A Point Gained: Exeter City 0-0 Imps

November 17, 2024 Gary Exeter, Headlines, Lincoln City, Matches, Reports 1

Credit Graham Burrell

I made the mistake of looking at social media last night. I don’t really know why I do it.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but some of the predictable nature of the responses really gets under my skin. Basically, playing well and winning are good. Play well and don’t win there’s a clamour for it to be ‘two points dropped’. There’s no solace in creating better chances or being the better team when the narrative suggests you should be. Sometimes, you don’t win every game. Not losing, that’s a skill, and we’ve now not lost in six. Should we have taken four from the last two games? Yes, probably, but surely there’s a positive there, in that we should have taken those points. We weren’t outplayed, by two half-decent sides, and we created chances. If we keep doing that, we’re on the right track.

I even saw one comment saying something like ‘I’m not convinced about the head coach yet’. Only two teams have lost fewer games than us this season, and I stopped looking for the last time we got to November 17 with fewer than three league defeats (I suspect it was 75/76). Spoiler – when we won the National League, we’d lost four, and when we won League Two and the season we made the League One play-offs we’d lost three by this stage. Seriously, how hard are some fans to placate?

Then there’s the narrative. Poor old Exeter City, down three players due to international call-ups. It wasn’t fair, I grant them that, and I believe the game should have been called off. It would have done us a massive favour – no Tom Hamer, Adam Jackson, Erik Ring, Tyler Walker, Reeco Hackett, Freddie Draper or Tom Bayliss. If Gary Caldwell honestly thinks they were at a major disadvantage playing yesterday, he was wrong. They were at an enforced disadvantage, but having this game called off and rescheduled for January would have played into our hands, too, let’s be honest. Remember, Ethan Erhahon is only just coming back as well, someone that the negative supporters will say we haven’t missed. Until that is, he is back.

I’m not one for calling out opinions and those of you who are dissatisfied, that is your prerogative. I have to outline what those opinions are here so I can attempt to debunk them, and another that is grinding my gears right now is the attitude towards Jovon. ‘If he’s scored the sitter’, I’ve seen. ‘Cadamarteri would have scored that’ I’ve seen. Basically, lots of the narrative from social media is Lincoln City would have won the game if Jovon had scored his chance, pure and simple.

It’s not entirely right though, is it? Yes, if he had scored, we would have won. I’m not arguing one point or the other here, and it was a miss where you’d hope he’d score, and ultimately, we drew 0-0 rather than winning. Yes, Jovon’s finishing is a part of his game he needs to work on, but laying the blame entirely at his feet? That is very short-sighted. In fact, once again, it is a form of confirmation bias. Those who don’t rate Jovon want to see him miss so they can go in two-footed on him, cementing their opinions as fact. He cost us the game, right? Wrong.

Here’s some facts. Jovon’s chance, according to industry-accepted Wyscout, commanded an xG of 0.11. That means, roughly, someone could have that chance nine times and score once. Lincoln City created 12 chances yesterday, and of those 12, four had an xG of greater than 0.11, and one matched 0.11. That’s six chances, and yet the one Jovon misses gets the stick on social media? One day, I’d love someone to sit down and explain why misses by Ben House, Lewis Montsma, Jack Moylan and Paudie O’Connor don’t get mentioned. I’m sure there’s a good reason.

I’ve started this write-up very negatively, haven’t I? My apologies; it’s actually because I wasn’t upset by yesterday, aside from the result. I felt we had a huge job on our hands, with a massively depleted team, going to a ground we’ve won at once in ten visits spanning 24 years. We’ve lost six of those ten, another fact I deal in. The trip down the M5 is often not fruitful, and whether we stay over in a hotel or not, I firmly believe the travel is a part of that poor run. To go there and take a point, when they’ve been in really good form and only conceded ten goals all season (seven fewer than us, by the way) is a big achievement. Throw into the mix the whole international call-up thing, the sense of victim they built up pre-match, the expectation Caldwell placed on us, and you’ve got a recipe for a disaster. We had to manage that, and we did.

The team was a little threadbare, and nobody really noticed Reeco being called up for St Lucia, and playing Friday night. It escaped me if I’m honest, and it was a loss for us. It meant a shuffle of the pack, one which also saw Cadamarteri start in place of Jovon. Ethan Erhahon returned to the bench, but we didn’t have a familiar, coherent look about us.

That showed in a disjointed first half where neither side really got a footing. Exeter played some nice football at times, in patches, but it wasn’t a great game. The xG proves that – 0.23 for them, 0.51 for us. Both sides had a single shot on target, and that was pretty much it in terms of excitement. Our best chance came from Jack Moylan’s free kick, which Joe Whitworth palmed away – he’s a good keeper with a big future. He reminded me a bit of how Carl Rushworth approached the game- not the biggest, but a huge presence.

I felt the game was ruined a little by a referee who just didn’t have a lot of control. There were inconsistencies throughout – Pierce Sweeney getting between Ben House and the ball, falling over, and getting a free kick. Up the other end, the same happened and nothing given. McGrandles picked up a (very) weak yellow, then committed a foul worthy of a second yellow and the ref didn’t pull it. Sweeney was really lucky because a Ben House foul drew a yellow, but as play went on, he absolutely clattered Sean Roughan late, purposefully and got away with it. My Dad said, ‘The whistle had gone,’ but that’s irrelevant. If the whistle goes and you headbutt someone, it’s an offence. It all felt a bit unpredictable, and that wasn’t the worst of it.

House has to feel unlucky, he was adjudged to have fouled Sweeney in the first half, but somehow came away with a gash halfway up his leg. How does him fouling their lad end up with him having stud marks on his leg? It doesn’t.

Twice I saw their bench take a ball away when we wanted a quick restart. David Perkins did it once and got into it with one of our lads, and then Caldwell deliberately took it into the dugout. For me, that’s a red card, and a lot of other referees would have sent him off. The game escapes me, but I’m sure we’ve seen an opposition manager do that at the Bank and get dismissed this season. I had a bit of respect for Caldwell and his side before the game, but his antics were very Evans-esque, and Perkins was acting like a cross between Paul Raynor and Richard Hammond, hanging off the shoulder of a proper arsehole trying desperately to be relevant. Still, they had their narrative to play to; they had to make the three-and-a-quarter sides of the ground a cauldron of hate (some songs might have helped), and they did what they needed to do.

Rather ironically, the injury we suffered before half time, to our captain Paudie O’Connor, wasn’t due to a tackle, but just a simple twist as he went in for a challenge. He limped through the last ten minutes of the half but was forced off at half time. Now who has the victim narrative? The side with two bookings when there should have been a few the other way, the team with one call-up which didn’t get mentioned, with six injuries, and now a seventh as the captain hobble off?

No. Not us. Because we’re not victims. There’s nothing ‘victimy’ about bringing on the best midfielder in League One football outside of Birmingham.

Rate The Imps

1 Trackback / Pingback

  1. SW 333 – Exeter, Patron Questions and Why International Football Is Rubbish | The Stacey West

Comments are closed.