Not the Top 20 expert George Elek believes Lincoln City are still being underestimated despite an opening eight Championship games which have provided plenty of evidence that the Imps belong at this level.
City went into Saturday’s meeting with Swansea City on the back of consecutive away wins at Preston North End and Bristol City, and led at Sincil Bank through Reeco Hackett’s first-half penalty. Swansea responded immediately after the interval, Moussa Yeo equalising before Stephen Eustaquio’s heavily deflected effort completed a four-minute turnaround and secured a 2-1 win for the visitors.
Elek was discussing the game on Not The Top 20, the EFL-focused podcast he presents alongside Ali Maxwell. NTT20 covers the Championship, League One and League Two, with Elek using the Swansea defeat to argue that perceptions of Lincoln have not yet caught up with either the results or performances produced since promotion.
“They are still being perceived by bookmakers, and I think by quite a lot of football fans, as being one of the worst teams in the league, despite the fact that there is absolutely nothing in their performances to suggest that they are,” he said.
“They had the second-highest points total in League One last season from a champion, behind Birmingham, in a decade.
“They’ve come up and their results are pretty good. They sit comfortably in mid-table in 12th position with 11 points from eight games. That isn’t an overperformance in any way, and that was before this defeat. They just had won back-to-back away games.”
Lincoln’s summer also brought a significant change in the dugout, with Michael Skubala departing after leading City to promotion, but Elek does not believe that has stripped away the foundations behind last season’s success.
“The departure of Michael Skubala, as we predicted, I would say hasn’t been a huge loss to them because they still have the infrastructure at the club in order to achieve.”
Saturday’s scoreline also did not necessarily reflect the balance of the opportunities, with Lincoln creating the greater volume of chances despite Swansea taking all three points.
“When you look at the actual numbers in the win for Swansea here, Lincoln outshot them 13 to 10,” Elek added.
“The xG was 2.11 to Lincoln, 0.92 to Swansea. So you could argue, in some ways, it was a relatively fortuitous win if you’re going by stats only.
“But I still think it’s a significant one, and you saw from the reaction of Matos post-match, celebrating with the away fans, I think he would agree.
“My big takeaway, or how I would look at this game, is in Lincoln City and Swansea City, you’ve got probably the two teams who have overachieved maybe the most of any in the Championship so far this season.”
The defeat ended City’s run of successive victories, but left them with 11 points from their opening eight Championship fixtures and another performance in which they competed strongly against a side at the top end of the table.
The NTT20 assessment suggests that, while outside expectations around the Imps remain relatively low, the evidence from the opening weeks is beginning to tell a rather different story.
Only players who registered this stat are listed — somebody on nought tackles is not part of a tackle ranking, and padding the table with them buries the players who did something. Bars are scaled to the best figure shown; this is a within-match ranking, not a league-wide one.
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