"Quite toxic" - Clive Nates offered Lincoln City advice amid supporter divide | OneFootball

The Imps' supporter-base is seemingly divided, despite some extremely impressive recent results.

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...

With sporadic and largely unpredictable form, Michael Skubala's Lincoln City have found themselves in mid-table obscurity in League One.

The Lincolnshire side are on course to secure a seventh successive campaign in England's third-tier after being a National League side as recently as 2017.

While this existence would be the envy of near-all below them, certain supporters have become vocally agitated at the lack of further progression.

But while the existence of speculation towards Clive Nates' ambition is plain to see, just how prevalent is it among the fanbase as a whole?

Social media criticism is misrepresentative of Lincoln approval, says pundit

Asked what message he would send the Imps' current owners at this time, FLW’s Lincoln City fan pundit, Gary Hutchinson, discussed the importance of vocalising positivity, taking the opportunity to disparage the comments of the unhappy minority.

"The one message I would like to send to the club's current owners is that social media criticism is only one very small facet of the fanbase.

"It's been quite toxic at Lincoln City over the past few weeks. You wouldn't think that we'd beaten local rivals Peterborough 5-1 for our biggest ever win against them, or Mansfield away 3-0 for our largest victory at Field Mill.

"Instead, apparently we lack creativity, football's boring and people aren't entertained. I mean, it's the same old rhetoric that gets reeled out year after year.

"We had it in Michael Appleton's final season, we had it throughout Mark Kennedy's tenure. People seem to have this romanticised image of the Kennedy era, trying to compare it to Michael Skubala when it's honestly night and day, or yin and yang, in my opinion.

"But the owners see the feedback on social media, they see the criticism. Quite often it's the same names, and they're entitled to their opinion, but there is a large number of supporters who are not vocal on social media, and won't voice differing opinions for fear of being shot down, or entering into an argument.

"I myself have been in them recently, and have had to block people, but I do believe the majority of supporters are very much behind what we're doing with our budget restraints in how the club is being run. I think that they should keep doing what they are doing and rest assured that plenty of people believe in what they do."

As with any club's social media discourse, the emotional response will often present itself disproportionately, giving a skewed outlook to overall supporter satisfaction.

Hutchinson's counterargument to the disgruntled few suggests a divide of opinion within the fanbase, an all-too-common problem among mid-table EFL sides.

Lincoln City find themselves perfectly in mid-table

Sat in 13th position currently, Lincoln City find themselves ten points from play-off contention and eleven points from relegation, almost perfectly mid-table.

The Imps can still, of course, mathematically rise or drop into either position, though the number of clubs surrounding them on each side suggests that they, more than anyone in England's third-tier, look set for a springtime period with little-to-no jeopardy.

While this would understandably feel like a disappointing conclusion to a once-promising season for the LNER Stadium faithful, supporters that are finding League One stability to be boring, may do well to remember that numerous teams below them would swap places with them in a heartbeat.