Frustration: Wycombe Wanderers 1-0 Imps

March 31, 2025 Kyle Fox League One, Lincoln City, Matches, Opinion, Post Match Reaction, Referee, Reports, Wycombe 0

Credit Graham Burrell

Today’s write up is brought you to by Kyle Fox, due to me being away. Bubs also had a break planned this weekend, hence the Twitter embeds. Normal service to be resumed for Huddersfield.

Another defeat that followed the theme of quite a few others this season. Could have been a point gained and maybe should have been but it didn’t turn out that way, writes Kyle Fox.

I’m sure it’s been pretty frustrating for everyone connected with Lincoln City this season watching games that we’ve lost when we could have gotten more from them. Defeats are part of football, but the fact that we’ve made a bit of a habit of losing games we could have drawn or won is annoying. Saturday was no different to the similar defeats we’ve already experienced this season. Birmingham away, Barnsley away, Leyton orient away, Wrexham away. They are some of the other games in which we’ve played well at least in spells and still came away with nothing.

Pre-match, there were a couple of changes in the team selection including a surprise start for a forgotten man. The 4-2-3-1 remained but we saw a rare stuck for our resident Swede Erik Ring. He’s had a difficult time over the past few months due to illness over the Christmas period alongside a lack of playing time before and after that. So it was nice to see him in from the start and for the first time in his preferred position as a winger so he can be assessed more ahead of next season. Ben House also came in from the start who I imagine is also under examination from the club in terms of whether or not he will be kept on next season. I believe there is a club option for an extra year when his contract expires this summer so we would be protected in that case. James Collins would also have been a factor in the decision to start House as we know he is not able to do 90 minutes on a Saturday-Tuesday schedule, so he will be available for Tuesday’s game at home to Huddersfield from the start.

We started the game ok, we were good out of possession with some good moments and nice interchanges in possession. It didn’t take long for the first half to settle in to a bit of a rhythm with Wycombe having the majority of the ball (60% to our 40% in the first half) but struggled to break us down. The same was true for us, but in a half of very little chances for both sides we had the best one which fell to Reeco Hackett. Darikwa recycled the ball following an attack that broke down and found Tom Bayliss. He then laid off a short pass to Makama who drove in centrally to a pocket of space on the edge of the area. He then dinked a little cross in which picked out Hackett who ended up facing away from goal when he brought the ball down and because of that he had to spin and shoot at the same time which caused him to drag his shot wide. It was not an easy chance by any means as it only created an xG of 0.19 but it was the best chance of a very close first half and it came 11 minutes in.

A few minutes after, an incident occurred after Darikwa was tackled by Leahy leading to a throw in for Wycombe. When this happened, Makama was right next to it and made a split second decision when he realised his team mate was out of position. He raised his hand in front of Leahy to delay him from taking the throw in, which caused the referee to intervene and show Jovon a yellow card for it. The reason this turned in to more of an incident is because of what happened later in the game concerning referee Scott Jackson but I’ll come back to that later.

In terms of chances for the hosts, there weren’t any good ones in the first period. They had five shots, none of which were on target and they generated an xG of just 0.14, (we generated 0.20 from two shots). They were pretty much all pot shots from the edge of area. Xavier Simons drove in to yards of empty space outside of our 18 yard box following a set piece and produced a shot that went up and never came down. Josh Scowen attempted a quick snapshot from the edge of the area after being teed up which was high, wide and not at all handsome.

After being really resolute for the majority of the first half, we had a bit of a scare on 40 minutes after a Wycombe long throw was cleared away but was played back in resulting in an attempted cross from the byline by Reach which was partially blocked by Hamer and was heading towards goal. Wickens then springs into action to parry the ball away from goal but it ends up going behind him and bouncing off the crossbar resulting in Makama having to block Taylor from getting a shot away by using his body which he did very well in that moment.

Watching this back I actually think Wickens makes a really good save there. The ball is either going across the six yard box where Kone was waiting or it could have even dropped in to the net. Kone was another Wycombe player in the first half who made himself half a yard of space on the edge of our area and had a shot which sailed over the bar.

Speaking of Richard Kone. He was up and down more than a whack-a-mole. Pretty much every time he contested a duel with one of our players, he would go down claiming a foul, then complain to the referee and would get more irate each time. He was also committing fouls himself, at one point he committed a foul, the referee gave him a warning, then no more than 30 seconds later he had committed another offence and was not booked for it. Another thing the referee got wrong.