Lincoln City picked up what looked like a fine win against Blackpool on paper, but that can easily be written off by critics.
“It was against ten men,” would be one shout, while “They’re only League One,” would be another. The brutal truth, despite the difference in divisions, is that the side 40th in the English game played the side 50th in the English game. Away. With 11 changes, and with seven making their full debuts.
I’m not going to pretend a 4-1 victory against ten-man League One opposition suddenly tells us everything is ideal after two Championship defeats, because it doesn’t. However, I do think there was plenty to take from this game, perhaps more than the scoreline initially suggests. Last night was a dress rehearsal for the understudies and the wannabes, and in the main, they gave the management duo headaches.
11 changes meant we were effectively looking at an entirely different Lincoln City side, with several summer arrivals making their first starts and others getting an opportunity to demonstrate where they might fit into the Championship picture. We have spent the opening weeks of the season finding out just how unforgiving the second tier can be, but this was the first chance to look at the depth underneath our ‘recognised’ league XI and ask whether it really does resemble a Championship squad. By the end of the evening, I thought the answer was largely positive.
The opening stages were understandably fractured because making changes and expecting everything to click immediately would have been unrealistic. City had plenty of the ball without doing a huge amount with it, while Blackpool were probably the more threatening side when they managed to play through us. They had good League One players on the pitch as well, the sort of names you could easily imagine forming part of a strong side at that level, so this was not some collection of reserves being brushed aside. Josh Bowler can make things happen at Championship level, let alone League One, and George Honeyman has plenty of experience.
I also liked their young lad, Leighton Clarkson, a one-time Liverpool youth. He’s got a great delivery and should be a huge threat in League One. He was in decent form, and there were occasions when Blackpool managed to break the lines and expose a defence that had obviously not spent much time playing together. Joe Gauci was required to make a good save, and there were other situations in which the hosts threatened, but I never felt City were being overwhelmed. If anything, there was a slightly strange pre-season feel to the first 25 minutes, lots of possession and probing without either team really injecting the sort of blood-and-thunder intensity you sometimes associate with a cup tie.
That is why Tanto Olaofe’s opener felt as though it arrived from nowhere. It was absolutely a gift; there’s no point pretending otherwise, because the ball was simply played into his path and suddenly he was through on goal. What happened afterwards was still important, because gift or not, Tanto scored.
We spent plenty of time after Portsmouth talking about moments, opportunities and the need to be ruthless when a chance presents itself, and Tanto did precisely that. He stayed calm, went one-on-one with Bailey Peacock-Farrell and slid the finish through the goalkeeper’s legs without making a fuss about it afterwards. I liked that, and I liked his performance generally.
I’ve not been completely convinced by what I’d seen from him in his first couple of appearances, albeit those were very limited opportunities on which to judge anyone, but this was much more encouraging. He looked physical, he showed some pace, he put himself about, and he took his chance when it arrived. Fair play to him, and his post-match interview helped endear him to me even more. I found something really likeable about him underlying his answers and persona.
A Useful Look At The New Faces
There were other encouraging performances: I thought Yunus Konak looked good on the ball, comfortable receiving possession and capable of moving it intelligently, while Josh Honohan was one of the players who really caught my eye. Given the concern around Tendayi Darikwa after the Portsmouth game, Honohan’s performance felt particularly useful because he looked like somebody capable of coming into the side without us suddenly having an enormous problem on that flank. He was energetic, involved and assured, and his contribution later in the game only strengthened that impression.
Andrei Coubis had a couple of moments in the first half where he looked slightly uncertain to me, although I’m conscious that might be a little harsh because I don’t actually remember him doing anything significantly wrong. Perhaps it’s simply his size and the way he moves that occasionally makes him look a little cumbersome, or perhaps he’s still acclimatising to English football. He did go on one of those long, striding runs we have seen in clips, and as he grows into the English game, he’s going to have suitors.
The equaliser was frustrating because it came from an unnecessary free kick conceded by Tom Bayliss. Clarkson’s finish was excellent, and perhaps Gauci will look back at where he was beaten and feel he might have been positioned a little too far left, but sometimes you have to recognise a very good strike for what it is. We seem to have been doing that quite often recently, which is perhaps one of the realities of stepping into a better division. There was Šmodics against Derby, the late quality at Middlesbrough and another tremendous strike against Portsmouth, and suddenly we’re encountering opponents who can punish moments from positions that might not previously have felt particularly dangerous.
At 1-1, I thought the scoreline was probably fair. Blackpool might even have felt they had created the better chances overall, but considering the changes City had made, I didn’t think there was much to criticise about the performance.
In fact, that first half was probably the bit of the evening I found most informative. Blackpool are a good League One side and had started the season strongly, while we had changed every single player from our weekend starting XI. Yet City were still able to dictate long periods of possession and control the rhythm of the game in a way we simply won’t be able to do regularly in the Championship.
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