Let’s Not Worry – Forest Green 1-1 Imps

Lincoln City took away just a point yesterday away from home against Forest Green Rovers, with many fans considering it two points dropped after taking the lead early through Ben House.

Mark Kennedy made two changes to the side after a couple of defensive injuries hampering us after our draw against Portsmouth. Sean Roughan moved into the back three alongside TJ Eyoma and Paudie O’Connor, meaning Harry Boyes came into the side against his old club. Regan Poole captained the side on the other flank looking to continue his impressive form, while Ethan Erhahon and Ted Bishop continued as our midfield pairing. House returned to the side after his one-game suspension alongside Jack Diamond and Mide Shodipo.

I’ll tell you this now, I don’t think Forest Green are a bad side at all. They have two of our ex-players in Jordon Garrick and Jamie Robson, who are in no way bad players, especially the latter. Amadou Bakayoko is also a very capable number nine, that they picked up in January. I think their results before Saturday don’t show the full picture, since Duncan Ferguson came in they’ve played sides such as Shrewsbury, Bolton, Charlton and Ipswich and bar the Ipswich grabbing, they’ve been in all the games and always had a chance of getting a result. That said, they are bottom of the league and we are known to struggle against sides at the foot of the table, so in contrast to some of the previous games it isn’t an awful result.

This result takes us to sixteen draws for this season, which has obviously been given a lot of coverage. Some people will see it as a negative but on the flip side, only the top three have lost less games than us this season, we are hard to beat and we seem like a team that is taken seriously by the big sides in this division. There are so many positives for us right now. We have a really good defence, with O’Connor at the heart of that, available every game, which is something we’ve lacked in the past few years. We have Erhahon, who we need to be building around and we have House, who just keeps getting better and better every single week.

I’ll jump back to the game action because that is what I’m here to discuss and I thought we started really well, even without thinking about the goal. We looked to get onto them early and we really concentrated on hurting Robson on the left-hand side in the air. We got our reward for our good start, with an excellently taken goal from House. Rushworth pinged the ball out to Poole on the right-hand side. The skipper’s early ball into the area was inch perfect to set up House on the volley, who converted beautifully into the top corner of Ross Doohan’s goal.

We should have had more in the first half though, Shodipo had a golden chance to add a second and probably win the game for the Imps but he couldn’t convert the chance. Judging on the first-half Forest Green looked very weak, fragile, and I don’t see them staying up no matter what, I don’t think they have a bad team like I said earlier, but I just think they haven’t got the ability to dominate a game with purpose and they look destined to go down, with or without Duncan Ferguson at the helm. We should be going to Forest Green and getting three points, I don’t want to get away from that but we don’t need to panic about it.

I feel like if we went into half-time with a two goal cushion, we probably would have gone on to win the game with their confidence being so low, but you just felt like the longer it went on, the likelihood of them equalising was rising. That belief from FGR turned into reality with ex-imp Jordon Garrick netting the equaliser before shushing the Imps fans, which was understandable after he was given stick all afternoon. Fair play to him, he failed to kick on with us and now he is performing with another team. Sometimes players need the right environments to succeed and it looks like he has found that so far.

I think they had the better of the chances in the second half and with the chances they had, we couldn’t have had any complaints if they scored a second. We had a few of note, with the main one being O’Connor’s header getting cleared off the line. One result doesn’t define us, the win against Accrington didn’t mean we were going up and the disappointing result yesterday doesn’t mean we are going down. As Mark is constantly reminding us we need to not get too high with the highs and not too low with the lows. We are in a good place, but we shouldn’t ignore the fact we can improve.

I didn’t want to write too much after yesterdays draw because I think what I have said just about what needs to be said. If we get three points on Tuesday, then this will not look like a bad point at all.