By Nathan Jackson
December 2 2011

Lincoln City enter the middle of the trilogy of away games in Wales as they travel to Newport County on Saturday. The match comes two weeks after a trip to Wrexham and a week before the FA Trophy game at Colwyn Bay, but it's also a meeting between two sides with unusual coincedences to their name.

David Holdsworth's start to life as Imps manager has been promising. 4 league games have yielded six points, a reasonable return considering all of those opponents were above us at the time, two of whom are currently in the top five. The home form is finally getting somewhere with comfortable wins over Barrow and Ebbsfleet, but on the road City have been poor, but again, the away games have come against teams currently battling for promotion.

This Saturday sees a trip to relegation threatened Newport. It's the first time under Holdsworth we have a League game against a team below us, but you're unlikely to find two teams with more unusual facts about how their seasons are going.

Lincoln City haven't managed back to back victories since February when a 1-0 win at Hereford followed on from a midweek victory at Bradford City. Since then every Imps win (although there haven't been many) has been met with a draw or defeat. The record this season sees 2 draws and 4 defeats following victories and if City are realistically going to start pulling away, we will need to start recording back to back victories. Not that we have to worry about a back-to-back victory as we travel to Newport after Tuesday's defeat at York City.

Newport on the other hand have not won on a Saturday in the league so far this season. Their four wins in the League have all come on Tuesday nights. They've beaten Hayes and Yeading 4-0 twice, Kettering 3-1 and a brilliant 4-1 win at Fleetwood, but we'll get deeper into their form later on.

The Imps can only move up one place with victory, although that would potential move us six points clear of the drop zone. Newport will go above City with a win on goal difference, but won't climb any higher than City's current 18th place.

Home form vs away form is also interesting in this fixture as Newport have only picked up two points more in their 11 home games than City have in their 11 away games....and City's have lost 8 of those 11 games.

The Imps have no new injury worries but striker Sam Smith is still out. Top scorer Smith limped off against Wrexham and hasn't played since, and given that no Imps striker other than Smith has scored since August 23rd, you'd be hard pushed to see where City's goals might come from. With that in mind, Kyle Perry (right) is likely to be the most under pressure to start performing after his performances have drawn heavy criticism from City fans.

The starting line up is expected to be the same as the one that started against York.

EXPECTED STARTING LINE UP

Paul Farman

Tony Sinclair

Richard Hinds

Josh Gowling

John Nutter

Alan Power

Conal Platt

Simon Russell

Tyrone Thompson

Jake Sheridan

Kyle Perry

Newport are in their second season in the Blue Square Premier. Their first season saw them challenging for promotion early on due to only one loss in their first 11 games. They were history makers when they faced Mansfield Town as it was the first time in history that twin brothers faced each other as managers. Newport's Dean Holdsworth facing his brother, and current Imps manager, David.

Holdsworth soon left Newport to manage Aldershot and although their season didn't fall apart, they finished nine points off of the Playoffs, although that is highly respectable in their first season, especially as they won their final match 7-1 at Gateshead.

This season has been more of a struggle for Newport, with just four league wins, all of which have come on Tuesday nights. Whilst they have beat Hayes and Yeading 4-0 twice and won 4-1 at Fleetwood, they have also been heavily beaten on occasions, including 5-0 against Mansfield and 3-0 at home to Southport.

Newport have failed to hit the net nine times during the season so far, wherreas they've only kept four clean sheets.

The two sides haven't shared many players in the recent past, with only Steven Lennon (left) being noteworthy. Newport did try to sign Cian Hughton from the Imps last season but that transfer fell through.

It's the meeting of the two teams with bizarre form

Discussion started by theimps.ka (IP Logged), 02/12/2011 21:30

theimps.ka
02/12/2011 21:30

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