to emulate but don’t get the idea it’s the cut price option. If you want a lovely field of potatoes come July you’re going to have to spend some money and time in March. We’re not Salford City or Forest Green Rovers, thank goodness. Thanks to good management and tight control City can afford to pick and choose who they sell and when. Make no mistake Harry Toffolo will go at some stage whether it’s today or in May, so will others. It’s what we do.

Please don’t get the impression I don’t care about these departing players, I do but as the saying goes, don’t cry because it’s over, celebrate the fact it happened at all. We’ve had the pleasure of watching these marvellous players. In Toffs case, if he ends up in the Prem I don’t think he’ll have a better season than this one.

Good luck to them and good luck to us. We all deserve it.

Four in and, er………………….

You know that saying, the more things change the more they stay the same? I was thinking, not for the first time, that sums things up as far as Lincoln City are concerned. Way back when I first started following the Imps in earnest there was the Lincolnshire Echo, that came out every evening bar Sunday. Then there was the Football Echo which arrived on the streets about an hour after the final whistle. If it wasn’t in those two publications, you heard nothing. No Radio Lincolnshire, no internet. There was the Chronicle but that didn't count.

So when you next feel like bemoaning the lack of news think of those days. And yet, is it any different now in terms of good solid information? I’m not sure it is to any great extent.

Take the current situation. We’re sat here, what do we know for sure? Well City have signed four players. Are they any good? Time will tell. Can we read anything into it? Yes we can. Some will play, some may have to wait. At least one, so far as I can see, is with a view to selling on. That, we were told, was the way forward for a club like Lincoln City. I can’t argue with that.

Ah ha, I hear you say. What about all the departures? Oh yes, the departures. What to we know about them? Well Harry Toffolo to Huddersfield, Harry Anderson, ditto. A million pound fee. Who told us that? The internet, so it must be right.

The truth of the matter is we don’t know anything. Yet. So for the moment, you, dear fellow supporter and I, are in exactly the same position as myself all those years ago, delivering papers around the Hartsholme Estate, having a look at the Footie Echo before it went through the letterbox.

Oh, I can tell you something with great authority. Lincoln City take on Shrewsbury Town tomorrow where they will either win lose or draw. Remember where you heard it first.

Is this the new norm?

Promotion to league one was certainly a step into the dark for many supporters. For us old fogeys it was a chance to compare ourselves to Imps sides of many years ago. The last foray was short lived as City attempted to live with the likes of Manchester City and Stoke who were light years away in terms of finance.

That team came straight down at the first time of asking but it wasn’t always like that. Previous teams have prospered at the level although I always look back to a time I truly believed the Imps had made the permanent move to a third tier club and to think about it I was at college at the beginning of my career and now I’m retired. How time flies when you’re having such fun as an Imp (possibly).

Usually the problem was the old perennial, cash, or lack of it. Gates which rode to good levels during a promotion season, failed to live up to the promise built up and usually fell back to almost the previous situation as casual fans waited to see if the Imps could maintain their course.

So to that extent are we now in a new improved era as some would believe? The signs are good in two ways if not three. For a start, City have enjoyed two sell out games over the Christmas period. When was the last time that happened? I can’t remember it. The capacity of the LNER stadium was greater previously of course so it’s not a level playing field but even so, those who believed enthusiasm would wane after the departure of the Cowleys are wrong, so far at least.

Secondly, and this is the most important point as far as I’m concerned, City are settled off the field, with an innovative and pragmatic board, one of all the talents I’d say from my distant vantage point and the club are, I hesitate to say wealthier, but certainly well into the realms of solvency, unlike some clubs you could mention and others reliant of the goodwill of an individual or several benefactors who could lose interest at any time.

Thirdly (I’m not making this up as I go along, honest) the club seem to be able to make up for the geographic isolation of Lincolnshire, or the perception of it, by attracting players because of the much improved infrastructure not least the training facility. Also the stature of the club as a good place to send young players to further their football education, knowing that they will be looked after properly and that the club has the funds to facilitate that.

As fans of course that is by the by, performances and results are what matter to us and the Imps have just served up two delicious feasts of games in the Christmas home fixtures against Ipswich Town and Peterborough United. Those two names underline surely City’s progress, one a really big name, admittedly from the past but even now are a club we can marvel at defeating, not in a one off cup game but as a club at our own level. The other, a club who we probably regard as local given that, as a previous manager said, everywhere is an hour away but a club who usually manage to get the better of us and are certainly on a different planet financially. They provided us with, well amusement, I’d call it, especially given that Barry Fry was sat a couple of rows from me. His face bore the look of a man who couldn't beleve his eyes, especially as Posh had got their noses in front at one stage. Well, get used to it Barry!

Anyway, Happy New Year. I’m full of confidence, I hope you are.