Match Thread: Lincoln City v Accrington Stanley | Page 17 | Vital Football

Match Thread: Lincoln City v Accrington Stanley

How can you possibly know that? Nobody knows who will be top and who will be bottom at this stage. The first few matches of the season are just a stick your finger in the air job! None of us know what the general standard of League 1 is because I suspect I am like the vast majority of Lincoln City fans and haven't seen much League 1 football for years.

We played well but one swallow doesn't make a summer as they say. All I will say is that I was chatting with some Accrington fans on the way back to the car and they think that their squad is at least as good if not better than last year (even without Billy Kee) and they finished 14th. They also said that if we played to that standard every week we would be comfortably in the top 6 come the end of the season and they were surprised how good and quick we were. After a whole season watching League 1 football last year I was pleasantly surprised and pleased with their assessment.

Fact is we will be able to make a better judgement after 10 matches as the table is starting to take shape then.

All fair and valid points.

It's of course a big call to make promotion/relegation predictions after one game... just as getting overly excited about the Imps' performance in one fixture is too.

That said, I did watch a bit of L1 football last season (PO games), and like you as well I suspect, pretty much a whole season of L2 football. On that basis, I felt Stanley looked no better than a mid-table L2 side; and whilst their fans would of course have an infinitely better overview than me of their squad quality, taking out your top scorer of the last 3-4 season hurts any team at any level (and I didn't see much on Saturday to suggest they've found a replacement for Kee).

As you say though, it is all a bit finger in the air at this stage... and probably very unfair to make this judgement after one game... we'll see what's what come the end of the season. And goes without saying, I'd prefer Stanley to battle their way to survival than many other teams in the league (Evans' Gillingham for one!).
 
L1 teams still have all of august to add players to their squad, or to lose players from their squad. 10 games in is a good first assessment of how we are doing, and even that can be clouded by an 'easy start' for us, or for other teams.

saturday will be a good test, back to being scrapping underdogs - which i agree, suits us.
 
It's not particularly easy to get promoted or relegated from any league. Although as we know, if you try hard enough both are possible.

Most teams are by definition fairly average. Last season there were 8
teams in L1 that were 5 points or less above the relegated teams. Accrington were at the top end of this group.

It should give us a guide that we are not likely to be completely out of our depth.

Sunderland got 30 points more than Accrington and still did not get promoted. Therefore, anything above mid table would require a consistently good run
throughout the season.

Where that puts us on the evidence of one match, no one really knows...
but as yet there are no grounds for pessimism.