Play-Offs Next Season? Here’s Why It’s (Obviously) Too Early To Tell

Every summer, like clockwork, the chatter begins. And already, barely a breath taken since the final whistle of the season, some corners of social media have decided that if Lincoln City don’t make the play-offs next year, it’s a failure.

Let me be absolutely clear. In my opinion, that take is complete and utter nonsense.

It’s a product of starting from a negative position. It’s not an argument built on analysis, balance, or any degree of reason — it’s someone planting a flag and declaring, before a ball has been kicked, that you’re ready to be miserable again for another nine months, evidence absent. I’m done pretending otherwise.

We don’t know the 24 League One budgets yet. We don’t know the squads. We don’t know the fixtures, who has signed for whom. We don’t know if we’ll have Paudie, Sean or Ethan in the squad. We don’t know who might replace them. We know as much as Jon Snow (who, for the record, knew nothing).

So, how can we possibly say what constitutes failure or success?

The Illusion of a Weak League

There’s this idea floating around that the division is weak (as it was, apparently, last season). “Wrexham have gone. Birmingham have gone. Nobody strong is coming down.” Really?

Luton Town are coming down with parachute payments — they’ve got the financial power to build an Ipswich-style promotion charge. Plymouth weren’t awful in the Championship after Rooney and have a manager many thought could’ve kept them up. Cardiff? Big city club, big expectations of bouncing back. Are we really saying two of those three will be mired in mid-table mediocrity?

Okay, if you look at those coming up — Doncaster, Bradford, Port Vale — none of them will be turning up for a relegation scrap ubt none will do a Wrexham or Stockport. Bradford are a bigger club than us (that’s a fact). Doncaster will fancy a top-half push, perhaps. Wimbledon, with the right recruitment, could be more solid than some expect. Will they be above us? No, you wouldn’t expect it, but they’ll all have momentum coming up.

However, of course we need to talk about the likes of Peterborough, Bolton, Barnsley, Reading, and Stockport — clubs with ambition, budgets, and recent near-misses. Wycombe are well backed. Huddersfield spent £3 million on two strikers in January. Are we just writing all these clubs off? Or, more pointedly, are we writing off all but five of these clubs in saying play-offs are a minimum for us? If so, that’s ridiculous entitlement. I’ve listed 10 (the three coming up and seven here) without mentioning Blackpool and Orient, sat on either side of the top six battle this season.

Judging in a Vacuum

When people say, “anything less than play-offs is failure,” I want to ask — based on what? On our name? On finishing 11th last season? Or a rudimentary glance at a few badges on social media?

We don’t know who’s signing whom. We don’t know who’s staying, who’s going, what the form looks like come October. We don’t know who is spending what, we cannot possibly make a judgment with such little information.

It feels like the base setting for some supporters is one of misery and a desire to fail. Last season, some were already moaning in pre-season, and some seemed much more vocal when things went awry. It’s why some are still hung up on whether Sam Clucas should’ve played more or why Jovon Makama wasn’t out wide sooner — reasons to be angry even after the final ball has been kicked.

It’s the same train of thought that leads some to switch their stance when things become too positive. One moment, Mark Kennedy’s football was dire. Then he’s sacked and we should have stuck with him because he was right to call out the players. Some who called him for boring football now laud him for ‘discovering’ Lasse Sorensen as a wing-back, despite that being out of necessity against MK Dons. The same fans deride Michael Skubala for not playing Jovon out wide sooner, rather than discovering him as more of a winger.

That’s a classic example of glass half full, glass half empty, but some people seemingly don’t even have a glass these days.

Budget Matters (No, Really)

Don’t get me started on the budget debate. “Budget doesn’t matter,” they say — until it’s Wrexham or Birmingham at the top. Then, suddenly, budget is everything again, because they’ve bought the league. When we talk about overachieving our budget, what happens? People are sick of hearing about it again.

Well, guess what? It does matter. Lincoln City were 17th in the budget table last season. We finished 11th. That’s overperformance. Michael Skubala got more out of that squad than most would have. Only Richie Wellens overperformed more at this level, and yet that’s now being cited as an example of how we failed. Orient made the play-0ffs by overperforming budget, so the fact that we were second-highest, but not top six, proves it can be done. Man Utd proved that clubs can win the treble, but I’m sure Liverpool supporters don’t see their title win as a failure, just because a treble can be won.

For the record, had we matched their overperformance, we’d still only have been ninth. The whole argument is non-sensical, based entriely upon a starting point of utter pessimism.

Basically, as far as I can ascertain, budget matters when clubs are spending their way to success, but not when we’re using it as a defence for being 11th. Imagine even needing a defence for being a top-half League One side, once the Holy Grail for Imps fans. I’m not just talking about our non-league years either – up until 2018/19, my entire Imps’ supporting life was based on hoping one day we might be doing exactly what we’re doing now.

But for some, seventh in League One, or 51st best football team in the country, is failure.

What Do You Even Want?

And that’s the question I keep circling back to: what do the people already calling out failure before a player has been signed actually want?

Some go to games and seem to actively want to be angry. Angry at the sausage roll quality, raging at the queue for the loo, angry at the team sheet, angry when we’re winning 2–0 but concede a soft goal, angry because the subs were brought on ten minutes later than they’d make. There are some who turn up not hoping for joy, but expecting misery. I remember seeing people arguing about our direction after we’d beaten Bolton Wanderers 4-2 at the end of the season.

If some people don’t get their fix of misery, they find something — anything — to be outraged by. Once, months after winning the National League title, months before our first Wembley trip, on a day when we beat local(ish) rivals Chesterfield for the first time in eight years, a small section of our fans got angry because some of their disabled supporters got wet. I’m not belittling their experience, by the way, merely underlining how some people have to latch on to something. I know, 100%, there will be some latch onto this, accuse me of being a club stooge, etc.

What-the fuck-ever.

Supporting your club shouldn’t be a penance. If you’re already miserable in May about a season that hasn’t started, what are you doing? Get a new hobby, maybe one that involves constant disappointment, like skydiving without a parachute, or fist-fighting gorillas.

I don’t expect blind optimism, which I know people won’t believe. I don’t want happy-clappy nonsense about how we’re going to walk the league. But there’s a middle ground between hope and delusion. Between measured expectation and relentless moaning. And sadly, some people skipped that middle ground a long time ago.

Consolidation Is Progress

Finishing 11th again — for the third time in League One — is stability. It’s the first time since the Bill Anderson era that we’ve consistently operated in the top half of the genuine third tier (not regionalised), or higher. That’s real progress, even if we dropped a few places from the year before.

Our budget improved slightly, but in a market where everyone else ramped up their spending, we slipped in the budget rankings. So to still finish 11th? That’s a credit to the staff, the players, and the project.

And yet some still call that failure.

The club has ambition. I’ve sat in the room with people who are planning, clearly and realistically, for a future in the Championship. It’s not pie in the sky. But it’s not going to happen overnight. Not sustainably. Not the right way.

I’m told we weren’t entertaining, but when I point out big wins (Mansfield 4-1, 3-0, Posh 5-1, Bristol Rovers 5-0) I get told we should have won those games; they were poor sides. Again, no admission that we were exciting at times. I’ll admit we weren’t always – Wigan, Stevenage and Rotherham spring to mind, but then I can see two sides of every point. If only everyone could, I wouldn’t be writing about play-off failure 11 before we may or may not fail, and three months before we even begin trying.

So no — anything less than the play-offs isn’t a failure. That statement is built on (in my opinion) a degree of ignorance, not insight. It doesn’t account for nuance, variables, or reality. It’s hyperbole, the sort of nonsense social media breeds these days.

In Conclusion

By all means, hope for play-offs. Dream big. That’s what being a fan is all about. But to make your baseline emotion one of impending disappointment? To pre-load a full season of football with that kind of expectation?

That’s not passion. That’s poison.

Let the summer breathe. Let the team take shape. Let the season start. And then, then, if we’re bottom four by November, sure — let’s have a chat. But until then? Chill out. Watch the friendlies. Try the new home kit. Fight a gorilla. And for the love of all that is rational, please stop pretending May is the month to define failure in April.

Up the Imps.