By Nathan Jackson
September 23 2010

Lincoln City have a rare opportunity on Saturday as they face Stevenage. Not only will it be the first ever Football League meeting between the two, but Stevenage are one of the few sides that have actually won fewer times than the Imps this season. However, the pressure won't be on Stevenage to get a result, it's on Sutton.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, the clock is ticking for Sutton to get results. Next week will see the year anniversary since Sutton was appointed as manager, 48 League and cup games later, he has won just fourteen matches and two of those were against teams from the Blue Square North. With a winning record in the league of just 29.16%, the pressure is starting to mount on Sutton as more and more fans are getting off the fence and realising he’s not good enough, especially as we have only avoided defeat in three of our nine games this season.

To put it into some kind of context, Sutton has the worst winning percentage by quite some way since the days of Alan Buckley (source Lincoln City Archive), and only nine managers in the whole of Lincoln’s history have a worse percentage than Sutton, however, only one of those (Buckley) has actually been in charge for more games than the current manager has.

Sutton has effectively given himself a large amount of pressure when he proclaimed before the Barnet game that he expected a decent return of points from the next ten games, a bizarre claim at the time given that only two of the ten teams were below us at the time….and now with eight of those ten still to play, only one of those eight opponents are below us….and their away record is exactly the same as our home record.

It does make you wonder what will happen if we get to the end of this run of “decent point games” if we don’t get that many points.

So the first of the remaining eight comes against Stevenage. I think it’s far to say that Stevenage have made an average start to life in the League. They have won just once, but on the other hand have only lost twice and are still unbeaten at home, whilst they have yet to win on the road.

City can’t go bottom if they lose due to Morecambe vs Barnet, but the Imps could slip into the relegation zone.

Scott Kerr is suspended for the game, whereas Andy Hutchinson is still out injured. Other than that it’s a seeming full bill of health for the Imps.

THE LIKELY CITY STARTING XI
	Anyon is the one reason we haven’t lost every single game this season, he has pulled off some fantastic saves and kept City in games that the opposition should be miles ahead in.
	Mr Anderson, it must be so frustrating to improve a lot as the season goes in, only to then see the rest of the defence leak goals for fun.
	Watts’ marking was a little suspect against Accrington, but he’s probably still the best defender in terms of ability that we have......even though he does appear to be letting his ginger hair grow out.
	Green seems to have established himself in central defence over recent games, although he failed to really inspire in his last outing.
	Other than the game at Gillingham, you’d be forgiven for not noticing that he was playing. The player that looks really exciting at the end of last season has gone missing completely.
	The fact I had to look on the official site just now to see if he played at Accrington (even though I was there) sums it up. He hasn’t been the same player since he got back from injury and has a lot to prove, especially at home.
	When Jarrett doesn’t play well, the Imps generally don’t play well, a worrying trend indeed.
	Sutton seems to love Josh O’Keefe and no-one seems to know why, he's not even a trier. We have lost every time O’Keefe has played and if there’s one player than needs to have a good game, it’s him.
	With Scott Kerr suspended, Clapham is likely to continue in midfield....whether he can have the same positive influence on O’Keefe that he had on Anderson is very debateable though.
	The former Stevenage striker is under pressure to get goals, people did excuse that initially due to him holding the ball up, but there’s only so long a striker can go without netting.
	Other than scoring two goals, he hasn’t really done a lot at all in his loan spell so far, but then again Sutton is unlikely to drop the only striker at the club to have scored this season.

 

There is no real recent history between the clubs, this weekend’s game will be the first time the clubs have met since an FA Cup game in 1998.

Drewe Broughton and Albert Jarrett are a former Stevenage players, whereas former Imps Chris Day and Luke Foster (left, celebrating after scoring the opening goal in the 5-0 demolition of Grimsby Town, he only goal for City and one of only four goals during his career) will make their first returns to Sincil Bank since leaving in 2001 and 2007 respectively. Rob Burch has also played for both clubs, as did Ritchie Hanlon, who is the only player to move directly between the clubs when he joined City on loan from Stevenage in 2004/5 before the move became permanent. Scott Eustace, Tony Battersby, Michael Blackwood, Jude Stirling has also all represented both clubs during the last ten years.

There was a lot of controversy beaten the clubs several years ago. Stevenage fell out of favour with their striker Anthony Elding, Lincoln made a bid and according to Keith Alexander, the Stevenage Chairman at the time said “I’ll sell him to anyone, except Lincoln.” Elding went on to sign for Kettering but did eventually play for the Imps, joining on loan from Crewe in the 2008/9 season and scoring 3 goals.

Despite the lack of players who’ve played for both clubs in recent years, Stevenage have signed several former Lincoln targets during the last ten years. Darryn Stamp, Brian Quailey and Tes Bramble all playing for Stevenage are City failed to bring them to Sincil Bank, mainly under Keith Alexander.

There would have been few people around the country that would have thought that Stevenage’s promotion was undeserved. One of the most ultra consistent sides outside of the Premiership, Stevenage finally gained automatic promotion last season after winning the Blue Square Premier Division. They were challenging Oxford for most of the season before Luton suddenly made a march before Stevenage Borough, as they were then known, won the division by a whopping 11 points.

They have kept the majority of their promotion winning squad, but much like many Conference Champions before them, they are sitting in midtable. They’ve won just once in all competitions, one of the few sides in the division to have actually won fewer games than the Imps, but they haven’t actually lost that many, only being defeated twice in the League, both away from home and both only by a single goal. They have failed to score in four games in all competitions, whereas they’ve only kept one clean sheet and that came against Torquay last week.

Much like many other sides who have come up, they could end up relying on some excellent home form as they are yet to suffer defeat on their own patch in League games, whereas a win at Sincil Bank would be their first ever win away from Broadhall Way at this level.

City have rare challenge as they face Stevenage

Discussion started by theimps.ka (IP Logged), 23/09/2010 18:29

theimps.ka
23/09/2010 18:29

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