It was a phenomenally successful 2025/26 League One campaign for Lincoln City. We established our intent and our dominance pretty early on in the season and as the history books will forever show, we cruised to top spot and the third-tier title with 31 victories and ten draws, to register a whopping 103 points across our 46 games.
The Championship beckoned for the new year and for those fans who like a flutter on newly licensed uk bookmakers, they would have been optimistic in their season predictions. Joint head coaches Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw seem to have so far nicely steadied the ship as we made the step up, and we have made a good impression at the second tier level.
Heading into the month of October with the international break in full flow and providing a nice rest and recuperation opportunity for the players, eight games in has so far returned three wins and two draws – and until the Swansea City defeat a run of five straight games without loss was a boost to everyone.
Key to our recent rise has been the focus on the future, and few could argue that it is not working out for us when you look at Ivan Varfolomeev’s rise into the international ranks following his arrival at the club back in the summer of 2025. But with real news quiet on the ground right now, it looks like another of our mini gambles from last summer will also soon come to fruition in a way that all Imps can celebrate.
For those who pay more attention to our youth ranks, they will know that back in June we snapped up six new scholars for our Under 18 side. One of those six was a Leo Fifield who had spent the second half of the last campaign with us where he chipped in with a number of goals – in fact, he across his match minutes following his arrival from Coventry City, he was averaging more than a goal a game. He impressed enough for us to offer him a formal scholarship and he has not let us down yet, and the decision looks like it was a stroke of genius.
Having more than put himself on the map, his own development curve has continued quite dramatically this year. Our youngsters have just recently put themselves into the third round of the Youth Alliance Cup following a storming second round 5-2 victory over Walsall. Striker Fifield helped himself to all five goals on the day.
Just remember we are not even in October yet. His five goals against Walsall took him 25 goals for the season, with six assists, in just the opening ten games of the campaign across all competitions – and probably the best thing about his after game interview was how he seemed to pivot every question back to the service he was receiving from his team mates and the way the coaching staff had been working with him to boost his confidence, belief and ruthlessness in front of goal since the campaign returned.
Clearly he has had his head screwed on nicely, and he has the eye and the talent to boot. It will be interesting to follow his development further in the coming few years, as right now, it does not seem that he can put a foot wrong.