Lincoln City have been promoted to the Championship, despite being 17th in the budget table, in case you haven’t heard.
In a landscape filled with rich predators, we’ve bucked the trend. We’ve fought back. We’ve laid a blueprint for others to follow, but it isn’t as simple as some think.
I’ve seen plenty of dissection of our success, with other clubs, such as Chesterfield, suggesting they want to follow the Lincoln City way. Often, I see a broken-down summary of what people think has driven our success, but they’re only seeing one part. Like any good recipe, the best results are only achieved if you have everything in the right measure. We are showing others how to do it, but it isn’t as simple as paint-by-numbers.
Those clubs don’t need a quick chat and an assumption that improving set pieces gets you promoted, or simply playing without the ball. No, they need a Dummies’ Guide to League One Success on a Budget, and it’s not an overnight fix. It’s something that started a few years ago now, and something that you can’t just replicate overnight.
How did Lincoln City get promoted? Our new series looks at every aspect that we, as fans watching week in, week out, think contributed to one of the most impressive League One promotions of all time.
People
The first root has got to be people. I’ve heard stories of a big club in our division, one I wouldn’t name as it was in an off-the-record conversation, where a senior member of the recruitment team won’t talk to the club manager. We’re talking about a side that has invested millions more than us, with a non-functional backroom staff.
This is crucial; everyone has to work together. We’ve seen what happens when members of the coaching team and members of the recruitment team don’t get on. If you sit down with some of the staff still at the club and talk about either of our previous two managers, you hear about friction from certain places, particularly with staff leaving in late 2022 and early 2023.
I’m not talking just about the management and coaching here; that’s going to be a different element. I’m talking about everyone, from top to bottom. That started with Clive. We had good people before: Chris Moyses working for free, Bob Dorrian keeping the doors open, and Roger Bates fighting for the academy. Of course, you can keep tracing the current success back, and that’s probably ground zero, but in terms of what has led us here, in my opinion, it started with Clive.
Clive has a personality which is just different from other owners. He sees the world in a way many football club chairmen (now former, granted) do not. He understands you and me, that’s why he’s in with supporters at games. That’s not a publicity thing; he watches football from the perspective of a supporter, but manages the club as a business and a community asset.
He set the culture from day one, and as he’s appointed people, that culture has continued. Danny and Nicky Cowley were obviously key as well, good people aligning the club with fans, carrying on Chris Moyses’ work in that regard. On the field, things went well, but look at Cambridge, Grimsby Town and Exeter City. They’ve had good cup runs and promotions from non-league, but where are they? Similar-sized clubs, by the way, but not able to capitalise on their success in the long term.
It continued with Liam Scully. I’ll get accused of being a club stooge here, but I don’t care what anyone says: Liam Scully is vital to this football club. He’s one of the most respected CEOs on the EFL circuit, and he cares deeply about the club and its fans. He can do nothing right in some people’s eyes, and sometimes he’s had to make tough calls and deliver challenging news that hasn’t been popular. The one that stands out in my mind is stopping the turnstile operators from coming in for free, which went down badly. The same goes for changing the concession ticket age from 60 to 65 (I think it was that). Unpopular at the time.
Finally, Jez completes the Holy Trinity that brought us to this season. Another much-maligned figure, a suit and tie at a football club is always the first target when things go badly. There were rumours of Jez being unpopular at Cambridge, but I lived through their promotion in the city, and he was hero-worshipped at one stage. He’s the man with the plan when it comes to recruitment; he gets things done. He has a strong football club to sell, and he does that well, from Stockholm to Dublin, Liberec to London.
Those three work in unity, and everyone who comes in around them seems to be a decent sort. I’ve met a lot of the people from the club over the years: Jay Wright, David Lowes, Jason Futers, the list goes on. Different levels, different jobs, but always seemingly the same outcome. I’m sure it’s not always rosy behind the scenes, I’m sure there are disagreements, but for me, the key staff we retain are the ones that carry the culture Clive, Jez and Liam have created.
How has this directly contributed to our promotion? They control all the aspects of the football club. They have appointed Michael Skubala, invested when needed, attracted new investment, and identified talent. They set the culture, and almost everyone who comes in and works with them understands that culture. It’s open and transparent, but not ‘the chairman has a podcast where he calls out players‘ transparent. We’re managed as well as can be, underwriting inevitable losses, but not to an unsustainable level. They treat players and staff with respect, and that permeates into everything we do.
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, instances that people will point to. I’ve heard stories of a member of staff, a ten-year servant, not getting a handshake on his final day, or at a playing level, legends of the club training on their own. Not everything is perfect; it isn’t at any club, but it is as close as it can be, in my opinion.
That culture, set by our people, attracts talent. Giving Lewis Montsma and James Collins contracts is sure to give us a good name with players and agents. Having a clear pathway and never blocking moves helps too. To be the best on a budget, you need to exploit those marginal gains, and being respected in the industry is a huge help.
It’s also helpful when you’re trying to bring an assistant head coach to the club who has been in the Premier League, or when convincing other coaches to sign new deals when seemingly bigger opportunities arise. As Lincoln City, we’ll always be at risk of losing our best people, but when they do move on, it should always be with pride if for the right reasons. In 2025/26, any person moving on tends to be for the right reasons.
Part one of my analysis of why we’ve been successful concludes. It doesn’t drill into the specifics; it merely notes that with good people and a good culture comes the right environment. It’s not one of fear, dishonesty or illusion, but one of transparency, hard work and measured, insular belief.
Your people set that bar.
Disclaimer: this article wasn’t about me pointing to all individuals who are good people, either. It’s not a list where people can be missed off. There are so many, from the ticket office to marcomms, from the boardroom to the fanzone. They all buy into the culture, and that is what I mean by people.
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