Why I Worry About Lincoln City, But I’m Not Concerned

Lincoln City are currently 12th in the Championship, and I suspect most of us would have taken that when we were celebrating promotion.

We have stepped into a stronger division, come up against clubs with considerably more resources and shown that we can compete. Yet that hasn’t stopped the familiar discussions about whether we are fortunate, whether we score enough and whether the squad needs something more.

I understand those discussions, because I have them myself. Supporting Lincoln City has never involved looking at a reasonably healthy league position and deciding there is nothing left to fret about. There is always another opponent, another injury or another chance to imagine the whole thing unravelling.

However, there is a distinction I keep coming back to, and I think it matters when we judge this team. I worry about Lincoln City constantly, but being concerned about Lincoln City requires something more substantial.

Worrying Is Part Of Supporting The Club

I briefly worried about relegation under Mark Kennedy. I worried about missing automatic promotion in 2020/21, and last season I worried about our run eventually ending. Even as we were heading towards a league title, I could find a reason why the next fixture might be the one that changed everything. Maybe I am the eternal pessimist, and Chris Ashton still laughs as he said ‘another three points’ as we were 3-1 up at Plymouth with five minutes to go, and I explained how we could still draw the game.

That is the emotional side of supporting a football club. You care about the outcome, you know how quickly things can change (down by the Riverside, for instance), and you remember enough disappointments to keep the possibility of another one close at hand. A good season doesn’t switch any of that off.

Concern, for me, needs evidence behind it. If results are keeping us afloat while the performances suggest we are struggling to compete, then there is a reason to question whether our position is sustainable, as with Kennedy in 2022/23. Equally, if we are barely creating chances and repeatedly asking the defence to rescue us, there is a problem worth discussing.

It is a bit like reaching the right answer in a maths test without understanding how you got there. You might have arrived at it once, but if you can’t show your working, how can you expect to repeat it? When I look at City at the moment, I think we can show our working.

Are We Really Just Getting Lucky?

Some supporters might disagree with that last point, citing the unlikely win at Bolton, the Southampton equaliser or a match in which they felt the opposition deserved more. There will always be individual moments we can isolate and use to make a case. A chance goes wide, a goalkeeper makes a save, or a late goal changes the mood.

What I struggle with is the argument that we would be in trouble if we removed particular goals or results. Of course we would be further down the table without the points we have won. That is no more revealing than saying we would be higher if a chance we missed had gone in.

Football is full of those margins, and they operate in both directions. If we are going to revisit the moments that went our way, we also have to revisit the opportunities we didn’t take and the periods when we played well without getting the reward, such as against Portsmouth. Selecting only the incidents that make our position look worse doesn’t give us a more accurate assessment.

My feeling is that the underlying numbers are encouraging and the performances have generally supported them. Portsmouth is the one league match where I felt we were given a proper lesson in finishing, yet even there we created opportunities and xG suggested we should have won. A poor result doesn’t erase those chances, just as creating them doesn’t erase the mistakes that helped bring about the defeat.

People sometimes put the ‘eye test’ and expected goals on opposing sides of an argument, as though you have to choose between watching football and understanding the numbers. I don’t think they are telling dramatically different stories about us. We have competed, created chances and made opponents work for what they have taken from us.

That is also why I don’t dismiss the views of Ali Maxwell and George Elek, of the Not The Top 20 podcast, simply because they aren’t watching us from the same seat every week. They research the division, watch matches and can compare us with the other clubs in it. Their perspective can be useful when our own view is dominated by every chance we miss and every goal we concede. They don’t really put is in the relegation fight, so there isn’t a reason to be concerned.

We know we are the underdogs financially, but it is easy to turn that into an assumption that any decent position must involve luck. Other clubs have weaknesses too, including clubs with bigger budgets and more familiar names. We don’t have to be perfect to deserve our place among them.

What Last Season Taught Us

The reason I place so much importance on chance creation is that we have seen what happens when it becomes a problem. Under Kennedy, we could defend well and stop opponents scoring, but the numbers at the other end suggested we weren’t creating enough. We discussed that regularly on the podcast because it was a legitimate concern, until we began to drop results.

Producing opportunities and failing to finish them for a spell is a different issue. I have made that distinction since the discussions around 2018/19, because consistently creating chances gives a team something to work with. You can assess the finishing, the decisions and the individuals involved, but at least the ball is reaching places from which goals can be scored.

Think back to the 3-0 defeat at Rotherham last season and the reaction afterwards. There were calls for the manager to go and suggestions that the situation was becoming toxic. It was a bad afternoon, but I didn’t think the wider evidence described a team without a way forward. On that isolated occasion, it was deemed we were not good enough, and yet we did the same things that day as the games before and the games after, and won the title.

A goal is like a punch landing, while a missed chance is a punch that doesn’t connect. The score tells you which punches landed that afternoon, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you everything about the contest. There is a difference between being unable to get near an opponent and getting into position without making the most of it.

That doesn’t mean finishing is irrelevant or that every defeat can be explained away. Poor finishing can persist, and nobody hands out points because an expected goals figure looks healthy. However, a change in execution can produce a very different result without requiring an entirely different football team.

I believed we would be fine last season because the opportunities were there and the broader approach was working. There were adjustments, as there always are, but I don’t buy the idea that our title came from suddenly discovering a completely different way of playing after one particular game. We kept creating, kept working and eventually finished with 103 points.

That experience should influence how we judge this season. The Championship presents a different challenge, and last year’s success guarantees nothing, but we have already seen the danger of treating a disappointing scoreline as proof that the whole approach is wrong. If the performances have substance, good xG and chances, then eventually, they will produce results.

The 20-Goal Striker Argument

Once a discussion turns towards missed chances, it usually isn’t long before somebody suggests we need to go out and buy a striker. I understand the desire for more goals, and I would welcome somebody who could score regularly in the Championship. What baffles me is how often the demand becomes a ’20-goal striker’, as though that is a basic item every competent club should have.

Last season, only one player in each EFL division reached 20 goals during the regular league campaign. Žan Vipotnik scored 23 for Swansea, Dom Ballard scored 23 for Leyton Orient and Aaron Drinan scored 22 for Swindon. That is three players across 72 clubs, which tells you something about how rare the achievement is: around 4% of clubs actually have one.

Remember, none of those three clubs won promotion. Orient finished 20th despite Ballard’s goals, while Swindon finished ninth with Drinan leading the League Two scoring charts. In League One, Jayden Wareham and Kyle Wootton both scored 19 in the regular season, yet Exeter went down, and Stockport missed out on promotion.

Every club that went up across the EFL managed it without a player reaching 20 goals in the regular league campaign. That doesn’t make a prolific striker unimportant, but it does undermine the suggestion that success depends on having regular goals from one person. It also shows why buying goals is a more complicated business than identifying a name near the top of a scoring chart.

Goals matter, obviously, but so does how you create them, how you share them around the team and what the forwards contribute before a chance appears. A striker’s pressing, movement and ability to bring others into the game can help the whole side function. We should assess whether the attack is working collectively as well as counting the goals against one player’s name.

We have just won a league title without a 20-goal striker, and now we are 12th in a much stronger division with a smaller budget than most of the clubs around us. I can worry about whether we will score enough without deciding that the evidence demands an immediate overhaul. At the moment, I think the sensible expectation is that we keep doing the things that have got us here.

What Would Change My Mind About Worry or Concern?

The next seven matches will tell us more about the squad, the contribution of the loan players and how comfortably we can maintain our place in this division. Ten points would be an excellent outcome, but I will be looking at how we have played as well as the total we have collected. A points target is useful; it shouldn’t become the only way we judge the football.

If our chance creation drops away, opponents begin controlling matches consistently, or we need exceptional saves every week to stay competitive, then I will be concerned. Those would be signs that something needs addressing. At present, I don’t think that is the story the performances are telling, so I’ll just keep unduly worrying every time we have a lead to protect.

It might not be a lead, but I will almost certainly find something to worry about when the football resumes, because I always do. For now, though, the performances, the numbers and the people leading the team give me far more reason for confidence than concern. We have earned the points we have, and I can see enough in how we are playing to believe we can keep earning them.