Lincoln’s Michael Appleton: ‘My time with the Oystons was difficult as any’

29-May-2021 11:00:23 | The Guardian

The youthful Imps have made a mockery of a bottom-half budget to reach Sunday’s League One play-off final against Blackpool

For Lincoln City, regular reminders of what a dazzling team performance looks like are never too far away. Overhead, in fact, with the club’s training base across the road from RAF Scampton, home of the Red Arrows. “New signings come in the building and think it is amazing, so you have the normal little joke with them: ‘Yeah, because you’re a new signing we asked them to go up and show you what they are about,’” says manager Michael Appleton. “But they do become a bit of a nuisance because when you are trying to get a point across the players cannot hear a bloody word you are saying.”

On the day the defender Lewis Montsma arrived at the training ground last summer, the Hawk jets were busy practising loop-the-loops. The Dutchman, a free transfer, has been one of several shrewd signings at Lincoln, who have made a mockery of a bottom-half budget to reach Sunday’s League One play-off final, one game from the Championship, four years after promotion from non-league and that memorable run to the FA Cup quarter-finals, which galvanised the city and paid for the club’s £1.8m elite performance centre.