You always get at least 1 game a season where you’ll never know where to start with these sort of reports. Today was a great example of why Sincil Bank is turning into a great place to be entertained as there was controversy, 2 penalties, several yellow cards, a red card, a pitch invasion, plenty of goals and of course, Martin Allen going mental on the touchline.

I think a good place to start is what happened first in the game, that penalty. Not a single person in the ground realised it was a penalty and it took around 20-30 seconds after it being given that the Lincoln fans started moaning and MK Dons fans started, well, not even cheering. Without the benefit of a replay at this current time, I must say that I couldn’t see anything wrong at all and the referee gave a penalty out of the blue. It’s safe to say that changed the game from just another game to one game that live long in the memory.

Then we get to the other two MK Dons goals, both good headers in their own right but the fact that both goal scorers were surrounded by 3 defenders and not a single one of those defenders tried to jump with the attackers made it easy for the attackers and left Marriott with no chance at all.

Most worryingly for the Imps was that during the majority of the games, certain players didn’t try and win the ball in 50:50 challenges and I lost count of how many free-headers that MK Dons had and that’s what lost us the game but MK Dons had plenty of time to get the ball down and boot it up the field to McLeod. These same players seem to have “Peter Gain Syndrome”, by that I mean that when the ball is straight at their feet, they do stuff with it and can beat several opponents before providing a good pass, but on occasion, they will just stand there and do naff all when the action’s less than 2 yards away.

Martin Gritton fits into the above category. When the ball was at his feet, he linked up well, had the odd shot here and there and was unlucky on occasions but when the ball came near him but was directly to feet, he just seemed uninterested and perhaps if Stallard had stayed on the pitch, we might have got something out of the game because to say City were shot-shy overall during the game, is something of an understatement. This could also go to prove that City don’t have back up that is good enough and Ollie Ryan’s introduction into the game as a last sub was a case of déjà vu as he constantly gave the ball away and it’s only when your best strikers get injured, that you realise how poorly backed up you are in that department.

However, there were several players who covered every blade of grass and that’s what made it appear as though the Imps were putting up a decent fight of it but it seems no coincidence that as soon as arguably the best player on the pitch, Lee Beevers, was substituted, that all of our forwards runs stopped and we hardly had any shots after that. Beevers’ goal was no more than he deserved and although it was a little fortunate that the goalkeeper flapped at it, it capped off a good performance from the right back.

Now to the other goal that City scored and well, you’d be hard pushed to see a better goal during this season at Sincil Bank. Lee Frecklington is really coming into his own now and it’s hard to think that before this calendar year, no-one would ever have imagined that a player would come out of no-where to cause this much impact. That goal today was pure class and absolutely beautiful, it’s just a pity that it ended up making little difference to the end result and wouldn’t have looked out of place in the higher divisions.

Overall, as a game it was fantastic and as a performance, it wasn’t too bad in parts but in others, it wasn’t particularly convincing for a team that was 2^nd in the league. Luckily, that is now one of our most difficult games out of the way but it says it all that City would have gone top with a win, but instead City will now travel to the league leaders next Saturday.