While Lincoln City lost against Swansea City yesterday, the overriding feeling I came away with was one of pride, with the international break seeing us well clear of the bottom three, and perhaps even lamenting what might have been.
Despite the result, I came away from Sincil Bank with the sense that we had again shown we belong at this level. Swansea ended the afternoon top of the Championship and, for long periods, we made them look distinctly uncomfortable. When you are walking away from a defeat to a side of that quality feeling irritated that you have not taken anything, rather than relieved it was only narrow, that says plenty about how far this group has already come.
Before the season started, I think most of us simply wanted some evidence that this team could compete in the Championship. We did not want to spend the first couple of months feeling like tourists, admiring the opposition and talking about how nice it was to be here. We wanted to see whether this squad could handle the physicality, the tempo and the quality of the division, and after eight games I think the answer is pretty clear. We have 11 points on the board, we have competed in every single match, and against Swansea we produced a first half that was probably as good as anything we have delivered so far.
There were three changes again, but that no longer feels unusual because the demands of the division appear to be driving a little more rotation than we were used to in League One. Reeco Hackett, Tom Bayliss and Andrei Coubiș all came in, and none of them looked remotely out of place. Coubiș in particular continues to look like a player who has been here for far longer than he actually has, while the bigger picture is that the players who were already at the club have given the staff enough breathing space to bring the newer signings through at the right pace.
That is probably worth bearing in mind with the likes of Yunus Konak and Mikkel Ladefoged. There is always an understandable temptation to look at summer signings and ask why they are not playing more, but Ivan Varfolomeev is a good recent example of why patience can be useful. He was not thrown straight into everything immediately, but once he settled, he became increasingly important. I would not be surprised if our strongest XI looks noticeably different by December compared to August, but the encouraging thing is that we do not need to rush that process because the players who got us here have shown they are capable of playing at this level.
The way we started against Swansea was very Lincoln City. We came out trying to suffocate them with pressure, long throws, second balls, free kicks and repeated entries into the box. I think we had three or four long throws inside the opening few minutes, and the message was pretty obvious: deal with this. Chris Cohen has used the word “violence” before to describe elements of how we play, and that is probably as good a description as any when you strip away the literal meaning. It is not about kicking people; it is about making the game uncomfortable, chaotic and physically demanding, and then making sure the opposition never quite gets the chance to breathe.
That first half was a brilliant example of how possession can be one of the most misleading statistics in football. Swansea had loads of the ball, and at one point the possession figure was something like 77 per cent in their favour, but I never really felt as though they were controlling the game. Most of their possession was in areas we were perfectly happy for them to have it, while we were creating the more dangerous moments, getting into their box more often and forcing them to defend far more than the possession split would suggest.
There is a difference between having the ball and controlling where the game is being played. We did not need possession to dictate the terms because our out-of-possession work was so organised that Swansea were often simply passing the ball around inside areas we had already decided were safe. As soon as they tried to progress, the press arrived, the space disappeared, and we were able to force the sort of turnovers that lead into the direct, aggressive football we are so good at.
That sort of control relies on clever footballers as much as technical ones, and Ben House is probably one of the best examples in the side. His booking after only a few minutes was incredibly harsh in my view, and I am not even convinced the challenge was a foul, never mind worthy of a yellow card. The problem with that decision is that it instantly puts one of our most aggressive players on a tightrope and forces him to manage the rest of the game differently. I’ll try to steer clear of referee talk, for now.
House plays on a booking extremely well. He is involved in so many physical duels that he is always likely to collect bookings, but he rarely allows those bookings to become anything more serious. In fact, over the course of his Imps career, he has amassed 46 bookings, but only once, away at Derby in 2023, has he been sent off for a second yellow. Yesterday, once he had the yellow, he still pressed, battled and competed, but he did it with a level of control that meant he never really looked in danger of receiving another.
The frustrating part was that Anthony Backhouse never seemed to establish a consistent threshold after that (okay, I give up, can’t ignore him). There were challenges later that looked at least as worthy of a yellow as House’s, not least one in the middle of the park by Stamenic, but they went unpunished. Once again, we’re talking about consistency, and I wonder if maybe, just maybe, we’re beginning to get tarnished by our reputation.
The Josh Tymon incident in the second half was the one that really stood out. He fouled Conor McGrandles, and the referee appeared to reach towards his pocket before stopping himself when he realised Tymon had already been booked. If that is what happened, then it is difficult to defend. If a challenge is worth a yellow card, the fact a player is already on one should not change the decision. A second booking has consequences, obviously, but those consequences are not supposed to influence whether the foul itself meets the threshold.
I do not think the referee cost us the game, and I am not interested in pretending every defeat comes down to officiating, but the inconsistency was irritating. Vigouroux was punished (probably wrongly) for taking too long over a restart early in the first half, then similar delays later appeared to be ignored. House was booked quickly, while other fouls escaped punishment. There is always going to be an element of subjectivity, but when the interpretation seems to shift as the game goes on, it becomes difficult for players to know exactly where the line is.
Thankfully, the penalty was one of the decisions he did get right. Freddie Draper did well to make the most of the physical mismatch in front of him, getting himself into a position where the defender had to react and then drawing the contact. Watching it live, I thought it was a penalty, and seeing it again did not change my mind. Hackett certainly did not leave anything to chance with the finish, absolutely hammering it beyond Vigouroux.
Vigouroux was outstanding, and not simply because of the saves he made. In fact, he probably did more damage to our attacking threat through the moments that never became shots at all. He dominated his area, came a long way to collect crosses and repeatedly killed attacks before a second ball could drop. In a game where so much of our pressure came from repeated deliveries, long throws and recycled possession, having a goalkeeper willing to come 16 or 17 yards from his line and take responsibility was enormous for Swansea.
Jez George (in our Patreon-only event last night) went as far as saying he thought Vigouroux was the best opposition goalkeeper he had seen at Sincil Bank during his time at the club, and I can understand why. A less dominant keeper probably leaves two or three more balls alive in the box, and that alone might have changed the feel of the game. He did not necessarily have to make a string of spectacular saves because his starting position, decision-making and confidence prevented those chances from ever developing.
If there is one small criticism of our first half, it is that all the pressure did not quite produce enough genuinely clean chances. We created plenty of dangerous situations and repeatedly got Swansea defending their own box, but a lot of those moments ended in half-chances rather than the sort of opportunities where you expect a goal. I do not think we have necessarily been wasteful this season, but the next stage is probably turning all that pressure into slightly clearer openings with one more pass, one better angle or one more composed touch before the shot.
Swansea gave us a warning just before half-time that the second half might be different. For 35 or 40 minutes they had looked like a good side being prevented from showing why they were good, but there was a spell before the interval where they began to find a little more rhythm and work out where the spaces were. Unfortunately, that carried straight into the restart and the whole feel of the game changed very quickly.
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