The young imps held onto a 3-2 lead against York City to pick up three more important points to continue what has been a very strong start to the season.
Sam Tillen spoke on the team’s performance and said: “I think it was up and down, I think there were elements that were really good and elements of complacency. When you play an opponent and you win significantly in the game before, it throws up different challenges.
“I thought we started sloppy, we were complacent and we were punished for that. That sparked us into life, we got back to playing our game, we played quicker and scored three good goals. After half time we came out with that intent, we weren’t able to get that fourth goal which would’ve put the game to bed.”
Lincoln City held onto the ball for much of the game, with the side having to adapt to facing a team sat in a low defensive block, with Tillen explaining how he thought they coped with that new challenge.
He said: “We did some preparations for it and I think it’s something we’ll look at as a sign of respect that they wanted to reduce the space in behind and they knew we were really really good, obviously we had just scored ten goals so they adjusted their strategy and tactics somewhat so that’s testament to our performance on Wednesday but I think we need to be better.”
Looking ahead to the weekend, it will be the fourth straight home fixture as City will welcome Rotherham United in another league clash on Saturday. The squad will have had more time to recover and prepare without a midweek fixture, and Tillen spoke on these preparations.
He added: “We’ll assess this game and go through the learnings that we’ve already identified in terms of complacency but also how we can be better in possession against a team that sits in. When we did play quicker and break the lines, we had the threat in those areas to cause problems, and we just didn’t do it enough so it’s just about showing the lads that we can do it.
“We’ll look at individual performances and do some individual work as well and see where we can improve and obviously highlight some very positive stuff as well. If you’d said at the start of the week that we would score thirteen goals in two games, then I think we would be very pleased with that so it shows we have a lot of attacking intent.”