Lincoln City visit the DW Stadium on Tuesday, I had the pleasure of catching up with the very amiable Jake Tonge from The Stacey West Podcast podcast.
We chatted all things Lincoln, let’s take a look how it went:
Barry – Your season so far, Jake, has it met your expectations?
Jake – I’d probably lean towards, no, beaten playoff finalists last season, we had quite a few high hopes, but that has cost us missing a big chunk of the recruitment window, we had three weeks after the season was over where other clubs could focus on their recruitment, then the wage cap’s gone which massively affected us as there are some big clubs in this league, such as yourselves, Sunderland, Ipswich, Sheffield Wednesday and Pompey who can afford to pay that bit more for players, which is fair enough, but we have had to go towards our ‘b’ and ‘c’ options for recruitment and its started to show a little bit.
We’re performing ok and I don’t think we’re in any danger of going down, but I would have to describe Lincoln this season as consistently inconsistent, no clean sheets in 13 games, playing good football at times like on Saturday, but can’t score goals, our striker Tom Hopper is out until Christmas, I’m hoping that we’ll do a Blackpool, a slow start and finish strong.
Barry – Michael Appleton, is he the man to take you forward?
Jake – Yeah, massively a favourite at Lincoln City, so much credit in the bank for what he did last season, so much so he was rewarded with a four year contract.
Appleton is still the man, the style of football is brilliant, he says “we’ll never be hard to beat” which is interesting, because Lincoln under the Cowley’s were very cautious and very defensive, where as Appleton is ‘let’s be all guns blazing and see if we can’t score many goals’ which we are all liking.
I can see him taking us up at some point within the next five years, whether that’s sooner rather than later remains to be seen, but the board are happy with Appleton, the fans are happy with Appleton and most importantly Appleton is happy being at Lincoln.
Barry – You made great use of the loan market last season with some good players coming in, have you made similar use this campaign?
Jake – You have
to look at the loanees we had last season and look at where they are now,
Brennan Johnson, Morgan Rogers and Alex Palmer are all doing brilliantly in the
Championship this campaign.
This season we’ve got TJ Eyoma, whom we had on loan last season from Spurs, brought in on a permanent this summer, Dan Nlundulu a striker from Southampton, the loanee I’m most excited about is Lewis Fiorini, in from Manchester City, he’s very good, hits them from outside the box, but the loanees have been indifferent, not quite hitting the ground running like they did last season.
Barry – Last season you were quite expansive in your play, using the wide men quite a lot, similar style this season?
Jake – It could be, but on Saturday at Hillsborough we were quite narrow, played a 4-1-2-1-2, we have no real quality out wide, Hakeeb Adelakun is not a bad footballer for the level, but I think he’d be first to admit that he’s not hit the ground running and Anthony Scully, who has probably been our best player so far this season, but he needs to make his mind up if he is a striker or a winger.
We get it on the floor and knock it around, play attacking football, some of the balls we put in the half spaces between the opposition fullback and defenders are brilliant, it’s just the craft seems to be the issue, we’ve got no centre forward that seems to know where he needs to be in the box.
It’s good football to watch, it’s not hoof ball, like a lot of teams at this level, but coming to Wigan on Tuesday night, I think we will be a lot more pragmatic and play a bit more reserved and hope we can hit you on the break.
Barry – What’s your score prediction, Jake?
Jake – Not good, Baz, to be honest with you
Based on our away record, we’ve only won twice on the road this year so far, we also had a pretty poor away record the year before last season, but last season we were unbelievable away from home, even picking all the points up against yourselves after going behind, the issue is this season, once we go behind we really struggle to get back in to it, so the first goal on Tuesday is going to be crucial.
You look at your front line, you’ve got Will Keane, Charlie Wyke, Callum Lang and James McClean all players very capable of scoring goals and the fact that we’ve not kept a clean sheet, you’ve scored in every game, probably got nil-nil written all over it, but if I’m being a realist I’m going to go with 2:0 Wigan win.
I really do think it will be a comfortable win for you and I can’t really see us scoring, so an optimistic two nil defeat for us.
Many thanks Jake and I look forward to catching up with you at the game.
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