Marcus Braddock looks ahead to the weekend's game with Lincoln City
This Saturday, Lincoln City make the trip to Montgomery Waters Meadow for their 24th and our 23rd Skybet League One game of the season. Lincoln's start to the season was rather good with three successive wins in League One and one in the Carabao cup away to Huddersfield. After that, they went into a steep decline with just three wins in their next 20 games. The reason for the decline seems to be losing the Cowley brothers to Huddersfield in September but new manager Michael Appleton looks to have wrestled the team back to winning ways with five wins in their last ten games.
Top Scorers (cup goals in brackets)
Tyler Walker 12 (2)
John Akinde 3 (3)
Harry Anderson 3 (2)
Assists
Jorge Grant 6
John Akinde 2
Harry Toffolo 2
Harry Anderson 2
Tyler Walker 2
Joe Morell 2
Clean Sheets
Five at home and three away.
Stats
Lincoln are the 9th best team in League One with 12 points over the last eight games.
In away games, the 15 minutes after half time tend to be the best for the Imps with three goals scored and none conceded all season.
Seventy-five percent of Lincoln's away goals conceded were scored in the first half.
The Imps have conceded an average of 1.39 away goals and scored an average of 0.8.
Referee
Andy Hains from Tyne and Wear. Games this season: 25. Yellow cards: 66. Red cards: 7.
Squad News
Lincoln's Michael Bostwick has been ruled out for up to eight weeks with a calf injury. There seems to be an influx of new players amongst the Lincoln ranks so changes may be made.
Sam Ricketts has no new injury worries.
Summary
Lincoln may have lost more games than any other team in League One but Michael Appleton seems to be turning things around and has signed some useful players in the last few days. That means there are a couple of relatively unknown quantities that could act as wild cards if given the opportunity.
After a run of four winless games, Sam Ricketts team will be itching to make amends with a positive result in front of the home supporters. If we're going to make an impact on the top ten and beyond, we really need to win our home games and to do that we're going to need to improve on the performance at Doncaster.
COYB!!! Marcus