Eight Teams Lincoln City Have Aspired To Be Over The Last Decade

Lincoln City kick off a Championship game at the Bank this weekend for the first time since 1961. 

It is a little slice of history: our first game in the rebranded Championship, coming against a side that denied us a stab at it two years ago with a cruel final-day win. Danny Mandroiu’s missed penalty and Paddy Lane’s over-the-top celebration ruined a wonderful run which might have taken us up early.

Still, we’re here now, and we must have plenty of teams looking at us, our method, our achievements, thinking, ‘I wish my team were like Lincoln City’. I thought it might be interesting to look at the teams I (we) have thought that about over the last few seasons.

We’ve all done it in the past. I’m not talking about the moneybags teams, such as Rushden, going boom-or-bust. I’m talking about those teams you look at and say ‘Well, that could be us’. If only we were better.

The team I am going to start with is going to blow your mind.

2015/16 – Grimsby Town

Told you.

I don’t hate Grimsby as I should. Oh, I used to, don’t get me wrong, but then I realised I have far more respect for someone living near Grimsby, putting his (or her) money into their local club and turning out in the cold and wet, than for some armchair Manchester United or Liverpool fan watching in the pub and pretending they’re an expert. You don’t know football, proper football, until you’ve driven 150 miles to lose a game you were never going to win, in the cold, in the middle of winter, while your wife (or husband) goes at home in the warm.

So you support Grimsby, instead of Lincoln. Or Mansfield. Or Scunthorpe. The only difference is your team are shitter than mine, that’s it. I share more genetic make-up with that person than the mate who messages me every six weeks saying ‘Lincoln are doing well’ when the last football stadium they stepped into was the Etihad to watch Oasis.

That brings me back round to Grimsby Town. In 2012, they finished six places above us. In 2013, 12 places, but they lost in the play-offs. In 2014, 10 places and again lost in the play-offs. In 2015, 12 places, and lost in the play-offs. In 2016, nine places, and they were promoted via the play-offs.

Their average attendances were higher by around 1,000. Essentially, they were just the same as us, a provincial club from Lincolnshire in a half-empty stadium on hard times, but they just did it better. We wanted 3,000+ every game. We wanted play-offs. We wanted promotion. Say it quietly, but they were the benchmark.

Then, in 2017/18, we finished seventh, they finished 18th, and they haven’t been above us since.

Dare I say, if we have been challenging for the play-offs, we’d have averaged more than the 3,308 they did in 2013, but that’s conjecture.

Exeter City – 2017/18

I think it is fair to put the Grecians in this article. In 2017/18, we came up from the National League, and while we were forging our own path, I strongly suspect we’d have happily swapped with Exeter. Sure, we wanted promotion, but what Exeter had looked good. The fan-ownership made them a role model, but they had decent players as well. They’d managed to find Jayden Stockley to score goals; Christy Pym was the best keeper in the division, and their returning hero, Dean Macey, pulled the strings. Ollie Watkins has trundled off their conveyor belt to make money, and that almost self-sustainable model appealed to the hipster in me.

They were (are) a similar size to us, in their original ground, the only professional team in the city, maybe slightly affected by geography. There was a lot to like about the Grecians, until that night in the play-offs when it all went a bit awry. The baton was well and truly passed a couple of months later when we stuffed them 3-0 at their place, and the role model became just another team to beat.

Bristol Rovers 2018/19

The Gas were promoted from the Conference in 2016, then went straight through League Two. By 2018/19, we were settled in League Two, and they’d been sitting mid-table in League One for a season.

That was a benchmark. We’d come out of the National League, and obviously, the next thing is promotion. We skipped the whole ‘survival’ thing, and why not? They’d done it. I didn’t want to do it their way. They sacked Darrell Clarke; they thought that was the best way to progress, and somehow, Graham Coughlan convinced them he was the man.

I didn’t aspire to that, but I did aspire to being a League One midtable side. They’d done it, leveraging promotion from the fifth tier, so why couldn’t we? The desire to be like them lasted maybe a single season, maybe not even that, but it was the framework.

I think with football, you’re always looking at the next team and thinking that it could be you, and for a few months in 2018/19, it was The Gas. I think as that season wore on, I felt we could probably do a little bit better, and when they sacked Clarke, my mind changed. Yes, I wanted promotion and consolidation, but I wanted continuation with Danny and Nicky as well.

Shrewsbury Town 2019/20

This one is probably a bit late in the article, because ever since 2017/18, they’d been in my sights. I like Shrewsbury, I like the town, I like the people, and I like the club. I liked the old Gay Meadow ground, and while Lincoln is bigger, I always felt a parity between them and us.

In 2018, when they finished third and got to the EFL Trophy final, I wanted a bit of that. Why not? They weren’t bankrolled massively; they seemed steady, comfortable in League One and moving in the right direction. Sure, 2018/19 was tougher, but in them I saw us.

You know that saying about wealth: ‘I wouldn’t mind being ten quid behind him’ well, that’s how I felt about Salop. I wouldn’t mind being a point behind them. You don’t see their workings, that they were crumbling behind the scenes, purchases like Luke Waterfall and Lee Angol proving to be fruitless. Maybe they wanted to be a bit more like us, especially after Paul Hurst left and John Askey had his ill-fated run at the helm.

Of course, we lost Danny and Nicky and got Michael Appleton; then Covid struck, and when everything settled, we finished 16th, one place and 0.01 points behind Shrewsbury in the points-per-game table. Mission accomplished.

Rotherham United 2020/21

Rotherham United were promoted in 2014 to the Championship, then relegated in 2017. Promoted in 2018, they dropped in 2019, only to be promoted in 2020 and relegated in 2021. Promotion would follow in 2022, making them a typical yo-yo club.

Imagine switching between Championship and League One, just too good for the third tier, not quite good enough for the second. As a side who had survived in 2019/20, that felt like the aspiration. That felt like what we wanted. Again, we’re talking about a club similar in size to us, a club that felt like it belonged with the Stokes and Middlesbroughs, not the Exeters and Cambridges of the world.

I also like their mentality. They were big and strong. They beat us 1-0 on their way to promotion, and they bullied us: Matt Crooks, Michael Ihiekwe and Michael Smith were just bigger and stronger. I knew then what I aspired to, or what I wanted my football club to look like, was monsters and bullies. I wanted us to be the biggest kids in the playground, taking the lunch money from the fancy-dans and pretty boys.

And I wanted it as we flitted between League One and the Championship.

Peterborough United 2021/22

I think there are a couple I can pick over the coming seasons, but I have gone for two, starting with Posh. They weren’t better than us in 2020/21. They were promoted, and we weren’t, but I don’t think their team was better than ours. They just had better players.

That was what they could do. They operated on a model I respected. They would outbid anyone for players in the National League and League Two; they’d take a few hits on those that didn’t work out, but when they sold, they sold big. Then, they had a bit more to spend, and so on. That’s how they got the likes of Marcus Maddison (he was good once), Johnson Clarke-Harris, Ivan Toney, Sammie Szmodics, Siriki Dembele and numerous others. They bought, improved, sold and reinvested, and I respected that.

It really hit home in the summer of 2021. They were promoted; we weren’t. One of our best players, at least the one we owned, was Jorge Grant, so they bought him. Done and dusted. They came for Tayo Edun as well. They did what they do best: identify talent, seek to turn a profit. Okay, it didn’t really work with Grant; there was a small profit, and Edun turned them down, but they’re still doing in. Kyrell Lisbie and Kwame Poku are the latest examples.

If you’re a fan of a League One side, and you don’t think that model is the way to go, remember this. In the 17 seasons since they’ve been doing this (going back to Aaron McLean and George Boyd), they haven’t been in League Two, or Division Four, once. In the 17 seasons before, 40% of their time was spent at that level.

Bolton Wanderers 2022/23

Bolton are the first team on this list that I think can justifiably, and without argument, claim to be bigger than us. 2022/23 was a crap season for us; Mark Kennedy did give us a nadir in terms of the last decade or so, but it was the first time our aspirations were to be a team bigger than we were historically. Grimsby, Bristol Rovers and Posh can all say they’re bigger; there are arguments for and against, but in history, we’ve not been miles apart.

Bolton are different. Bolton are a Premier League club down on their luck, a team who’ll be spending wages twice ours this season, and probably twice ours in 2023. They were rattling buckets in 2019, but writing cheques just a year or two later. That’s not jealousy; it’s what average attendances of 18,000 in League One buys you.

That wasn’t why I wanted us to be like them. No, I wanted our team to be like their team. It’s a bit like the Rotherham point: be big, be strong, be bullies, and you’ll be good. Ian Evatt’s Bolton didn’t get promoted; he clearly lacked a little something, but his team stood out. They bullied- who can forget Dapo Afolayan on Lasse Sorensen?

That’s what I wanted for us. They could play a bit; they had some really good players whom they spent a bit of money on, but their superpower didn’t come from spending big; it came from being big. If anything came out of that Kennedy era, for me at least, it was a realisation we needed to be more physical than technical.

Brentford 2026/27

For the last couple of seasons, I haven’t wanted my club to be like anyone. Wycombe did well a couple of years ago, but I didn’t think their business model was one to mimic. Oxford, a similar-sized club to us, got promoted, but I never felt like I wanted us to be like them: strangers in their own ground, forced up by poor form from the likes of Barnsley and Blackpool, only promoted on the final day because our brave run ran out.

I dropped the desire to be like Bolton as we became more streetwise, starting putting bigger players in. It was after the Kennedy season, as we added experience, as we added height and as we moulded our own philosophy. We’d been around League One enough to know what was needed, that we no longer needed to be like anyone. It makes me think of a lyric from a band called Sound of Rum, which goes:

“He don’t see to be real you gotta be yourself,
“Not a poorly constructed version of someone else”

We became the danger. We were the ones who knocked, we were the team others looked at and said, ‘we want to be like Lincoln’. We had taken bits of other teams and become a well-constructed version of us. We still are.

So, why Brentford? In 2008, Brentford averaged 4,469 supporters and finished 14th, one point and one place above us. Since then, they’ve climbed, surprising everyone by establishing in the Championship, then getting into the Premier League, and now sustaining top-ten finishes.

They haven’t done it by spending more than everyone else. They’ve been further up the food chain; Ollie Watkins is a great example. I wanted Lincoln to be like Exeter, producing an Ollie Watkins back in 2018. In 2026, I want us to be the next one up, buying an Ollie Watkins for £1.8m and selling him for £28m three seasons later.

I want us to progress using data. I want us to have our succession plan that includes promotion from within. I want us to be identifying talent like Yunus Konak and buying boldly from the best 50 young players in the world at the time. I want us to establish ourselves in the Championship, and maybe even grow, and I want to do it the Brentford way.

Conclusion

What I really like, and the final piece of this article that brings it back around, is how I believe we are now the aspiration for a lot of teams. In 2016, who could honestly say they wanted to be like Lincoln City? Dover? Welling? Maybe. That’s not a slur on the good people at the club at the time, but we were just a team falling on hard times, a team gripping on to the last shred of dignity.

Now, ten years later, we’re a benchmark. So many teams referenced us last season, winning a title without massive backing. We are the ones many teams look to, and I’d imagine Exeter, Shrewsbury, Grimsby, Bristol Rovers, Rotherham, and even Peterborough would now give quite a bit to be in our position.

That’s progress, and long may it continue.

Brought to you in conjunction with Lincoln Wingers.