We Needed One Win in 11 Games To Stay Up

2011 was utterly awful, with a terrible Imps side sliding down the table without a hint of a win. In fact, we only needed a single win from the last 11 matches to stay up, and we couldn’t get it. Well, at least that’s the accepted memory that literally thousands of people have, but it’s not strictly true. After we beat Southend 2-1, many people felt we were safe, and one more win would be enough. We had 11 games to get it, and had we won one of those 11 matches, we’d have been safe. That’s what people remember.

Not true. We were relegated with 47 points, a point behind Barnet but with a much worse goal difference, -36 compared to -19. With 11 matches to go, we had 45 points, so if we’d won one game in the final 11, we’d only have had 48 points, level with Barnet. That means we’d have to have won that game 17-0 (or 18-1, etc.) to have stayed up by winning one more game. There is an element of fact in the stats; we needed to win one of the last ten, having drawn with Macclesfield the week after Southend. Indeed, many say that had we hung on and won that game we’d have stayed up.

That is true – we didn’t know it, but Sam Wedgebury’s 90th-minute leveller against ten men did relegate us. In a way.