The Imps ended their preparations with a tough afternoon against Championship opposition, providing our toughest test of pre-season so far.
I won’t bore you with a full on match report, you can read that on the club official website now. I’ll spend a bit of time going through the team that played, I’ll touch upon the match after that and give you a few of my thoughts, but if you came here to find out the ins and outs of our performance then head over to the club website!
We went with the side that will probably walk out against Bolton next week for our league opener. Lukas Jensen started in goal over Jordan Wright and has seemingly secured his status as our number one goalkeeper. Some may see that as slightly unfair on Jordan based on his few outings for us last season, but Lukas has come in and done well so far in pre-season. Jaden Brown and Lasse Sorensen started and that means they’re certainly our first choice wing-backs, I think that’s pretty much expected. Sean Roughan is our only other option on the left, and while Elisha Ahui has impressed me in almost every game I’ve seen him, he’s still extremely young so he won’t be ready to play League One football too regularly yet on the right hand side over Lasse.
What I find incredible with Lasse is that this time one year ago we were unsure what his best position was in the midfield, it was hard to see whether he was an 8, a 6 or even a more advanced 10 and he was probably heading down the same route as Max Sanders and may have found himself replaced this summer. Fast forward a year and he has transformed himself into an excellent right wing-back and a massive fan favourite at Sincil Bank. We haven’t signed a new wing-back, meaning that is definitely Lasse’s position going into the new campaign, and if you’ve seen any pre-season games so far, he’s in peak condition and looks even better than last season already.
The three central defenders were Paudie O’Connor, Adam Jackson and Sean Roughan. I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the three we saw at Bolton if I’m honest. Paudie and Adam have to start, and then it’s in-between Sean and TJ Eyoma, and at the moment that former is slightly ahead of the latter in the pecking order. Sean offers us defensive solidity and balance on the left, but also provides us an option of using him as an overlap on the attack to help overload the wing with Brown.
The biggest debate of the week was who would start in midfield next to Ethan Erhahon. Ted Bishop or Ali Smith? Unfortunately, I think we got an easy answer to that today. Smith started alongside Ethan, but with Ted out injured, there wasn’t another option in that area of the pitch. It’s a massive shame for Ted because he was having a good pre-season, and in my opinion, a fit Ted is easily our best creative player. He has the ability just to switch it on, change the game and swing it in our favour. Luckily it is only a small injury, but it probably has cost him a place in the team against Bolton. Reeco Hackett and Danny Mandroiu started out wide, with Dylan Duffy on the bench, while Ben House was leading the line. That front three will start against Bolton I’d imagine, purely because options are still slightly limited in that area of the pitch.
Similarly to Lasse, this time last year, no one really knew what Ben House was. He had played well in midfield for us, but had previous success as a number nine at Eastleigh and with Tom Hopper being named captain and Mark Kennedy opting for a system that only used one striker, it looked like it would be a season of transition for Ben and one that he might have to play a few different positions to get in the team on a regular basis. Fast forward one year, Ben is our starting striker after scoring 12 league goals last season and finishing as our top goalscorer. His form led to the exit of club captain Hopper and other than his goals, he offers so much more, with intelligent pressing off the ball and a real understanding of the game out of possession.
Onto the match, I think everyone will have a different reaction to it in all honesty. Some people take pre-season results more serious than others, but if people are worried after seeing that today, they shouldn’t be. This was our toughest test of pre-season so far, and people may consider Rotherham a weak Championship side, but they are still in the division above and they punished us for mistakes we made throughout the game.
The first goal from Oliver Rathbone was an absolute stunner, with the midfielder curling in his effort from the edge of the area after a one-two with Georgie Kelly. It did come from a mistake though, but I’d much rather it come yesterday than at Bolton next weekend.
The second goal was unavoidable. Firstly, I feel it wasn’t a foul but Cafú’s free-kick was really well hit and in all honesty not many keepers would get any where near it, let alone keep it out. Moving on to the third, it could’ve been defended better, but once again we payed for our mistakes and like I’ve already said I’d rather us make these mistakes now than in the first half against Bolton.
One of the biggest positives was obviously Tyler Walker playing 45 minutes, and him getting on the pitch for the first time since he made his return to the club a few weeks ago. We can’t sit here and judge him based off this small cameo, but he looked bright and created our best chance of the game, which Lasse fired wide. In a game with not many talking points for the Imps, Tyler was definitely one of them.
I’m not going to hype it up, the game yesterday wasn’t inspiring by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s still a pre-season game, let’s not take it too seriously and wait to see what we get away at Bolton.