Lincoln City 1-5 Shrewsbury Town

Ouch that hurt.

All good runs have to come to an end at some point and the Imps certainly did on Tuesday night. When you have a scoreline like this one there is two ways you can look at it. Either they were fantastic or we were crap. If the Imps ever play crap then this blog doesn't pull any punches in saying so (see the Accrington away blog entry) This performance however was much better than that one, and better than many of the early season Chris Sutton inspired performances.

Tuesday night we simply came up against a side on top of their game who were far too good for us. From the word go they ran at us directly, both down the centre and the on the wings. The first goal came after 6 minutes following a great finish with the outside of the boot after the Imps defence failed to contain their winger. This set the tone for the rest of the match.
The Imps did hit back more or less straight away. Gavin MacCallum broke free on the right and crossed in for Ashley Grimes to convert from close range 1-1 after only seven minutes of play. That goal only seemed to wake Shrewsbury up and they were quickly back on the front foot forcing a flurry of corners. The second came on 13 minutes when another dangerous cross was knocked in by Julian Kelly for an O.G.
Next step forward Shrewsburys Lional Ainsworth.
Shrewsbury paid good money for this guy in the summer and in 13 devastating minutes we were going to see why.
Gavin Hoyte has signed on loan for the Imps for the rest of the season and by and large has been a good signing and don't little wrong. However he must have been watching his Arsenal team mates second half defending at Newcastle pre game because that is the only reason i can think for him trying to run the ball out of defence instead of just booting it long up the field. On 22 minutes he tried this crazy move thus allowing Ainsworth to rob him off the ball and fire hard and low into the corner. Two minutes later it was 1-4 when a loose ball was fired home from the edge of the box through a crowd of players. His 13 minute hatrick was complete when he spun off the centre half and finished with style. His third was a wonderful piece of skill and one of the best opposition goals seen at the bank for a while.
1-5 after a mere 35 minutes. Things weren't looking good.
Lincoln dug in but still the Shrews had the better of the play. It was a relief to get to the break. Lincoln had had decent spells of knocking the ball around and a couple if half chances but we had just been blown away by the visitors.

The second half was much closer. But to be fair Shrewsbury at 5-1 up took there foot of the gas, The Imps did compete more but never looked like scoring if truth be told.
Ok so tonight wasn't very good at all but all unbeaten runs come to an end at some point and this was ours. Results elsewhere went our way though so at least that is something. Lets see how we respond at the weekend.

In other news the Chip shop had run out of Kebab meat before the match. A bad night indeed readers.