Accrington Stanley and Macclesfield Town have walked away from Sincil Bank with zero points after a night game, infact, the only two teams to walk away from Sincil Bank pointless at all this season, however, the Imps face a different prospect with vastly improving Hartlepool who've finally found their feet after returning to this division during the summer. It was their first bad season in 7 years after 5 playoff campaigns and one promotion, it came as a bit of a shock for a team hoping they would be travelling to the Brittania, Home Park, KC Stadium and Stadium of Light this season, instead, they get Moss Ross, Edgar Street and York Street.

However, the key question won't be if Hartlepool beat the Imps, it'll be whether the Imps' beat themselves because in the last 2 games, the only reason the other team beat us is because we lost the game, not because they won it and any more performances along a similar line to the ones against Boston and Bury and our fading hopes of automatic promotion will travel, along with the 3 points, back to Hartlepool.

Same old same old for City, meaning Eaden and Hughes will more than likely start, oh dear. Other than that, there are no fresh injury worries for the two Johns and hopefully, it'll see a return to the pass game that saw the Imps go unbeaten until mid-September.

Who I think will start (Right to left)

Marriott

Eaden   Beevers     Moses    Morgan    Hughes

Kerr  Frecklington   Mayo

Stallard    Forrester

As you can tell, they've picked up a bit of form recently and striker Jon Daly has all of a sudden popped out of no-where, after nearly leaving the club a few months ago. He picked his moment to score his first ever goal for Pools as he scored the goal that put Hartlepool 2-1 ahead in the eventual playoff final defeat to Sheffield Wednesday a few years ago. However, he form has been pretty rubbish the following season and he was eventually loaned out to Bury. However, 7 goals over the last 3 games has took him from the bottom to the top few of the scoring charts.

However, they do seem to have a problem beating top half sides, especially when you considering only 1 of the sides they've beaten are currently in the top half and that was only Peterborough. However, never count Hartlepool out and they could still easily win promotion from this division.

It's also interesting that the Imps are no-longer the biggest play-off flops in the division, Hartlepool have made 5 appearances in the end of season lottery, making the final just once and winning just 1 match out of 11, a 2-0 home win over Tranmere in the 2004/5 season.