City traveled over 300 miles yesterday to return back to Lincoln without a single shot on target. Let that sink in.
The imps were not at full strength yesterday with Norton-Cuffy and Fiorini on international duty and that was just one of the issues for Michael Appleton’s side with a number of key players injured during the match. We are edging ever closer to the end of the season, and it looks more likely we will stay up, with us being only eight points away from fifty. Despite MA saying he is not thinking about next season, I’m sure in the back of his mind, he knows who he wants to be here next season and a performance like that will not help anyone’s case.
I feel a 20/21 style rebuild will happen in the summer, with MA keeping key players such as Hopper and Poole, and letting quite a few leave. When I say a few I mean five or six, not the whole squad like some will always suggest after a defeat but it’s shown this season, when everyone is on their game, we are incredible and compete with some of the best sides in the division but for some reason, we can’t keep them performance levels up consistently.
Nothing went for us at all yesterday, we were poor but we certainly weren’t helped by the circumstances. In my years watching football and sport in general, I don’t think I have ever seen someone suffer three concussions in a matter of around seven months. We have spent large parts of the season talking about injuries and injury prone players, Jackson is one of them players, but he isn’t picking up constant ankle injuries for example, it’s head injuries, which is purely unlucky and might cost him a place at the club next season.
We looked good in the first twenty minutes of the game. We always struggle against Shrewsbury because we get outnumbered in attack against their three at the back but with us matching them at the start we looked composed and creative. Losing Jackson and having to go to the four really disrupted us. It wasn’t just the injury to Jackson that disrupted us. In the second half, we also lost Cohen Bramall to a hamstring injury that will surely end his season.
Shrewsbury capitalized on our weak right hand side. Bishop was carrying an injury and had to come off the pitch, which they targeted and got their goal from that side of the pitch. We have the building blocks for next season, with the right recruitment next season we can have a stronger season.
We move on to another hard game against Charlton away from home next Saturday. Over 1500 Imps will be making the trip and hoping it will be a worthwhile one.
The AllLincoln MOTM is Regan Poole.