That's Entertainment

Wycombe 1 Lincoln 0
P-Bo

You can always see what the WWFC board's main perceptions of the previous manager's supposed failings were by what the new manager is forced to trot out when he gives the debut press conference (other than the obvious lines about reminding the board of Martin O'Neill).

Paul Lambert? "The team'll be built from the back" - following the Gormanian era of trying to walk the ball into the net and sod the defence

And now, Taylor with the "we'll play entertaining football" malarkey, given the collective View Of The People that Lambo-style football was dull but efficient.

This from a manager renowned for 1-0 wins?

Scepticism abounds. However, if you took this match as evidence in isolation, the 'entertainment' factor (and what a cheesy word that is to describe football) seems to have returned to Adams Park.

The blue-quartered bombardment kicked off at a rocketing pace, winning corners a-plenty and generally peppering the Imps goal with shots, to which the hapless Lincoln defence's only response was of the hoof-flavoured variety.

The human spelling mistake, Mr Lewwis Spence, was putting in some nice corners, consistently finding a decent spot and not suffering the 'oops! hit the first man' disease that once afflicted so many of (the otherwise good) Russell Martin's efforts.

The only goal of the game came on 13 minutes from an unlikely source, Mr Crrrrrrrrrraig Woodman, fluffing his cross and...oh! it's gone in. Lavly. Memories of Scott McGleish's similarly happy accident at Rotherham last season. However, by that point we actually kind of deserved it, given the relentless endeavour and even (gasp) skill on display up until then.

Lincoln were looking frankly shite, and we were making the most of it. However, there were isolated moments of quality from Dany N'Guessan coming down the Impish wing, with his Travis Bickle haircut and crafty command of the handballer's art. Up front, though, LCFC looked toothless, making a mockery of Peter Jackson's fanciful claim that their signings were 'The Envy of League Two': http://www.sportlincoln.com/football/lincoln_city/news/displayarticle.php?ID=4473

Stefan Oakes? Envy? Mmm. I'm not really feeling the green-eyed monster myself. Anyhoo, the crocked yet as ever carefully-coiffured ex-Chairboy and Showaddywaddy offspring returned to Adams Park to do the halftime-draw and a barely-audible interview. And we cheered, oh yes.

'Pace' is a term used mostly by fans who think that footballers are nothing but a series of Football Manager stats. "Oh, he's crap, he's got no PACE" they'll cry of a player who makes up for it by wily reading of the game and other artful trickery which you can't feed into a computer program like you can an 100 metres time.

However, Paul Lambert's teams did tend to feature players who weren't that nippy. Well by golly we've gone the other way this season, with Messrs. Spence, Grant, Ashton and Zebroski all rocketing up and down the pitch. I will say this - there were many times under Lambert when there was a Wycombe player miles away from the ball, with the oppo man much closer, and you thought - ah fuck it, they'll never get there, why bother? Well today, we won those kind of battles several times, and made some good attacks out of them. Interesting times.

Promise shown too from Mousinho, in a kind of Bloomfieldian way, with all the solid workrate that that implies.

I did think that, with attacks coming from all over the pitch on our part, that McGleish was somewhat frozen out of the game for large periods - it used to be, 'oh, give it to our leading scorer, he's the one that gets the goals round here' and that was that. However, everyone else seemed to be having a go, yet many was the time that the master poacher was left arms in the air with frustration that another attacking talent had had a shot rather than passing it to him.

For once, the Man of the Match award was spot on - a vintage performance from the classic midfield schemer that is The Doc. A delight to watch - breaking up play, spraying round crisp short passes in the centre, or lofting longer ones for the wing-based speedfreaks to chase down, and, as ever, fouling craftily. A Doc appeal for a penalty was tediously but correctly waved away by Mr Hegley in the black, after rightly seeing our Tom carefully run into the defender's clumsily outstretched leg...nice try though.

We did peter out somewhat at times, but we weathered the Lincoln counterattacks.

You could argue that we should have had a couple more given the amount of opportunities created, but hey ho, it was a good win and one of the more exciting games seen at AP in recent times.

Taylor In? (for this week, anyway).

26.08.2008. 13:12

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