Rumours are abound that the famous ‘dressing room spirit’ shared by Lincoln City is no more than a smoke screen masking the real issues threatening to tear the club apart.
The surrender at Darlington this week left Lincoln goal-less and win-less in three games and many fans have turned on the manager, although the same could have been said after City had 6 points from 3 games. The cold hard truth is Jacko hasn’t been popular amongst Imps fans for a while, possibly since dropping Adrian Patulea last season.
However a lack of popularity can be offset by results on the pitch, but after three really bad performances against teams not expected to be battling for honours, alarm bells have started to ring. The most disturbing issue is that there seems to be no team spirit amongst the players.
Key senior players like Rob Burch, Scott Kerr and Richard Butcher are allegedly unhappy at the losses of key players last season such as Lee Beevers and Lee Frecklington, especially when they’ve been replaced by unproven youngsters. These youngsters were expected to have a passion for the game, but instead have looked out of their depth.
Similarly ex youth players have been creeping into the first team, and those two are beginning to look like they won’t cut it. Shane Clarke simply doesn’t look good enough to be a League Two player, and Lennell John Lewis has done practically nothing to aid the cause since his return. Indeed many are wondering why the Jackson ‘favourites’ continue to get regular football when they look so out of place.
One source at the club revealed that their had been an air of ‘unrest’ at the club throughout the summer after popular figures such as Beevers and Ben Wright were released and not properly replaced. However it would seem Jackson may have lost the dressing room as well as the fans. When the Echo tried recently to get a big name player to speak up in defence of Jacko the only player who would talk to them with positive comments was Cian Hughton, despite them chasing more established stars.
Stefan Oakes is another player extremely unhappy at Sincil Bank so far this season. Despite a great start privately it’s thought he is unhappy at being made a scapegoat for last season’s failing, and is especially unhappy with the way he continues to have to wheel out comments about ‘how bad I was last season’ when he was far from the only poor performer.
Many fans gave Jackson until mid November to turn it around, but defeat on Saturday against Darlington at Sincil Bank may see the board act.