City fell to defeat on Tuesday night against a strong Derby County side at Pride Park, but there were positives to take for Mark Kennedy’s young side.
The Imps added Reeco Hackett to their ever growing injury list, with Danny Mandroiu, Tyler Walker, Jack Vale and Ben House all missing. Jordan Wright made his first start of the season in goal, while TJ Eyoma captained the side and played alongside Alex Mitchell and Jack Burroughs. Jaden Brown started on the left for the first time since we played Sheffield United last month. Jay Benn is available for our EFL Trophy games despite his loan at Solihull so he started on the right-hand side. Oisin Gallagher made his first start for the Imps in midfield alongside Ali Smith, with Hakeeb Adelakun and Dylan Duffy both making their first starts of the season out wide. Jovon Makama started up front for the first time in his City career.
The EFL Trophy isn’t of much importance to anyone at the moment. Mark will say he wants to win every game we play, and while that is certainly true, he’ll be so pleased to come away from Tuesday night without anymore injuries. This competition can earn us a good sum of money, and potentially a trip to Wembley but a full strength City team would struggle at Pride Park, so to come away with a 2-0 defeat and plenty of positives is much more than I expected. I’ve mentioned there was positives, and I’ll go through three below, as I can’t imagine many people would want to read a full on match review for a game of this nature!
Oisin Gallagher & Jovon Makama
When I saw the team sheet, I wasn’t surprised to see Oisin Gallagher and Jovon Makama named as starters. It wasn’t because of our current injury situation either, if we had all of our players fit, then I believe that both players would have still deserved their starts. Both players have come up through the academy and have clearly impressed the club’s hierarchy.
Makama has made several substitute appearances and done well at times, but last night was his first opportunity to properly impress. I thought he did well throughout the 90 minutes. You have to remember he was up against experienced defenders, with serious knowhow and knowledge of how the game is. He will have gained really good experience last night up against those sort of players and hopefully, he can take that into the rest of the season.
We haven’t seen as much of Gallagher. He looked exceptional in pre-season and I did wonder if we’d see more of him sooner than we thought. He has very tough competition in midfield, with Erhahon, Hamilton, Smith and Bishop all vying for two positions, so you can understand why we haven’t seen him from the bench as we’ve done with Makama. I thought the young midfield did extremely well too, and similarly to Makama, it will be a massive learning curve for him after going up against such experienced opposition. He looked really composed in midfield, and I honestly think we have a future star on our hands. It’s now all about how we use him.
More Minutes for Adelakun
Haks wasn’t considered a Lincoln City player two weeks ago. Although he was contracted, 99% of us were sure we’d never see him pull on a City shirt ever again. Fast forward a few weeks and he’s now played 45 minutes in a League One fixture and started the following game. It’s clear he needs minutes to get up to full fitness, he would’ve trained but with no match sharpness, we’ll need to closely monitor his minutes.
He managed to get over 60 minutes under his belt last night, which is a massive positive for us. With Reeco and Danny now injured – although we don’t know how long for – he may have to start against Portsmouth on Saturday and we’ll need to him to be at the top of his game for that one. I thought Haks did well at times last night, and if we get the right players around him, I’m confident he can impact things. Give him the freedom that Danny and Reeco get, and we may even see a different player to the one we’ve had at Sincil Bank for 2 years.
No More Injuries! (We Hope)
It looks as if we didn’t pick up anymore injuries last night at Pride Park, which will be a massive relief to Mark and his coaching staff. Hopefully the injuries to Danny and Reeco aren’t too bad, because if we can get that pair back for our trip to Fratton Park, we won’t be in such a bad place after all.
We managed to rest a number of key players too. Lukas Jensen, Lasse Sorensen, Ethan Hamilton, Ethan Erhahon, Ted Bishop, Paudie O’Connor and Sean Roughan all didn’t start the game, with the latter two not being forced to play any minutes at all. If we can keep this group of players fit that we have available now, then we’ll be alright, but you have to fear that another injury could be devastating, especially if it was to be to one of the midfielders.
The injuries to Ben and Tyler are gutting, but to get through a fairly pointless game last night with no injuries will be a massive relief.
Final Thoughts
There were obviously positives last night, even ones I didn’t include such as Jay Benn and Jordan Wright doing well, but we still lost the game and that will frustrate fans whatever the competition. Mark wants to take every competition seriously and it is one we could potentially win with a trip to Wembley included too, but in our current situation we can’t complain at what played out last night.