Gary Simpson was keen to insist that it’s still early days and is looking to dampen down any early talk of promotion.
Speaking ahead of Saturday’s game away to Nuneaton, Simpson fended away questions that suggested Lincoln City were aiming for the playoffs.
He said, “It’s still early days, but if we take the consistency factor since I came in, we took 20 points from 13 games and its taken 1 game less to get that this season. Consistency is now building in and if we can keep that up, we might be there or thereabouts come the end of the season.”
When asked a follow up question about whether Simpson was confident Lincoln could be promotion challengers come the end of the season, Simpson bristled and sharply responded, “I never said that.”
He continued, “I never said that did I. I just said that if we keep taking 20 points out of 12 games, we’ll be there or thereabouts.”
Simpson then moved on to speak about how important it was to keep the players grounded amidst the hype surrounding the good start.
He said, “I’m not putting any pressure on the players. They’ve come a long way and at times it gets to the players when they lose 2 games and they get reports there’s a crisis at the Bank. Then we win a game again and it’s all about the playoffs again.”
“12 games in, we’ve done okay and we’ll look to do better.”
Simpson was then asked about whether 50 points was still the target.
He relaxed and said, “I think 50 points is the target for every club at the start of the season. As I’ve always said if you get it in January or February, that’s good and we’ll see where you go from there.”
Finally, Simpson was asked about Lincoln’s inability to turn a good performance away from home into a three points, something they’ve only managed once so far this season.
He said, “We’d like to. But it’s not always the point. We’d like to win every game away from home. It’s not as though, we haven’t played well in games to win away from home. That’s the important thing.”
Lincoln play Nuneaton on Saturday, with a 3pm kick off.