Michael Skubala hails one of best performances of season for Lincoln

Lincoln head coach Michael Skubala felt the emphatic scoreline against Blackpool reflected their dominance in the second half as his side’s stunning run of form shows no signs of stopping.

In truth, the contest at the LNER Stadium was in the balance going into the closing stages, but the second-placed Imps deserve credit for being ruthless against their struggling visitors after doubling their lead.

After their 17th league game unbeaten, they remain 10 points clear of third-placed Bolton in Sky Bet League One, while the Seasiders now sit just one point ahead of the relegation zone.

Skubala said: “We looked dominant [after half-time] and the second half, I thought, was one of our best performances of the season, when you think about the goals we scored but also the limited chances they’ve had.

“The backline again was magnificent, but what I really enjoyed was the young lads and subs coming on today, they were great.

“We have ways of doing it and we know that when we suffocate teams and when we get into counter-pressing, which we do very well, it’s very hard for teams to play against us.

“It might be 10 minutes, it might be 15 minutes where you can just feel goals coming – even in the first half when we scored, we had a passage that was very exciting.

“And then in the second half you could see, as the second one went in, we were going to get more and we got the job done well.”

Lincoln led at half-time through Conor McGrandles’ close-range header, but it wasn’t until the 78th minute that they doubled their lead when Rob Street capitalised on a Fraser Horsfall mistake.

Dom Jeffries stroked in a third for the Imps before substitute Ryan One completed the rout by squeezing in from a narrow angle.

Blackpool boss Ian Evatt said: “It ended up 4-0 because we lost our concentration and focus off the back of a really poor mistake.

“It was never a 4-0 game, I thought we had control in the second half and I thought for 70 minutes we were extremely competitive in the game.

“That one mistake completely rocked us, it gave them confidence and belief and somehow we’ve managed to lose the game 4-0. To capitulate like that isn’t acceptable.

“We’ll try and give the players as much as we can, but it’s about time they started taking responsibility because Steve [Bruce] before me tried to protect them as much as he could.

“I’ve now tried to protect them as much as I can, but sometimes you need to tell the truth and today they’ve let everybody down with their focus, second half.

“We were in the game and then after a mistake, we’ve gone under.”