2018/19 League Two Winners: Lincoln City
This win was a little different. In 2017 and 2018, we weren’t the favourites. Nobody expected us to win the National League ahead of Tranmere and Forest Green. The FA Cup run was almost as wild as Leicester winning the Premier League. In 2018/19, we had to be among the favourites. We were beaten, play-off finalists. We were the EFL Trophy holders. We signed John Akinde, a goal machine from Barnet. Our budget was top five, with the likes of MK Dons, Forest Green, Bury and Mansfield our only real rivals. In the early season predictions, Lincoln City were among everyone’s picks for the title.
That makes this quite special in itself.
In The Devil’s Advocate, Al Pacino says his strength is that nobody ever sees him coming. I’ve mentioned that before, but it is big. If you’re a middling side, and suddenly you’re good, big clubs take their eye off the ball against you. If you’re already a big cheese, you’re a target. Everyone knows what you are and what you do. That means a fight, a scrap, not just to achieve, but to make sure you live up to a reputation.
We had to do that, for the first time (and maybe only time) in this amazing run, we were the side to be shot down. We were the big guns, the ones people saw on the fixture list and expected to be a tough fixture.
Going up in 2018/19 might not have been a huge achievement in terms of the budget table (we still ended up a couple of places above our spend, one would imagine), but it was about more. About living up to expectations. About delivering on promise. That’s not always easy, and the fact Cardiff away this season was compared with MK Dons away in 2019 underlines that whether we should have been top three or not is irrelevant. We won the title, we held off all the sides with the same aspiration and we did it with focus.
Seriously, we drew a decent Championship side away and put out the reserves to preserve bodies for the league. That’s focus to be respected.
Comments Welcome!