By Nathan Jackson
July 9 2005

So we're hear again, just 6 weeks on from losing in Cardiff, City prepare for another promotion push. Will this finally be the Imps year or will the curse strike again? No team has been more consistant in this division in the last 3 years, but will that consistancy finally pay off?

So, here we go again, the pre-season is starting next week so we look ahead to the new season. Now, at the end of last season, I’m not going to lie, we dominated the playoff final until it got to extra time. Southend had played awfully and if various problems hadn’t arose with our strikers, we’d be looking forward to a season in League 1 now, but they did so we aren’t. Let’s face it, last season we were awful in most games, truly awful but let’s face it, the majority of the players who were awful in games have left. Laziness from GTF and Gain whereas lacklustre performances from Kevin Sandwith proved majorly irritating but now all 3 have gone. However, along with the bad going, goes the good with Simon Yeo and Richard Butcher both departing the club.

 

In the past, there have always been sides that look like they will be almost guaranteed to be at the top and the division has gotten extremely poor. Hartlepool, Yeovil, Scunny, Bournemouth, Hull, Huddersfield and Swansea are all teams that you would have expected to be there or there abouts every season but there are no teams that stand out in League 2 now. Unsuprisingly, with 5 playoff failures between us in the past 3 years, City and Northampton have been made the two favourites to go up with most bookies. No-one else looks like they can even guess at their finally position. I mean, it was no coincidence that 3 of the 4 best teams we played last season, got promoted, the other being Notts County.

 

This division is now of an extremely poor quality in general, I mean, without trying to cause offence to any of these teams but I’d rather have the teams listed above than Wycombe, Grimsby, Rushden, Torquay and Carlisle. A few years ago, this division was viewed as having better quality than League 1, but those days are long gone and the majority of teams, unlike before, make it very obvious why they’re in the bottom tier of League football.

 

One thing working on City’s side is that only 3 sides before them have made 3 successive trips to the playoffs, 2 of those lost all 3, only to go on and get promoted the following season. Birmingham City needed a 4^th playoff campaign in a row before winning promotion against Norwich in Cardiff. Hartlepool United went up automatically after 3 failed campaigns again so this could very well be City’s year

 

Now, I’m not going to lie, I HATE this division, I’m sick of going to the same grounds over and over again, I’m sick of the blandness of Wycombe, the sore losers at Carlisle, the mouth of Steve Evans, that away end at Cheltenham (although that’s going knocked down), the pit of silence that is Brisbane Road and the “could drop a pin”, Gigg Lane. I am desperate to win promotion from this division because from what I’ve seen under Keith Alexander, despite not getting the results we deserved, we are better than the vast majority of teams in this division. Only 1 side can say they have truly controlled all the games against us in recent years and that’s Notts County, no other team that has beat us in the last few seasons, that are still in this division, can say that they deserved more than a point. I’m not saying City deserved a point but the other team certainly didn’t deserve to win.

 

So it’s another year in this division for City, however, a new batch of City players will hopefully want to prove they deserve the chance to become what could potentially be, the biggest time in the club’s history. It’s a new era at Sincil Bank. A new crop of players, youth team members coming through, re-development plans under way and history on their side. This club is on the up but like all good things, if you want to make them last, they take time. So many times we’ve seen clubs go up to quickly and pay for it within a few years. Look at Rushden, they went up a few years ago and are now favourites for the drop into the conference. Do we really want that? After 3 years of being the “bridesmaids”, we’re finally ready to take a place in League 1, but will this season prove to be the season, or will we be in for yet another year in this division? No other side in the division has been as consistant as we have in the past 3 years but will consistancy continue? Only time will tell.