Football League World
·29 November 2024
Football League World
·29 November 2024
Bailey Cadamarteri is currently having a mixed loan spell at Lincoln City
This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more...
Lincoln City may adopt a rather indifferent stance in the potential event of a January recall to Sheffield Wednesday for on-loan striker Bailey Cadamarteri, who has struggled for a regular starting berth under Michael Skubala.
Despite failing to win any of their last four matches, though the last two have come against current promotion favourites in Wycombe Wanderers and Wrexham, Lincoln still find themselves in a favourable league position and are certainly in with a chance of securing a top-six spot at the end of the season.
At this moment in time, the Imps are sat in ninth position, trailing just one point behind sixth-placed Barnsley in the race for League One's final playoff spot. There's not too much to complain about, although goalscoring does look to be an issue right now and that's something they may look to rectify in the January transfer window.
Ben House is currently the side's top scorer with four goals from 14 games, and Lincoln rank 11th in League One for goals per match with 1.4, having scored 23 times from an xG of 18.4.
They've only scored three goals in their most recent four matches, none of which have come from on-loan frontman Cadamarteri, who is currently enduring a tough old time of it in Lincolnshire.
There was expectation and excitement following the summer loan arrival of Cadamarteri, who had shown promising goalscoring form in the Championship for Sheffield Wednesday aged just 18 last term.
Though evidently raw, the young striker displayed real promise by finding the back of the net on four occassions from 14 appearances for the relegation-threatened outfit, and it was hoped that he would light up League One in a similar manner to Joe Taylor last time out.
But it just hasn't really happened for Cadamarteri, who doesn't appear to be at the forefront of Skubala's thinking. The 19-year-old has started just seven times for Lincoln, with his other seven appearances in League One coming from the bench.
In fairness to Cadamarteri, he's scored five goals from 18 matches across all competitions and is currently averaging a respectable league return of 0.41 goals per 90 minutes, but the fact he seemingly hasn't convinced enough to become a regular starter has added a sense of disappointment to how the move is playing out, meaning it perhaps wouldn't be all that much of a surprise to see him recalled by the Owls in January.
When asked about whether a potential recall in January to Wednesday for Cadamarteri would be a blow, FLW's resident Lincoln fan pundit Gary Hutchinson, of The Stacey West website, was somewhat indifferent but did admit he'd be a "little bit upset".
"As things stand at the moment, I think that if he was to be recalled then I would be a little bit upset," Gary told Football League World.
"We are struggling for goals, he hasn't had a huge number of starts. He has scored five goals for us and didn't particularly impress last night [against Wrexham] but at the moment we need as many points as we can get because we are struggling for goals.
"But it wouldn't be the end of the world if he was recalled, as I'm sure we would loan someone else in.
"He has been in and out of the side, it's not like we've placed all of our faith in a loan player, which in the past we have when you think about having the likes of Brennan Johnson and previously Tyler Walker in 2019/20 was massive for us.
"If Cadamarteri was to be recalled then it wouldn't have a huge negative effect, but it would be negative so I'd prefer that he wasn't. But I would imagine that the club would already have a contingency plan in place."