Newport County v Lincoln City, 3 December 2011

Venue: Newport Stadium, Newport

Attendance: 1,270

Final score: 1-0

The depressing life of Lincoln fans continued this afternoon, as the rather-less-than-mighty Imps succumbed to yet another away reverse, this time at the hands of Newport County - a team that before the game were three points and two places below City.

The Imp’s starting line-up saw a few changes from the defeat at York, with Laurent and Christophe starting in place of Russell and Sheridan.

I would love to know what has happened to Barraclough and Taylor – two players who showed some promise earlier in the season but who seem to have vanished off the face of the earth.  Surely they are at least worth giving a few minutes on the pitch to see if they can turn our fortunes around?

The conditions were not great for flowing football, with a heavy, muddy pitch making slick football difficult.  Luckily, the pitch wasn’t hosting two of the world’s slickest footballing teams.

Newport started the brighter of the two teams, forcing an early save from Farman, but it quickly became clear that the match was never going to be a thriller.

Sadly, predictably, City were soon to display their uncanny ability to throw away such games, and Newport were duly handed a soft goal on 24 minutes.  A freekick that wasn’t cleared led to a scramble in the box, and Yakubu prodded the ball goalwards.  The linesman flagged that the ball had crossed the line, and City had yet another mountain to climb if they were to get anything from the match.

The second half saw improved effort from the Imps, but ultimately no end product.  City have to learn that its no good only starting to play with time running out and when you’re a goal down.

Holdsworth’s comments after the game actually annoyed me a little, as he basically said that we had been undone by a defender slipping in the box, which wasn’t really even a mistake, just bad luck, and without that we would have been fine.  No, we wouldn’t.  Without that slip we may have fought out a 0-0 draw and still not tested the Newport keeper.  Is that the limit of our ambitions?  That our manager would have been happy with a bore draw against a club that has only been full-time for 6 months speaks volumes about how far this club really has fallen from grace.

With Luton coming up on Tuesday night, City face a much tougher challenge than Newport presented, and a result of some kind seems essential if the attempt to climb away from the foot of the table isn’t to stall entirely, and the fans renewed sense of optimism dissipate entirely.  You may have guessed from this post that my optimism is rather under threat itself at the moment.  Come on City, give us a reason to smile…

NEWPORT COUNTY
1 Danny Potter
4 Tom Miller
5 Gary Warren
6 Ismail Yakubu
7 Danny Rose
10 Sam Foley
16 Andrew Hughes
19 David Pipe
21 Robbie Matthews
25 Paul Rodgers
26 Elliott Buchanan

Substitutes
9 Craig McAllister for Buchanan 62
11 Darryl Knights for Foley 90+3
17 Wayne Hatswell
18 Glyn Thompson
27 Felino Jardim

LINCOLN CITY
28 Paul Farman
13 Tony Sinclair
2 Richard Hinds
5 Josh Gowling
3 John Nutter
27 Jean-Francois Christophe
34 Tyrone Thompson
8 Alan Power
12 Conal Platt
11 Francis Laurent
9 Kyle Perry
Substitutes
32 Luke Medley for Platt H/T
36 Jake Sheridan for Power 70
15 Simon Russell for Laurent 75
17 Nicky Nicolau
1 Joe Anyon

Tweet