Football is about hope. It’s about belief. Every season, you think it’s going to be your season. Yet, for Lincoln City fans, yesterday was the signal for belief to flood back.
We’ve done things the opposite way around. Often, certainly in years gone by, belief seeps away through the season, then returns over the summer before being dashed as soon as a ball is kicked. Oddly, for this wonderful Lincoln City team, we oozed belief from every orifice as last season ended, and pre-season someone soaked that all up and threw it away.
It’s odd, because now, looking back on the dust as it settles on our first ever win in Derby, the fear seems bizarre. Of course we’re just going to do what we did last season. Of course the players we’re worried about have it in them to compete at this level. While it will still be a tough campaign, and we’ll lose matches, what made us special hasn’t gone anywhere. What makes us special only comes out when there is something on the line.
I fell into a trap. I said words like ‘pre-season doesn’t matter’ and then I watched us lose 5-1 to Grimsby and wondered what it meant. I went to Barnsley and used the title ’cause for concern’, and yet one week later, I’m not concerned. I still think we’ll be fighting in the bottom seven or eight teams, but concern would be a strong word. I was beginning to judge our chances on pre-season, and that’s like judging the quality of a TV series on the adverts. They’re there as part of the series, you watch them, but they serve a different purpose, and they mean nothing at all.
Yes, there had been a lot of apprehension going into the game, and I think that was understandable, if not misplaced. Pre-season had not been particularly convincing on the pitch, and some of the things we thought we were good at had not really been there. Maybe we had fallen into the trap of thinking we needed those games to rediscover our tactics, but the reality is that we know what we’re doing. We have to, because they were what took us to the League One title and 103 points. We tried some new things, knowing the things we do well, we do well.
Imagine, if you’d said this on the final day of the season: you’ll start the 2026/27 campaign against a top ten Championship side, and you’ll have no new signings in the starting XI. Oh, and you’ll actually be weaker, as your loan players will be gone and your Player of the Season (club’s, not mine) will be out injured. Good luck!
Uproar. That’s what you’d have got. Uproar. Again, misplaced.
A couple of weeks off was never going to completely change what this team does or what its ethos is. There was always going to be a slight question because Michael Skubala is no longer the manager, and naturally you wonder how much of last season was down to him, but Derby felt like a reminder that the identity of the side runs much deeper than that. At the end of what had been a pretty horrible week, City basically went out and said, “Just in case anybody had forgotten, we’re still Lincoln City.”
That was obvious almost from the first minute. The opening goal will get talked about because of the delivery and Ben House getting the final touch, but for me it started with Freddie Draper. He bullied his defender, forced the corner and immediately looked like the player we saw towards the end of last season. Against Bradford and Luton (among others) he was a monster, and while I had not really seen that in pre-season, this was a proper competitive game and suddenly it was there again.
House deserves the credit for the finish, and it was another example of City getting something from a set piece that had clearly been worked on. The ball went into a good area, bodies were committed and House got a foot on it. It might briefly have looked like an own goal, but it was his touch and his goal, and more importantly it was created by the sort of relentless work that became such a feature of last season. I’m not sure a Ben House flick was the outcome of the worked set piece, but Chris Cohen’s post-match comms were telling: ‘he was a blocker,’ he said, meaning it was a routine that ended up in a goal. Set piece one for the season.
This performance was not against a poor Derby side either. There was plenty of Championship experience on the pitch and a number of players who will surely feature heavily for them over the course of the season. They kept the ball well and had technically good footballers in important areas, but City just did what City do. We were aggressive, organised and completely comfortable allowing them to have possession in areas where it was not hurting us. If Derby got a shot off, a red and white shirt was usually in the way.
That was probably the biggest relief of the afternoon for me. I sat with Chris (Laming, not Cohen) in the media area and after five minutes we just looked at each other with that look of relief on our faces, like two students who have heard what sounded like someone breaking into their flat, only to discover a cat at the back door. That threat we’d conjured up ourselves, that collapse, that lack of depth, it was just the fear that the good ship Lincoln City had sprung a summer leak.
We have lost Jack Moylan, who has already scored on his Cardiff debut, and we have lost the manager who took us up. Pre-season was not especially great on the field, and the outside narrative was always going to be that Lincoln had lost their best player, lost their manager and perhaps were not quite ready for what was coming next.
That started to seep into our own thinking as well, the voices of reason and rationale. Chris and Tom are good guys, and there is plenty of belief in what they are doing, but after Grimsby and Barnsley it was only natural to wonder whether we had lost something.
The truth is, we probably never stopped being Lincoln. Pre-season was about getting minutes into legs, building fitness and trying things without the same level of intensity or consequence. I said on the way back from Barnsley that you can only play on the edge when something is on the line, and that was evident. Once there was something on the line again, all the familiar traits came back, and the front two of Draper and Rob Street set the tone for that in the first half.
Street might not have had a clear sight of goal all afternoon, but his work rate was phenomenal. He chased everything, scrapped for everything and made Derby’s defenders work for every touch. Alongside him, Draper was physically dominant and constantly occupied the back line, which gave City a platform whenever Derby tried to build pressure. Everyone knows I love Freddie; I love what he is becoming. He works hard, he runs hard, and he just bullies defenders. Sondre Langas last appeared in the World Cup in a defence trying to stop Kylian Mbappe, and he struggled to get to grips with our Freddie in his next competitive minutes.
There were also a few individual questions answered, a few players that in private conversations, I’ve heard people say ‘will they make the step up’. Tom Hamer has never played regularly at this level, so there was always going to be a degree of curiosity about how he would cope, but on this evidence he just looked like Tom Hamer. Deji Elerewe has not got vast experience at this level either, but he was an absolute monster and looked completely at home dealing with the physical side of the game. He was our Stacey West Man of the Match, a unanimous choice for an incredible display of power, strength, pace and composure. Sonny Bradley could be out for a couple of weeks, and yet I have no fear about our back line at all.
If this is broadly how a lot of Championship games are going to look, with the opposition having more of the ball and trying to be technically better than us, then there was plenty to like. We have not kicked a Championship ball yet, and it would be ridiculous to get carried away, but it was reassuring to see that the Lincoln City who topped League One have not disappeared just because of a few pre-season games.
This game mattered, even if it was only the first round of the League Cup. There was a result at stake, there were supporters in the ground, there was noise, and there was a proper competitive edge to everything, and that brought the best out of this group again.
Captain Tendayi Darikwa was probably the clearest example of that. There had been moments in pre-season where I had wondered whether the baton might soon need to be passed, simply because of his age and the amount of football he has played, but he was excellent at Derby. He was full of energy, aggressive when he needed to be and led from the front. We know Blackett-Taylor is a handful, and yet Tendayi didn’t have much of an issue with him at all.
For players like Darikwa and Adam Reach, this season must almost feel like another opportunity they might not have expected to get. Both have had big careers, and both have played in the Championship before, but when Darikwa came back from Cyprus or when Reach was without a club last summer, I doubt either was thinking too seriously about being back at this level with City.
That gives performances like this a little extra edge. Darikwa certainly played like somebody who had been handed a final chance and was determined to make the most of it. If that is what one of our so-called veterans looks like when the proper football starts, then I am not at all concerned.
There were also some really nice moments with the ball, little patterns of passing to get out of trouble that show we’re much more than a hoof it and run outfit. We know there will be teams in the Championship who are technically better than us, particularly in possession, but City played some lovely little combinations to get out of pressure and were rarely caught cheaply. There were one or two moments where Derby nicked it in dangerous areas, but overall we looked far more composed than some of the pre-season performances had suggested.
What really stood out was how uncomfortable Derby looked when they were prepared to leave themselves four against four at the back. Maybe they thought they could handle us physically, but Draper and Street caused them problems all afternoon and the second goal was another example of City punishing them when space opened up.
Conor McGrandles played an important role in the build-up, Draper (again) produced a lovely ball, and Dom Jefferies found himself coming in from the right before finishing past a goalkeeper whose last game saw him beaten twice by Kylian Mbappe at the World Cup. If somebody had told me last season that our first competitive game after promotion would feature Jefferies cutting in from the right and scoring at Derby past a keeper I’d watched on TV over the summer, I am not sure I would have believed them. DJ was another who put a marker in the sand. He wasn’t even a regular starter last season, given his injury, but he was the same as ever, busy, eager, and hard-working.
We could easily have had another as well. Lewis Travis’ foul on McGrandles stopped what looked like a huge opportunity after Derby made a mess of playing out from the back. McGrandles had players ahead of him, City looked to have the extra man and, with the right pass, it could very easily have become 3-0.
Within the laws, it was a yellow card, no argument, but in practical terms it was a great goalscoring opportunity, and those with rose-tinted glasses could have called for a red. Everyone knows I hate fouls where there is no attempt at all to play the ball; for me, something like that deserves a red (and yes, I did say it when Paudie did it at Exeter), especially when it’s denying an absolute chance. Derby knew they were exposed and Travis simply made sure the attack did not develop, which probably saved them from the game being almost completely gone before half-time.
Their goal came from individual quality rather than City suddenly being opened up. Sammie Szmodics is a player I despise for that dive while playing for Posh, and his reaction after, but my God, he’s class. He produced an outstanding strike from distance, and sometimes you just have to acknowledge the quality of the finish. There might be a conversation about the initial header not getting far enough away, but from that point onwards it was simply an excellent hit.
He’s a petulant little sod though. Three or four times he berated Joe Ward for something, even sticking his middle finger up at one point. Szmodics played one ball behind Ward, at pace, and then yelled at the winger for not getting it. I like to see players showing they care, but I’m not sure I’d like that attitude in our team. I’d probably like that raw ability though.
Even later, when Derby started adding more physical presence up front, it almost felt as though they were moving closer towards our kind of game. If you want to beat this City side, I am not convinced brute strength and direct football are the answer. We have defenders who enjoy heading the ball, winning duels and dealing with crosses, so sticking a couple of target men on and launching it forward is asking them to do exactly what they are most comfortable doing.
Technical excellence will hurt us at times; it is inevitable. Moving the ball quickly, creating overloads, pulling defenders into uncomfortable areas and finding little pockets between the lines will hurt us. Simply trying to overpower us physically is far less likely to work, because that is the game we want to play. Speaking to Jez over the summer, he mentioned how we’ve signed monsters, the likes of Coubis, Elerewe and Honohan, players with a big physical presence, players with fight and aggression, but also good footballers. Those players can match like-for-like all day long, and it wasn’t any real surprise that when Derby went to Plan B, we looked more comfortable.
This result feels important beyond simply reaching the next round. There are 46 Championship matches ahead, and I would obviously rather collect points in those than win League Cup ties, but there was still something significant about going to Derby and winning, especially when we had never won there before.
We did it by rediscovering all the qualities that made us champions last season. After a week in which there had been plenty of negativity and a few genuine questions about where we were heading, this felt like a reminder to everybody else, and perhaps to ourselves as well, that the side we watched last season has not suddenly gone anywhere. We’ve been laid a false trail of despair by the mainstream media, we’ve listened to the doom and gloomers, the ones who told you a 2-2 draw at Kenilworth Road was a honking result, and we’ve almost gone down the fear hole. The 1-24s that go out often have us bottom, but that’s lazy analysis. I shouldn’t put any stock in fans of League Two clubs or Premier League sides who style themselves as experts on everything putting us 24th just because Michael Skubala left, but for some reason I did. Fear of success?
Maybe. Maybe I am just an eternal pessimist. Chris Ashton said that to me in February; we led Plymouth 3-1 with ten minutes to go and he said ‘three points in the bag’. ‘Not yet, Chris, ‘ I replied, and he laughed. Yesterday, 90 plus three, he said ‘that’s it, we’re in the next round’, then looked at me and laughed. He knew I still think there is time for us to lose it. That attitude sees you watch a glorified training session on a warm night in Grimsby and think it means something.#
It doesn’t. If we produce that level of organisation, commitment and aggression in the majority of our away games this season, I genuinely do not think we go down without a massive scrap. There will be matches at home where we need to be a little different (think Cardiff and Burton at home, two different challenges), where we need more of the ball and where opponents will ask different questions, but on the road there is absolutely nothing wrong with leaning heavily into what already makes us good.
That, after all the doom and gloom of the previous week, was probably the biggest thing to take from our first-ever win in Derby.
Up the Imps.
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