Last night felt like the traditional Lincoln City banana skin.
Exeter City have been a bogey team in recent seasons. We’ve been poor in some matches against them, and we’ve been robbed in others. We fight against them, sometimes metaphorically, and sometimes literally, and rarely do we get a big result. Rarely do we get the outcome we need against them, especially at their place.
In fact, our win there last night was only our second win to nil at St James Park since 1989. We had to fight for it, on and off the field, and we did just that.
The melee at the end wasn’t a fight as such. It was, as the late Steve Thompson would (almost) say, ‘manbags’. The manbags were out, and a few people pushed and shoved. Tom Shaw was in the middle, and the alleged instigator, Sonny Bradley, walked off with his shirt in hand, a smile on his face and three points in his metaphorical handbag. What it underlined was a fighting spirit, a togetherness among the squad that maybe you don’t see when it’s all smiles after a 4-0 demolition of Blackpool.
That’s what will get us promoted. Not a scrum against Exeter, but that ideology that we’re fighting. It hasn’t been pushed by the club, but we’re fighting bigger budgets, bigger squads. On the field, we’re fighting not to concede goals, we fight when we do to get back on level terms. We fight for our goals, scrapping at set pieces, and that mentality has got us where we need to be.
Or, should I say, it has got us close to where we need to be. If all you have is fight and not enough quality, you end up like Gillingham, with a reputation for being thugs. We have artists as well. We have good footballers, not just hard men, but skilled men. We have players with grace and poise, players who can deliver crosses and dead balls with precision. Most of all, we have a plan, a tactic to win each game, maybe different every week, but a well-executed plan. Dare I say, we have a group of clever footballers, able to listen to instructions and deliver what they’re told to do.
All of that comes together with the spirit that saw us pile in, all for one and one for all, at the end of the game. Matt Taylor said, ‘nobody wants to see that’ in his interview. Pardon my French, but that’s horse shit. Deep down, once in a blue moon, we all want to see it. We all want to stand there, like we’re watching the aforementioned manbags from the kerb, kebab in hand, cheering someone on.
Oh yeah, before that, there was a game of football, our ace up the sleeve, so to speak. We’ve held the ‘ten points and a game in hand’ for a few weeks, like the game in hand is the asterisk that appears next to Sheffield Wednesday’s points tally every week. It’s not actually ten points, just like if they win ten games they won’t have thirty points. It’s ten points plus whatever happens when we play our game in hand. Some read it as 13 points, rightly or wrongly. As it turns out, that was spot on.
I won’t do a full match report, that’s done, but these are observations. We made some changes, probably to get a bit more attacking impetus going forward. Tom Bayliss is a more progressive midfielder than Ivan, or that is the perception, but actually, it was a tough night for Tom. I’m a huge fan, but it took him a while to get into the swing of things, and while the minutes in his legs helped, and he wasn’t bad, he did have a couple of shaky moments.
Ryan Oné came in as well, and he could have had a couple of goals. He’s direct, and wants to drive at goal and score. I’m not going to criticise a desire to score goals, maybe on one occasion the better choice was a pass, but a striker should be hungry, he should be greedy, and when they’re younger, the benefit of experience is yet to shape them. I’d be wrong to criticise it in Oné and praise it in Jack Moylan, another returning player who didn’t see the fruits of his labour.
In terms of xG, we were the better side, creating 2.73 throughout the game, according to Wyscout. However, all 2.73 of that came before the 60th minute, meaning we fought for the lead, got it, could have extended it and then, much like earlier in the season, defended stoically to ensure we kept the lead. There was an early-season feel to this, Northampton, Burton and Bolton away springing to mind. Mind you, to say we were under the cosh would be wrong. Exeter’s xG was 1.26, decent considering that’s the best for any opponent since Luton away, but after 60 minutes, they created 0.3. We read the room and applied ourselves accordingly. Another Michael Skubala masterclass, one might say, although I’m sure he would say it was a team effort, just as he will if he wins Manager of the Month again this month.
Our goal was a set piece (again, olé olé), from a clear foul on Moylan who wanted to wriggle away from his marker. We can talk about the delivery, the offside (or not) and the header, but I want to highlight the build up to the foul. A clip of the incident shows three attempts by us to win the ball high before the foul, Moylan with Cummings, Reach with Oakes and then House with McMillan, before finally Moylan and McMillan come together for the foul. That’s a nine-second clip in which we have three attempts at winning the ball high and keeping pressure on. We win it, they foul, and we score from the free kick.
That’s fight. The end product might be nice delivery, determined header, hint of offside, but the process was fight, hard work, and planning.
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