Tom Shaw says City will head to Middlesbrough with belief and “no fear” as Lincoln City prepare to begin their Championship campaign on Saturday.
After last weekend’s League Cup victory against Derby County, attention now turns to the Riverside and our first league fixture at this level for more than 60 years. Middlesbrough will provide a significant examination, with Kim Hellberg’s side expected to be among the stronger teams in the division this season.
Shaw is under no illusions about the size of the task awaiting City, but believes there are elements of Middlesbrough’s game which the Imps can exploit.
“Yeah, we’re not naive to this. These are an excellent football side. As I touched on, there’s a couple of parts of the game that they are outstanding at and can really hurt you.
“But we’ve recognised a few bits in their make-up that we think we can affect. It’s going to be a very tough fixture, a very tough opening game for the Championship campaign.
“But we’re definitely very confident from the Derby experience as a building block. We think we can hurt them in a few parts and things that really suit how we play, and have a massive effect against Middlesbrough.”
There is little doubt about how City are being viewed externally. Promotion has taken us into a division containing clubs with substantially bigger budgets and recent Premier League experience, and plenty of predictions have the Imps among the favourites to struggle.
Shaw understands why that perception exists, but he also believes people looking purely at the size of the football club risk overlooking what has brought City this far.
“Yeah, I don’t see loads of it, to be honest. I hear about it through other people. I sort of understand it. We’re not a monster football club compared to the others, but I think we’ve got 103 points here.
“We’re on an amazing upward trajectory as a football club, which I’ve been blessed to have been involved in a lot of that in the last however many years, eight, nine, ten years.”
That reference to City’s trajectory carries particular weight coming from Shaw. He first joined the club in 2018 and has subsequently worked across the academy and first-team setup, as well as serving as interim head coach before eventually becoming one of City’s current co-head coaches alongside Chris Cohen.
He has therefore seen much of the transformation first-hand, and Saturday represents another landmark moment in that journey. City might arrive on Teesside as outsiders, but Shaw insists that will not dictate how his players approach the afternoon.
“We will be perceived as the underdog. I sort of understand that. But we won’t play like it. We’ll play with belief and no fear. Respect for them and their team and what they’re capable of, but no fear at three o’clock.
“I think everybody to 2.58pm is within their rights to have a little look around and drink it all in. There’s a trajectory to now be picking our wits for Middlesbrough on the first day, but at three o’clock it’s a game of football that we’ve got to try and win and everybody should be really excited about that.”
There will inevitably be a sense of occasion when the players walk out at the Riverside. This is the moment City have spent the summer preparing for, and one few supporters could have imagined when Shaw initially arrived at Sincil Bank eight years ago.
The message from the head coach, though, is that the occasion ends when the whistle blows. Lincoln City fans, players and staff can acknowledge where they have come from beforehand, but once the Championship campaign begins, they are there to compete rather than simply admire the surroundings.
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