So after the rather unconvincing display against Northampton, comes what could be another potentially bad display as City travel to Chester. However, City have an excellent record and 2 wins and a draw over Chester boss Keith Curle, scoring 8 goals. Although it's not particully vital at this stage of the season, City really need to win to show intentions of a good season. As I say though, results don't mean a lot at this stage because a win and we could be top, a draw or a defeat and we could be bottom. Infact, the stat that shows you just how much things can change via one game in the first month, comes in 2002/3 when City were heading into a home game with Macclesfield for the 5th game of the season. A 3-0 win later and City had jumped from 19th to 6th.

Unfortunatly, I will not be attending this game (only the 2nd game I'll have missed in 4 years) so the match report might not be up to the usual standard and there will definatly not be any match photos.

Well Saturday's game has shown us which starting line up Keith would prefer this season. However, we at theimps.tk have a few notes. I was disapointed with the contributions of Cryan and Brown. It says a lot about Cryan's performance that I didn't even notice he was playing until he appeared to make his first touch of the ball, in the 70th minute.

Also, I would personally like to see Asamoah start as the performance improved a lot when he came on for Molango on Saturday. However, the chances of Keith doing that are slim.

Who I think will start (Right to left)

Marriott

Beevers     Morgan       McAuley     McCombe     Mayo

Cryan     Brown

Molango     Green     Birch

There's one thing guaranteed about a Keith Curle side, they will play some very entertaining football, they have a lot of players with talent and Marcus Richardson. Curle's sides are always very hard to beat, even when City beat his Mansfield side 4-1, they were still an incredibly hard team to break down.

As I said, Curle has brought in some major talent into the Saunders Motors Stadium. The summer has seen the signings have seen 3 ex Lincoln players head their way in the form of Marcus Richardson, Justin Walker and Luke Dimech. Dimech is also one of a handful of former Mansfield players at the club. The biggest signing of the summer however, had to be the capture of Gregg Blundell, who was also considering a move to the Imps.

Chester started the season with a 1-0 win at Peterborough which their former boss, Mark Wright wasn't happy with and describe Chester as "a bunch of cheats".

Last season saw the Imps take 4 points off Chester. At Sincil Bank, Francis Green had given the Imps the lead before Chester equalised in very controversial fashion. A Chester player took a 30 yard shot and goalkeeper, Simon Raynor picked the ball up and the referee ruled it to have been a back pass and despite that bit of controversy, it was nothing compared to what happened next. Ex-Imp Kevin Ellison, who was arguably the most popular player with the fans during his 3 month loan spell, stepped up to take the in-direct free kick, a Chester player had his foot seemingly on the ball and Ellison ran up and smashed it in but whether the player's foot was on the ball is a different thing all together.

The game at the Saunders Motors Stadium was a very boring game where the only decent thing that happened, came in the final minute of stoppage time when Simon Yeo broke through and scored a goal for City.

In 1999/2000, City did the double over Chester, winning 3-1 at the Deva Stadium and 4-1 at Sincil Bank. Chester's last victory over the Imps came on New Years Day in 1998 when they won 3-1 at Sincil Bank.

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