SWINDON TOWN 2

LINCOLN CITY 2

TOWN FLIER

Swindon’s home game against league leaders Lincoln City for once lived up to expectations – there was plenty of drama and incident, and some good football as well writes Peter Mitchell.

In the opening half hour Town pressed well, dominating the game, and creating several good chances.

True, City missed a great opportunity after five minutes, when Jason Shackell was given a free header from six yards, but he missed the target. Other than that, apart from their two shots, both on target and counting, the Imps hardly threatened.

Both goals conceded were eminently defendable and Town will be very disappointed.

First, a relatively innocuous low shot from Shackell should have been saved by Lawrence Vigouroux, who was surprisingly beaten at his near post.

The second goal came when, in first half injury time, Dion Conroy should have headed back to the oncoming Vigouroux, but instead decided to try an overhead kick that could have ended up almost anywhere.

And it did - right at the feet of Shay McCartan who hit a spectacular volley over the out of position keeper.

Swindon are desperate for their stopper to sign another contract, to avoid him walking away without a compensating fee, but he seems to be becoming less reliable by the game.

Lincoln’s Carvalho Andrade was dismissed in ridiculous fashion just after half an hour, when he quite blatantly raked Kyle Knowle right in front of the dug outs.

Just before the hour mark, Town pulled one back when substitute Michael Doughty converted yet another penalty after Keshi Anderson was brought down, following another of his surging runs into the box.

Shackell was also dismissed at the time for dissent, leaving Lincoln to play with just nine men for almost 40 minutes.

It’s easy to be critical about not doing better with a two man advantage but, when City packed their area with all nine men for most of the time, it was never going to be easy to find a way through. However, Swindon didn’t seem big on ideas and were relying on their all too patient slow build ups to eventually pay off.

In the end the equaliser came when Doughty did manage to find the net, placing a low curling shot from 20 yards, with a couple of minutes of normal time remaining.

A point was no less than the Town deserved – Lincoln were at their usual intimidating best and how their goalie, Vickers, wasn’t at least booked for his ludicrous time wasting was another one of those refereeing mysteries that we find so often at this level.

I did feel it was wrong to take off Knoyle at the interval, and not to use him as a winger – unless of course he was suffering an injury.

I think the quality of his crosses from the right – of which there were many – would have been of a higher quality than new man Canice Carroll delivered.

It was also a surprise that the pace of unused sub Jermaine McGlashan was not taken advantage of.

Town now have three new young loan players to bed-in and are apparently intent on signing another couple of more experienced players before the transfer window closes.

All that will take time, and the games are starting to run out. However, this is such a topsy-turvy league that a very late run of five or six wins could still get them into the top seven.

Optimistic or what!

Swindon travel to ninth placed Tranmere Rovers next Saturday.

It will be tough to get something from a team that has lost just once at home, but once again Town have picked up more points on the road than at the County Ground this season, so you never know.