Death, Taxes, and Boxing Day Defeat: Shrewsbury Town 1-0 Imps

Those are the near certainties in life. We all know about taxes, and as much as we want to, we can’t ignore that death is inevitable. Sadly, Lincoln City being rubbish on Boxing Day is also one of those near-certainties we can’t avoid.

We try to. We imagine this Boxing Day will be different from the one Guiseley beat us on; in the same season, we won the National League, and they were relegated. It might differ from the year we won League Two, but lost 2-1 to Crewe, or the season an awful Burton Albion side were 3-0 up within about 15 seconds (warning, slight exaggeration is possible). We’re almost always disappointed on Boxing Day; Bolton, MK Dons, Oxford, Halifax, and Grimsby (three times) make up the list of teams to have beaten us since 2009/10, when there was no Boxing Day football. Burton, Stevenage and Alfreton are our only wins.

Of course, superstition has no place in football, and this game wasn’t lost because it was Boxing Day. It was lost because we faced a freshly street-smart Salop, managed by a man who will have them in the top ten in League One, even if that is via a stint in League Two. It was a game of difficult conditions, a game where we needed to be bang on it for 90 minutes, and instead, we turned in arguably our worst performance since we faced Crawley and lost our long unbeaten record. I know many of you think it was awful, but it wasn’t awful. It was turgid, stodgy, challenging and broken, but awful is a big jump.

The main problem was of our own doing. That early goal did us, because it gave them something to hold onto, and Gareth Ainsworth, as we know, can hold onto anything – if he’d been on the Titanic with Rose, he’d have held onto that door until a lifeboat saved him. I remember his Wycombe side needing a 0-0 draw at ours back in 2017/18, and he was holding onto that after 15 minutes. We go on about dark arts and stuff, and when it’s Rotherham, they’re balls-out, nasty and blatant. Shrewsbury are not, they’re clever with it, taking time over things but just enough time that it doesn’t get picked up. They’re not on the floor injured for five minutes with the referee stopping his watch, but the keeper is 20 seconds a time, throw-ins the same. Those minutes add up, and they’re not caught by the match official, who had a pretty poor game for both sides.

With that in mind, what you absolutely cannot do is follow the Boxing Day tradition of giving people gifts (that’s where it gets its name – servants were allowed home to see their families on Boxing Day and were usually given a box of gifts or food to take with them). We did. We started really poorly, couldn’t string two passes together, and then got done by a set-piece routine. I won’t watch the goal back because it is so utterly appalling from a defensive point of view. I think we had every Imp in the box, and still couldn’t get a block.

At 1-0, against a Gareth Ainsworth side, it was almost game over. At 1-0, against a Gareth Ainsworth side with one or two of ours not firing, it really was game over. There were some poor performances out there; let’s not make any bones about it. Without singling out one (which is what I say as I single out one), Conor McGrandles was woeful from start to finish. He wasn’t the only one who struggled – the front three didn’t really get much of a break, the wing-backs put a shift in but were ineffective, and even the usually dependable Tendayi made slips and errors. The conditions (same for both teams) didn’t help and the pitch certainly didn’t suit some of our play. We got sucked into trying to go longer as they sat deeper and the game looked messy.

There were bright sparks in the first half, one being the most exquisite pass I’ve ever seen from a Lincoln player. I’ve been championing Sean Roughan for months now, and he was one player I felt rose to the top like cream. His crosses caused the only real issues of the game, and one, with the outside of his boot, created our best chance of the afternoon. Dom Jeffries should perhaps have done better, but the angle is tight, and Jamal Blackman is a big lad and a massively underrated keeper, in my opinion, and he made the save look a little more routine than it should.

At this point, I could go on about possession, but I’d be a hypocrite. Shrewsbury had what they needed: a goal to defend, courtesy of us, so they had no issue with us having the ball. They dug in and prepared for trench warfare, popping over the top when needed top throw the ball back, and then digging in once again. That doesn’t mean they didn’t trouble us – they were more than ready to spring an attack of their own. It was up to us to carve them open like a turkey, and while we did get chances, really good ones, the turkey never quite got carved.

I know what you’re thinking: we didn’t get chances. We did, but because it wasn’t Jovon Makama who missed them, they haven’t really been picked up on social media. Makama did miss one and here’s the irony – it’s actually a pot shot (which we’re criticised for not having) that got blocked. Makama didn’t have a bad first half – he set Hackett up for two efforts, neither of which the winger could convert into a chance, but only played a short period of the second.