Lincoln City struck gold with 2022 capture | OneFootball

Lincoln City struck gold with the 2022 signing of Ben House, a striker who has been an impressive force since sealing his move to the Imps.

Lincoln City struck gold with the 2022 signing of Ben House, a striker who has been an impressive force since sealing his move to the Imps and continues to deliver.

Despite injuries plaguing parts of his spell at the LNER Stadium, House has cemented himself as a great Lincoln forward.

His 2022 signing is a tale of a January acquisition that has been effective short- and long-term.

Ben House is one of League One’s best on his day

House signed from Eastleigh in January 2022, after joining the non-league club from the youth ranks of Reading.

The Scotsman never managed a senior appearance for the Royals but caught the eye in the National League and soon found a home in Lincolnshire.

The only recurring quibble of his time in Lincoln so far is his injury record, as spells on the sidelines have stunted his explosion into potentially a Championship standard striker.

After House had returned from one of his stints on the injury table in February 2024, Imps head coach Michael Skubala called House one of the best strikers in League One.

The Lincoln boss singled out the off-ball work that House does, heaping praise on his frontman and that is the key. His work without the ball at his feet: pressing defenders high up the pitch, leading to turnovers in dangerous positions, is seminal to Lincoln’s style of play and very few at the level are better at it.

When under intense pressure from an opposing defender, House can hold up the ball excellently. That makes him somewhat of an unsung hero for Lincoln, because his work is crucial without being flashy and allows other players to thrive.

Lincoln City’s ever-reliant frontman

His numbers do not jump off the page, but they tell the story of a striker who provides a lot more than simply a threat in front of goal.

Even while loan signings like that of now-Huddersfield Town marksman Joe Taylor have taken the spotlight off House, he was plugged away almost unnoticed.

The striker has already surpassed his production from last term, when a long injury setback last season left him with only 22 appearances and just two goals.

He's bettered that this season in a Lincoln team that has struggled in the final third, even going close to ten hours without scoring a goal from open play across the end of 2024 and start of the new year, and if he can finish the campaign with a flourish we could see him into double figures for the second time in his Imps career.

House has proven himself an asset as a goalscorer in the past. In the 2022/23 campaign – his first full season after making a January switch – he secured double-digits for Lincoln. That is the level of production that the Imps and Skubala will want to get from him consistently.

Strikers like Ben House can often be forgotten, as statistics of goals and assists often trump the true grit of a player who can play with his back to goal, hold the ball up for others, and lead an intense press from the very front.

Injury trouble aside, he has been a fantastic servant for the Imps over recent years and a January transfer deal that saw the club strike gold from the lower leagues.