Adebayo Akinfenwa says Lincoln City’s League One title winners reminded him of the Wycombe Wanderers side that made history by reaching the Championship.
The former striker singled out the Imps when discussing how football has changed in League One and League Two. In comments reported by The Football League Paper, Akinfenwa said the influence of the Premier League has filtered down to the fourth tier and made it harder to tell one team’s approach from another.
City won the League One title with 103 points last season, earning a place in the second tier for the first time in 65 years. The comparison has a familiar name behind it, too. Former Imps winger Gareth Ainsworth led Wycombe out of League Two in 2018 and took them into the Championship for the first time two years later, beating Oxford United in the play-off final at Wembley.
Akinfenwa played in those promotion campaigns. He believes he could find a role in the modern game, even if the forward partnership he was used to seeing has become far less common.
“It’s changed so much in League One and League Two since I started, but football is all about adapting, and I’d like to think I could do a job the way it is now,” he said.
“It’s heavily influenced by what we see in the Premier League, and even in League Two you’re seeing goalkeepers trying to play out from the back, and I’d say there’s a lack of identity now because it feels like everybody is trying to do the same thing.
“You have to be comfortable with your own identity as a club, because when I was playing it was a bit more direct, and you’d have your big man-little man up top, but that seems to have gone from the game.
“I like that aggressive direct style of football, but I know everybody is trying to emulate the promised land of the Premier League, and I suppose that’s no bad thing.
“I liked what Lincoln did last year, because they reminded me of my Wycombe team in the way they played proper direct football, but it’s definitely few and far between now.”
It was against Wycombe that the Imps reached 100 points last season. City beat the Chairboys 4-3 in our final home game before lifting the League One trophy in front of the Sincil Bank crowd.
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