There will come a time of course when Lincoln City Mad have to report a loss but that time has not yet come and, once again the Imps had the engine running as the team carried out a smash and grab raid on in form Hereford United, surviving a second half onslaught to escape Edgar Street with all three points and bring the back to back wins total to five.
The one caveat to the previous victories in the run was that those opponents were suffering a loss of form and City, in a rare bout of good fortune were able to take advantage of teams that had been doing well but had slipped up. Not this time. In Hereford, City came head to head with a team bang on the money, second in the current form table to the Imps fourth. Something had to give and it was Lincoln who took the spoils to beef up their survival bid.
LCM would not be so unfair as to lay all the blame for City’s shambolic season at Joe Anyon’s door, not for a moment but there’s no doubt about it a confident, authoritative goalkeeper as the last line of defence makes it so much easier to get the various pieces to fit and the defences statistics are starting to look more than decent. What were the chances of this sort of defensive shut out a few weeks ago with the rampant Bulls snorting at the Imps rearguard? Not much chance frankly and with the strikers in a rich vein at the moment too it was Delroy who supplied the coup de grace in the first half. Delroy Facey; who can doubt his commitment or indeed ability to compete well at this level now? Here is a man enjoying his work alright. That long, tedious trek home must have seemed like the yellow brick road to our returning conquerors swept aloft in Nike’s winged chariot. Let’s hope the powers that be are in their usual ignorance of little old Lincoln for surely now the curse of manager of the month lurks in the shadows like Orson Welles rising from the underworld to wake us all from this delicious dream.
Steve Tilson, interviewed after the game was in buoyant mood;
“I just keep saying to the lads, you know, winning becomes a habit as much as losing does we’ve got to keep that habit going, don’t settle for second best we’ve got on a good run now we’ve got to try to keep moving forward.
“You have to do the horrible things if you’re going to get a result and we’ve done ‘em again today.”
Words of encouragement for goal scorer Facey’
“He’s taken the captains role fantastically forward, he’s given the lads a lot of confidence, they listen to him but also, I said to him five or six weeks ago, don’t keep turning shots down, have a go if you’re in a position to have strike, if you miss it, get the next one. He looks like he believes he’s going to score more than he did six or eight weeks ago so fair play to him he’s done ever so well for us.”
A word of warning for those who might believe the battle has been won;
“One or two bad weeks can totally change it so we have to keep improving and we have to keep believing we can get wins because, we’ve got five wins on the bounce but we need to keep pushing on”
Almost finished now but first a reminder that our message board is the perfect forum for your rants, raves, praise and put downs where classical Greek scholars for example could point out that it was Nike with the wings not her chariot and then to Tuesday, Sincil Bank 7.45 for the only game in town and where our heroes deserve and demand your attendance to see if this remarkable turnaround in fortunes can continue against Shrewsbury Town. You would be mad to miss it.