Lincoln City & The Not So Co-operative Bank
As the travelling supporters of Lincoln City Football Club left Blundell Park on the Sunday after Christmas, they might have been forgiven a little seasonal optimism. A Conference National win away to their local rivals Grimsby Town seemed only to cement the possibility that the Imps were turning a corner just in time for the start of 2025, and that a run that has seen the club go the last seven seasons without having done so much as finishing in the top half of the league table – a fact made somehow all the more remarkable for the fact that the club lost its Football League status in the middle of all of this – might finally be about to come to an end.
Such hopes may, however, may have turned out to have been a little premature. A week later they beat the near-runaway league leaders Barnet by four goals to one at Sincil Bank, but since then Lincoln City have won just two of their seven league matches, and are now back in a mid-table position, headed in the wrong direction just at the point of the season at which upwardly mobile clubs might be hoping to consolidate their position in the play-off positions, which are all the more important in a division in which only one automatic promotion place is available.
At a time of the season when distractions are at their least wanted, however, Lincoln City has found itself to be at the centre of unwelcome news stories, following the decision of the club's bank, the Co-operative, the withdraw its overdraft facility. Lincoln City has found itself close to the financial wire before and the Football Conference retains financial rules that are tougher than most other football authorities, so it is understandable if those close to the club are a little jumpy at the prospect of tins being rattled outside Sincil Bank again in the near future, but any such nervousness on this occasion might be considered to have been jumping the gun somewhat.
The club's total debt to the bank is £380,000, which is made up of a £300,000 overdraft, coupled with an £80,000 mortgage for a Playzone that it owns. In an era during which top Premier League players earn that sort of money in a month, this may sound like a relatively trifling sum of money, but the clubs of the Football Conference exist in a different financial world to bigger clubs, so clearing such a debt might be considered a considerable headache. Lincoln City, which has remained something approaching solvent thanks to directors loans in recent years, needs to raise this money on top of operating costs if it is to not be forced to
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