A Recent Pair
Steve Thompson (1990-1993)
I make no apology for having Thommo on this list. He’s a bloke I really like, funny and knowledgable. I suspect, were we ever to get him on the podcast, we’d record about fifteen hours of anecdotes. He’s played top-flight football, managed to a good level and was a super player for us in two spells, as well as a good manager.
People sometimes forget how close he came to putting us in the play-offs. He took over from Allan Clarke not long before my 12th birthday in the 90/91 season. Two big defeats, 4-0 at Stockport and 4-1 in the FA Cup against Crewe (I was there) didn’t signal a great future, but we finished 14th. The following season he got us up to tenth with a run at the end of the campaign which saw seven straight wins. Admittedly, few can forget the 6-0 thrashing we received at the hands of Barnet, but we were pre-season favourites going into the 1992/93 season.
In the end, goal average was all that kept us out of the play-offs, a disappointing 2-1 defeat against Bury on April 24th ensuring it was them, not us who went forward into the end-of-season lottery. However, it wasn’t just proximity to the top seven which made me put Thommo on the list; he brought the likes of Jason Lee to the club, a player sold at profit, as well as Keith Alexander who went on to achieve quite a bit. The youth team flourished too, the 1991/92 line-up shows Matt Carbon and Ben Dixon as youngsters, with Darren Huckerby emerging the year after.
We didn’t win anything under Thommo, but he did give us some decent seasons and his legacy shouldn’t be dismissed.
John Schofield (2006-2007)
Schofield was a no-nonsense player for us, but when he took over as manager in 2006 it wasn’t ever going to be easy. Keith Alexander was a legend at the time (still is) and to pick up that mantle and run with it was never going to be easy. However, only Parkes, McClelland, Taylor and Cowley have better win ratios than Schofield, which tells you everything about his side, albeit for a short time.
Ask any fan of 20 years about the best football they’ve ever seen at the Bank and they’ll point to 2006/07, maybe to October. The 7-1 win against Rochdale and 5-1 win against Barnet stand out, but for a few months, we were utterly ruthless, climbing to the top of the table and seemingly on course for promotion. Schofield instilled a wonderful philosophy in the club that pushed us on from Keith’s era and developed the theme.
Sadly, I feel Schoey was ultimately let down in the transfer market at the end of the 2006/07 season. Few could argue we finished the season well, scraping past Chester in the final game but being woefully inadequate defensively against Bristol Rovers over two legs. The summer brought Steve Torpey instead of a big name striker and October brought Schoey the sack.
It’s still hard to forget those incredible six months though, especially if you were at Mansfield when we must have outnumbered them and smashed four. Magical.
Agree with these. Schoey has us playing the best football I have ever seen. It was a friendly against Leicester where I think my jaw hit the floor with the game I saw.
Simpson is a definite one for me. Whenever the talk moves to Cowley’s achievements the thinking man will always say “of course it was Moyses who set us on the road to recovery”. But this misses the man who saves us from going down when he came in around March time. Got us mid table the next year and then was sacked for drawing 3-3 away at FGR. Moyses got in some great players and sorted out the training ground, but it was him and Simpson who laid the foundations. It won’t argue it fully, but could it be said without Simpson there would be no Lincoln as we know it? We were going down out the conference until he came in along with Lee Beevers and Nat Brown.
I wouldn’t include David Herd on that list.
1. After becoming manager he was unable to prevent a finish in the re-election zone in 1970/71 – admittedly there was a horrendous list of injury problems that season.
2. In 1971/72 after looking well set for promotion things just fell apart in the last month of the season.
3. After Graham Taylor’s side finished fifth in 1975 we know what happened afterwards, but after Herd’s fifth place in 1972 we were going nowhere the following season.
4. Of the players he brought to the club – rather than inherited such as Ward, Freeman and Smith – only Terry Cooper formed part of Taylor’s side with the latter fairly quickly shipping out Herd signings such as Bradley, McMahon, Bloor, and later on Worsdale, McGeough and Symm.
Mind you, all I’ve written above is probably down to the disappointment of missing promotion in 1971/72!
Maybe David Calderhead (senior) deserves a mention? He did take take City to their highest ever league placing of fifth in Division Two in the middle of several other respectable placings in the same division, plus an appearance in the last 16 of the FA Cup.
I initially thought David Herd for my No 5, but chose Ron Gray instead. We went on the great League Cup run with Ron in charge, beating Newcastle Utd and their stars. We lost to Derby County in a replay. Should have won at the Baseball Ground, but a shot on goal got stuck in the mud on the goal line and was cleared away.
The replay is still the record attendance at Sincil Bank.
Wouldn’t argue against Ron Gray who also revitalised the club and put an end to the series of re-election applications in the mid-1960s.
I would include David Holdsworth . If it wasn’t for him cutting the squad and budget then we would probably have been back in administration. His job was too put 11 players on the pitch as cheaply as possible . Didn’t get the credit he deserved I’m my opinion.
Simmo is a great shout. His team put a smile on my face for the first time in five years at Sincil Bank. And he was a link with the Keith years.
Agree re Holdsworth – he got a bad press for his ‘big black book’ and revolving door for players and God knows he could turn them over.
However, he had a job to do following Tilson and did it reasonably well. He was unlucky – a minute or so from winning the FA Cup 2nd round match v Mansfield (thanks, Rheady) which would have landed the home tie v Liverpool and things could have been very, very different. That following the Imps’ first ever FA Cup win over a side 2 divisions higher, at Walsall.
The loss of the replay at the end of a good run seemed to kill all confidence in the squad and it all fizzled out from there before his replacement by Simmo and that desperate, relegation threatened end to that season.