Lincoln City travel south to face bottom-of-the-table Barnet on Saturday, February 26th, as they look to push for a top-half finish in League Two in the final third of the season.
After last weekend’s 2-0 defeat at home to league leaders Chesterfield, the Imps will be hoping to bounce back and take three points off a Barnet side who haven’t won in eight games.
The Bees’ caretaker boss, Paul Fairclough, will see his side’s home clash with Lincoln as an ideal opportunity to claw their way to safety, although the head-to-head statistics don’t read well for the London club.
Since Barnet’s promotion back into the Football League in the 2004/05 season, Lincoln have won nine of the 11 meetings between the two clubs, including the last three, with Barnet’s last victory coming in the 2008/09 season when John O’Flynn’s 87th minute goal sealed a 3-2 victory.
A Ben Hutchinson penalty was the difference in the reverse of this fixture back in September, as the Imps took all three points in one of former manager Chris Sutton’s last games in charge.
Lincoln’s current boss, Steve Tilson, has only faced the Bees once as a manager – in an FA Cup match in 2005, when a solitary Freddy Eastwood goal sent Tilson’s Southend side into the second round of the competition.
On the injury front, Arsenal loanee Gavin Hoyte is out after injuring his knee in the Chesterfield defeat last weekend, whilst Clark Keltie is also once again sidelined.
However, Tilson will be buoyed by the news that on-loan Notts County defender Stephen Hunt has extended his stay at Sincil Bank for a further month, with another of the Imps’ loanees – Sunderland goalkeeper Trevor Carson – stating this week that he would be “keen” on returning to the club once his loan deal finishes in April.
Kick off at Underhill is at 3.00pm.