Lincoln City CEO Liam Scully has outlined the dilemma facing the club as preparations continue for our first season in the second tier since 1961.
It’s the first time the Imps will brush shoulders with Championship opposition since the start of the Premier League era, and the landscape is vastly different to that of the sixties. There are some very big fish in the division, with huge budgets, and as a club coming from a 17th-placed League One budget, it’s a daunting prospect.
While preparations are visible off the field, we’re also looking to put together a squad under challenging circumstances. Being linked with £1m striker Barney Stewart is an example of where we are now, but news of him closing in on a move to West Brom underlines how difficult things are likely to be.
That’s the challenge facing club staff this summer, and as Liam explained, there is a huge skill element in finding the sweet spot between risk and disaster.
“I think the skill element within this is calibrating the appetite for risk and knowing where to pitch it. Because if we don’t take risks, we will be relegated and we’ll be back to where we started,” said Liam, speaking on the Business of Sport podcast.
“If we take the safety catch off and go gung-ho, we might stay up, but we might also be relegated. And if we get relegated having taken the safety catch off, boy, are we in trouble. So there are two ends of the spectrum there, and neither outcome is particularly reliable. You wouldn’t want to take a bet doing it in either of those ways.”
How do the club go about that? What does ‘calibrating the appetite’ mean in real terms, ones fans can understand?
“We have to calibrate our attitude and appetite for risk. That’s in terms of the contracts we offer. That’s how we structure things. That is how many people we bring into the off-field team from a commercial point of view.
“I think that’s been the hardest pure technical skill element that we’ve had to calibrate over the course of the last few months, because it is subjective and strongly opinion-based.”
It’s obvious what the situation around contracts is; we all hear of clubs throwing big money out, getting relegated and being lumbered with a legacy squad: it’s how the likes of Huddersfield end up with 40 players and a finish outside the top six every season.
Commercially, fans don’t see quite as much, but Liam did explain exactly what he meant in terms of us building that area of the club.
“When you look at the revenue and say we’ve grown by 70, 80% in that change. The reality is that the broadcast deal has done that. What we’ve then got to do is just use the opportunity to maximise everything else that goes around that.
“We’re investing in new technology within the stadium in order to maximise that. We’re restructuring some of our commercial deals, our retail partnership and various other things. Again, in order to maximise it, because what works in a League One landscape doesn’t work in a Championship landscape. And we have to recognise that.”
Survival on the field will rely on players, goals, depth and ability. Off the pitch, this is a huge chance for Lincoln City to become something else, a bigger beast in terms of commercial revenue, matchday experience and the like.
In 2016/17, our title win changed the club forever, with the EPC, something that has since developed with subsequent trophies. In 2025/26, promotion to the Championship could shift the margins again, making Lincoln City a different club from top to bottom.
That can only happen by people like Liam, Jez, Ron Fowler and the board striking that perfect balance between risk and reward, jeopardy and outright danger. As with the appointment of Chris and Tom, as fans, we can only evaluate on the evidence we have, and it feels like we’re in the safest hands possible, for an impossible (opinion) task.
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