I arrive at Lincoln City’s Elite Performance Centre before 9.30am, slightly sheepishly hiding my seven-year-old Toyota Yaris in a corner of a car park containing slightly more shiny vehicles.
The three full-sized pitches in front of me look immaculate. I have a pair of Nike Tiempos in the boot. It seems unlikely that I will be needed to show anyone how anything is done.
League One Lincoln are, at the time of my visit, starting week four of a pre-season schedule that began with condition testing on 26 June. The players had guides for staying fit in pre-season that, these days, are hardly needed. The age of a summer splurge has passed.
Most players either do individual training or work with personal fitness coaches in June. Competition has never been higher. Summer is a good time to get ahead.
In the canteen area, players are finishing their breakfast. The training ground employs a chef who has served beans on toast, yoghurt with muesli and American pancakes with honey. On a table to one side are clear bottles and whey protein powder to make milkshakes.
In an office off the canteen is the gaffer’s office, where head coach Michael Skubala holds a meeting with assistant head coaches Tom Shaw and Chris Cohen. Shaw ended his playing career at Lincoln, while Cohen is best known for an 11-year spell as a midfielder at Nottingham Forest.
The last time I saw Cohen, I blurted out that he was my hero. He does an impression of a man who remembers me but not the incident. In front of 20-odd first-team players, I am grateful.
I spot a familiar face: David Preece is a former goalkeeper who did plenty of media work post-retirement alongside coaching. After working in Sweden, India and at Sunderland, Preece was unveiled as Lincoln’s new goalkeeping coach earlier in July. Having played here and living nearby, Preece considers himself to be back home.
At a table, Skubala talks me through the last few weeks. In week one, the players got back up to speed with their bodies and began to take on board tactical information. Week two comprised conditioning periodisation, i.e. lots of fitness work in the heat.
In week three, conditioning was combined with more in-depth tactical work using video analysis. The Imps also spent part of that week in Portugal for a warm-weather training camp.
Now Lincoln are entering the “match rhythm” phase: after a 2-1 friendly defeat to League Two side Grimsby Town following my visit, West Bromwich Albion await, preceding, effectively, the first week of the season before 2 August, when they face Reading. This season, Leagues One and Two are starting a week earlier than the Championship – that has its challenges.
“The camp [in Portugal] gave us a chance to fully integrate the new signings into the group and improve team bonding: play padel, play golf, go for meals out,” Skubala says.
“We’re also working them hard tactically in hot weather and that tires them out. It’s the environment that is important. Here, we might see them between 9am and 3pm and then they go home and, naturally, switch off.
“There we had them for 24 hours a day, so you’re boosting everything. You watch them and everything you see is magnified. It opens up discussion points that can shape the season.”
This is Skubala’s second pre-season at Lincoln. In what is his first permanent senior head-coach role, he has significantly outperformed the club’s budget twice in a division where spending seems to increase year on year.
As he says, 80 per cent of the game model remains the same, but each season you must evolve, keeping the good aspects and improving everything else. New arrivals require tweaks to tactics.
“This is the time of year for alignment,” he says.
“Coaches with players. Every member of staff with the club. You need to get alignment between everybody on use of data, sports science and tactics.
“I think increasingly, the job of the head coach is to ensure that alignment as a club grows in size.”
Recruitment in League One – where clubs may take loan players from divisions above – has been complicated by the unusually early season start date. Premier League academy graduates, who may often have made loan moves by now, are still on pre-season tours (often thousands of miles away).
Skubala says that Lincoln’s modus operandi puts them in a good position. They have a strong core group and do not have to be held to ransom through a need to be reactive. The transfer countdown, and external pressure, creates noise. He would prefer that to be another club’s chaos.
In a meeting room newly erected this summer, Skubala takes a team meeting which focuses on opposition analysis for the game the next evening against Grimsby. It focuses on high, medium and low presses out of possession, building play from the back and through midfield and some set-piece work, attacking and defending.
Previously, meetings would be held in the canteen with the tables all pushed to the side of the room. It is a small thing, but another improvement in the process.
Before on-pitch training, the players head into the gym for “activation” (what amateurs like me would call “warming up”). Players may do a light cycle, jump onto cushioned benches, do floor stretches, throw medicine balls to the floor or step over hurdles. The coaches don’t need to get involved here – players have their own routines.
At 10.45am, the goalkeeping group goes outside for their own warm-up: a game of foot tennis on the specially designed tables that you increasingly see at training grounds. I mention it for one aspect of footballer life that hits you in the face when watching them up close: they absolutely detest losing.
It stands to reason. To have even become a professional, you need to have sacrificed a great deal, physically and emotionally. The ones who thrive best are those who are uber-competitive and thus driven towards their own success.
It is still funny to witness. You could design the most vanilla task possible and professional footballers would still throw everything into beating their teammates at it.
At 11am, on-pitch training begins. It starts with a short jog and then running drills, again designed as team exercises with elements of competition: races around cones, paired sprints with obligatory throws of a football between teammates. The punishment for the losing team is only 10 press-ups – that is not the point.
The other thing that jumps out is just how “seen” footballers are in training. As the players complete the sprints, Skubala, Cohen and Shaw are looking on. The head of academy does the same – three academy players are training with the first team.
All are watching for behavioural signals. The fitness coaches and head of sports science will be looking for anything physical that may interest or concern them. Being a footballer is an exercise in being constantly judged and assessed – not just on matchday – and that comes with its own pressure.
Cohen then sets up two groups of rondos – two-touch and then one-touch – with an aim to get to 15 or 10 passes respectively without interception. Again, the competitive element takes over: nobody wants to be called to the middle or responsible for the ball leaving the circle.
Next, Cohen organises a seven-a-side match on a smaller pitch but with full-sized goals. Extra players are positioned on the sideline where they can receive and recycle the ball with one touch.
The intensity is relentless and the aim is to work on the pressing and ball-retention aspects of the team meeting in an enclosed, and thus hyper-pressured, space.
Then those same principles extend to a larger pitch marked out with discs. The principle is that each player can only enter designated areas of the playing surface, which governs team shape – they must stretch their available space to its maximum. Gradually, the restrictions are removed until the shape has become natural.
Cohen acts as instructor from the middle while Skubala watches from the side and occasionally has a chat with individual players. Throughout, a drone is sent up to offer a bird’s-eye view of the general shape and any passing lanes that players may have missed or created through their own movement. On the same pitch, the attacking and defensive set-piece work is then put into practice.
The session ends with the non-goalkeeping group broken up into units. At the far end of the third pitch, shooting drills involve players dealing with a pass-and-shot and then a surprise ball bounced from Shaw into an unexpected area – everything must be one-touch.
A senior central defender and first-year scholar work on long passes to one another with both feet, the accuracy and control completely transfixing. Central midfielder Conor McGrandles repeatedly takes passes under pressure and must pass first time into a small net – through-ball training.
The youth players begin to gather in the Puma footballs and training ends. This is matchday minus one and, as such, is only a short day. It goes without saying: I am absolutely knackered just watching. There is something about watching professional footballers up close that makes you question your own lifestyle.
By 12.45pm, the chef has prepared lunch: chicken, oregano rice, charred sweetcorn, baked half-potatoes, mac and cheese, roasted carrots, green salad. The players go first (fair enough really), followed by coaching staff and then me. It is hungry work on the sideline and it wouldn’t be the full experience if I didn’t eat with them.
This level of detail is now commonplace at smart clubs below England’s top two tiers. The menu for the players is different on a usual Monday or Tuesday to a Thursday or Friday – this is a matchday-minus-one offering. Lincoln also took their nutritionist to Portugal to make sure that meals were regulated.
That marginal-gains principle makes complete sense at clubs such as these. Last season, Lincoln had the 17th-biggest budget in League One and their aim is to overperform it by four places every season, something they managed in 2024-25 by finishing 11th.
An anti-gravity treadmill may cost £10,000 while supporters clamour for a new signing, but if it allows the full-time sports therapist lead, head of medical and two sports scientists to improve injury prevention, it really can be like a new signing.
After lunch, the players head off for a safeguarding meeting but are then free to leave. Usually there would be managed gym work, but a Tuesday night friendly means that they will meet up at 3.25pm the next day for the coach to Grimsby. They know their instructions until then: do as little as possible.
But work for the staff goes on. Cohen goes to the gym before his own lunch – the chef has held some chicken breasts back for the late lunch eaters. The two full-time data analysts (plus intern) begin to download and review the footage from training and will have meetings with Skubala about their conclusions.
Skubala and his coaches will have their own review meetings and then continue to work on any extra match preparation. Director of football Jez George has been here all morning and chief executive Liam Scully is on a call in one of the meeting rooms – there may be recruitment discussions and updates that require input from multiple people.
Tuesday is matchday, Wednesday a day off (for players), Thursday a full training day and Friday another matchday minus one. Then Lincoln are into full season mode: Reading, AFC Wimbledon, Harrogate Town in the FA Cup and Plymouth Argyle.
League One looks stacked again. Lincoln will hope that the work done today and over the last month will allow them to punch above their weight again. As with every club in their position, you certainly can’t accuse them of shirking on the preparation.
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