Welcome to Part 4 of the Lincoln City Promotion Manual. We’ve covered people, recruitment and luck so far, and today we come to one of the hardest bits to get right. Tactics.
Warning – I did want to keep these bite-sized, but I have got a little carried away today. Besides, I’m at a festival so this needed to give you your fill for the day!
I’ve lumped identity in there, because you have to have an identity. I remember back in 2019, a conversation with a former manager (and Marcus Clayson, Jack Mulhall, etc. will love this). He talked about identity and how a team needed to know what it was. He said he had a clear identity and a method of how he wanted to play, but he guaranteed Wycombe Wanderers, with no identity, wouldn’t go up.
He got two things wrong when he told me that. He misidentified a lack of identity at Wycombe for flexibility of approach, and he forgot within his own identity (that season) to add flexibility. Wycombe were promoted, and when Covid curtailed the season, we were far from safe.
You have to have an identity for your players to know what they’re supposed to do. What do you think of when I say Ian Evatt’s Bolton? Take a moment.
What you’ve just done is identify a team by its manager. It doesn’t matter if you have come up with ‘shithouses’ or ‘slick’ or whatever. That team had identity. Ian Evatt’s Blackpool? Not so much, no yet.
Michael Skubala’s Lincoln City? Yes, but to the outside world, the last manager to give a side identity at the Bank was one half of a brother team.
Next up, tactics. It’s great having an identity (let’s say for argument’s sake, high energy, high press, win the ball back quick, happy out of possession, ring any bells?), but you then have to have an approach. As the late, great Colin Murphy said, running around like Deranged Ferrets could make a team win, but in this day and age, running around like Deranged Ferrets isn’t enough. Each ferret needs to know their place, their job and how to approach different situations.
Tactics is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot when you talk about why a team succeeds, but in our case it sits right at the centre of what’s happened this season. There are loads of elements that go into building a successful side, but tactically, this is where managers either get it right or they don’t.
It’s why some managers come into League One and struggle straight away. It’s why others might fail initially and then succeed once they understand what the division actually demands. It’s why some managers always seem to thrive at certain levels, because they get what is required. And it’s why others fade, because tactics evolve, and they don’t move with them.
One of the biggest misunderstandings around tactics is that it’s just about how you want to play. It isn’t. It’s a two-sided coin. It’s about how you impose yourself, but also how you react. That part often gets overlooked.
You see it with teams that approach every game with a fixed blueprint. Luton Town have done it at times. They go into a match with a plan to win in a certain way and stick to it, and the fact they finished seveneth with four times the budget of the Champions tells you how that went. Birmingham did it last season and fair play to them, they had better players, and nobody could really stop them. They imposed themselves on the division.
But if you are trying to do what Lincoln have done, if you are a Chesterfield or a Doncaster and you’re working off a mid-table budget, and even that’s generous when you’re talking about 17th, then you cannot rely on one way of playing. You have to be tactically aware on both sides of that coin.
So how have Lincoln actually done it?
For me, the roots go back to last season. When Michael Skubala came in, the team was playing 3-5-2. It was something Mark Kennedy had used, something Michael Appleton had touched on, and because the squad had been built around it, Skubala stuck with it at first.
Then we hit that run early in 2024 that nobody will forget. Six against Cambridge, five against Bristol Rovers, five at Barnsley. We looked unstoppable. Everything clicked, the system worked, and it carried us right into the conversation for the play-offs.
But that system also carried into the following season, and it didn’t quite land in the same way. We started again with the three at the back, but it never really settled. How could Michael make those changes after a successful run in? The definition of madness, as we know, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome, but for supporters, that would probably switch to doing a different thing and expecting the same outcome. Still, left wing-back was an issue. Reeco Hackett played there, not his strongest role. Dylan Duffy was expected to fill it, but that didn’t quite materialise. Sean Roughan and Dom Jefferies were used there at different times. It never quite clicked.
So we changed.
Around the turn of the year, we moved to a back four. Something closer to a 4-2-3-1. Not identical to what Appleton had done, but similar in shape. The midfield balance is slightly different; Erhahon was used in a way that allowed one player to step forward more, rather than sitting with two deeper midfielders. That would benefit his partner, McGrandles, months later.
And it worked. Not spectacularly, but effectively. We finished 11th, which felt about right at the time. We ended up with a run of matches against sides in the play-off chat, and we didn’t disgrace ourselves. It might not have felt that promising with Wrexham and Stockport beating us in the last two games, but we competed. More importantly, we finished that season having played two very distinct systems with largely the same group of players.
That is huge.
Because it meant when we came into this season, players like Ben House, Conor McGrandles, Tom Bayliss, Dom Jefferies, Tom Hamer, George Wickens and others were comfortable in both. They understood the roles, the shifts, the movements required in each shape. Tendayi Darikwa was anyway, older heads understand those nuances, but it gave younger players the experience of both under Skubala.
We were not just building a team that can play one way. We were building a team that can switch. Switching is not always what people think it is. Going to three at the back does not automatically mean shutting up shop. It changes where you get territory, where your width comes from, and how you build play. Yet you still hear it, 2-1 up and we go to a three, and suddenly it’s seen as defensive. It isn’t always that simple.
That flexibility has been key, and recruitment has fed into it as well. Players like Dom Jefferies, Reeco Hackett, and others who can operate in multiple roles give you options without having to make wholesale changes. It allows you to tweak rather than overhaul.
Then you get into the in-game side of things, and this is where Lincoln have been really strong.
The Peterborough game is the obvious example. At home, just after a sensational Christmas period, we start poorly. They scored, and it feels like they could score every time they go forward. It looks like the game is slipping away. Then the referee goes off for treatment, there is a break, and we end up winning 5-2.
A lot of people pointed to that break and said that was the turning point, it disrupted Peterborough, it changed the rhythm. It didn’t. What it did was give Lincoln the chance to make a tactical adjustment. No substitutions, no big obvious change, nothing that jumps out immediately. But something shifted.
That is the bit people miss. If you don’t see it, you don’t acknowledge it. It gets put down to something external, when actually it is internal. Michael and the coaching team made a tweak.
It has happened in other games as well, Burton Albion at home, Wimbledon at home when they set up differently to how we expected. Matches where we have not quite been at it in the first half, then come out looking different. Matches where the opposition has changed something and we have had to react quickly.
Stevenage did it. There have been others where we expected to have the ball and suddenly didn’t. Bolton springs to mind, where they were quite happy to let us have possession and try to beat us in a different way.
So tactically, you have to adapt. And you have to do it quickly.
That is where the coaching setup plays a big part. Tom Shaw, who understands the club inside out. Michael Skubala is tactically sharp. David Preece, far more than just a goalkeeping coach, a proper football brain. Chris Cohen is up in the stands, feeding information down.
You can see it during games. If everything is going smoothly, Cohen stays up there. If something needs addressing, he is down early. Wimbledon was one where he came down quickly because something needed tweaking. Stevenage, similar, he was down within ten minutes because the view from above was not offering the advantage it usually does. That setup allows for those adjustments, and that has been a real strength.
There was an interesting anecdote about Ivan that I may have heard in conversation or an interview, I forget. It was about him learning English early on, and getting instructions out midgame. Michael said that they altered the press slightly midgame, so either we pressed a little higher, from a different angle, maybe let them have the ball ten yards further up the field. The message didn’t get to Ivan and for a minute or two, he was activating the old press. Did you notice? No, of course not. There was a little change, obvious to the playing staff, but one we’d never see in a game (unless you’re Chris).
Then there is how Lincoln approach opponents, and this is where the idea of being one-dimensional just does not hold up. Yes, we can sit deep. Yes, we can be hard to break down. But that is not all we do. we have a different identity.
If a team wants the ball but does not threaten in behind, we will sit off. If they struggle with set pieces, we will target that. Bradford hated it, absolutely hated dealing with balls into the box. Cardiff, we looked to break with pace. Different approaches for different teams, and it goes even deeper than that.
After the Plymouth game, there was a great example shared about targeting a specific defender. A player who was noticeably weaker on one foot. So the instruction was simple: when pressing him, come at him from an angle that forces him onto that weaker side. If he has to play out under pressure, he is more likely to make a mistake. That is exactly what happened, and it led to a goal.
That is not luck. That is preparation, detail, understanding. You make a lot of your own luck by doing the right things, in the right areas, the right way. Or, as some people call it, being good, tactically.
It applies across the board. It does not matter if it is Cardiff or Bolton, Northampton or Blackpool. The level of detail is the same. You identify a weakness, you look to exploit it. At the same time, you have to work out your own way to beat a team (we think we can hurt them, says Mochael every game), and that is something that has not always been there in previous seasons.
Under Michael Appleton, there were games against struggling sides where we just did not find a way. Dropped points against teams we should have beaten. Under Mark Kennedy, similar issues at times. Not being able to break teams down. This season, that has changed. Identity? Tactics? Both? You decide.
Teams have come to Sincil Bank and got nowhere. Northampton and Rotherham, in recent weeks, barely laid a glove on us. We have found ways to break teams down, not just react to them.
That balance is crucial. Having your own identity, but also being able to adapt to what is in front of you, and the players play a huge part in that.
Experience matters. Sonny Bradley, Tendayi Darikwa, Adam Reach, and James Collins have played in different systems, under different managers, at different levels. They understand roles. They understand when to drop, when to press, and when to shift shape.
That knowledge spreads through the squad.
When people talk about young teams lacking experience, this is what they mean. Not just games played, but understanding how to operate within different tactical setups. Where to be, when to move, how to react. So when you put it all together, this is not one single blueprint. It is not one idea executed perfectly. It is layers. Different elements were built over time. A system that has evolved, a squad that has been shaped to handle that evolution, and a coaching setup that can adjust on the fly.
But tactically, we have been better. More flexible than most, more reactive when needed, and more prepared than the majority of teams we have faced. We have understood opponents, adapted to them, and implemented our own plans effectively. Just like Ian Evatt’s Bolton, people know what facing Michael Skubala’s Lincoln City is. Michael Appleton was right, teams with identity do well (see also Bradford City and Stevenage).
Teams who know themselves, know how they play and execute those plans perfectly, do well. No shifting approach in midseason to see what works (Luton), no having one way and no other (Lincoln, 2021-2024), no wholesale changes in pre-season (Burton 2024). Know yourself, be yourself, understand everyone else, and execute every detail, meticulously planned, on a game-by-game basis, or sometimes, a minute-by-minute basis.
And that, more than anything, is why Lincoln City are League One champions.
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