This weekend sees the arrival of Nigel Adkins and Charlton Athletic at Sincil Bank.
They’re a side we brushed away at home last season, but who rolled our second-string over a couple of days after our Peterborough disappointment. Whether we have enough in the tank to repeat our 2-0 win is one thing, but their manager felt the referee gave us a hand on that day. We’ve seen two poor officials at the Bank in recent weeks. Will Saturday’s make it a triple crown?
Referee: DAVID WEBB
Assistants: Nik Barnard and George Byrne
Fourth Official: Sebastian Stockbridge
Webb is another who, like Andy Woolmer, has been around a long while and not stepped up to the Premier League. We first saw him in 2008/09, and it was an unremarkable appearance; he didn’t even book an Imps player as we beat Gillingham 2-0. We won 2-0 in the next game he officiated too, this time away at Bradford not long before Peter Jackson left the club. He also took charge of our 2-1 defeat at Chesterfield in February 2010, and again before we dropped out of the league against Macclesfield in a 2-1 win. Moses Swaibu scored in both those games, oddly.
Since we’ve been back in the league, we’ve seen him a couple of times. He was the referee who took charge of our 3-1 victory over Mansfield in the EFL Trophy in 2017, and the semi-final with Chelsea Under 21s the same year. A couple of weeks after that game, he was officiating our 3-1 win at Chesterfield, the one with the air ambulance incident. That was the last time we had the Lancashire official, but I don’t recall any major decisions from him, which is surely a good thing.
This season, he’s taken charge of ten games, and issued a single red card, in the Sheffield United and Derby game. He is usually in the Championship, only stepping out of the second tier for Morecambe and Rotherham, and West Brom’s 6-0 defeat against Arsenal in the EFL Cup. In his ten games in charge, he’s awarded five penalties, so get on Scully to score from the spot!