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Daily Mirror
3 days ago
- Sport
- Daily Mirror
Meet the innovative EFL club using AI on set-pieces and binary code
EXCLUSIVE FEATURE: Lincoln City are an EFL club who push boundaries to try and punch above their weight in League One with their Innovation Lab and lots of fresh ideas Lincoln City are one of the few clubs in the English Football League who are not afraid to march to the beat of a different drum. Innovation is championed above the status quo in the corridors of power at the LNER Stadium as they attempt to brainstorm new ways in which the Imps can thrive in League One. And in era where clubs try in vain to replicate models which have born fruit elsewhere, it turns out Lincoln do differently rather well. As with most things in football, that isn't by chance. They are the only club in England to employ a Director of Innovation; only four clubs across the whole of Europe are believed to do so, including Barcelona and Eintracht Frankfurt. And perhaps there is no better example of the club's willingness to embrace the extraordinary than the utilisation of AI in their set-piece planning. AI software which analyses thousands of set-pieces from around the world - coupled with the execution of said ideas from Scott Fry, the club's goalkeeper and set-piece coach - has seen the Imps establish themselves as the set-piece kingpins of English football. No team in competitive English football got near the 30 goals Lincoln scored via set-pieces from both first and second phases during the 2024-25 campaign. Arsenal are among those who have made set-pieces sexy again. But even they and the esteemed Nicolas Jover were nowhere near the total that Fry and Co cooked up for the Imps this season. It should come as no surprise that Lincoln and Michael Skubala, their forward-thinking head coach who started his career as a PE teacher before leading England's futsal team and then moving into senior football, are open to the unorthodox. After all, the landscape in the third-tier has changed drastically since Lincoln returned to the division in 2019. Birmingham City, last year's runaway champions, splashed in excess of £10million on a single player in Jay Stansfield. In a league littered with fallen Premier League giants, clubs like Lincoln have to work smarter and harder. Their approach goes beyond the 90 minutes on a Saturday and success on the pitch. The jewel in the crown is their Innovation Lab which, as Futers explains, has all of the club's stakeholders and the local community at the forefront of its mind as they seek new opportunities for growth. "What we're trying to do with the Innovation Lab is help start-ups get to market as quickly as possible in a way that helps the club, our community and creates value over time," says Jason Futers, the club's chief growth and innovation officer. "That can be on or off the pitch. You can imagine as a club the activities that we get involved with across technology on a retail, commercial, fan engagement level. Plus things like nutrition and science in sport. "So areas that we're working in anyway, but the Innovation Lab is really designed to enhance those and you know help start-ups, as I say, get to market as quickly as possible, which obviously helps them from a funding perspective and creates value for us." That ethos is already having a positive effect in terms of business. Futers explains that partners and sponsors are looking at the club in a different light due to their efforts to innovate. Quambio Sports, a joint venture with the Swiss sustainability firm, is the heartbeat of Lincoln's plan to reduce their carbon footprint and a perfect example of the type of initiatives that can add the future value that Futers speaks of. The collaboration also encourages and supports the club's stakeholders - be it employees or fans - lower their own carbon footprint. With Lincoln owning 50 per cent of the venture, there is also scope for the club to profit financially in the future. "What [Quambio] do is incentivise the reduction of carbon footprint, so that helps us in terms of our environmental sustainability," Futers adds. "We're not trying to save the planet in terms of environment, but we do want to move things forward and then we could get a financial benefit and of course ultimately it really helps out our fans and our stakeholders generally." In terms of what Futers and the club want to do, Quambio is just the tip of the iceberg. As Liam Scully, the club's long-serving chief executive, so aptly puts it, Lincoln are effectively "taking on nuclear submarines in a canoe". Though they are no minnows, they are, in the current landscape of League One, a relatively small fish in a large pond. Initiatives like Quambio Sports, should the club's ultimate vision come to fruition, has the potential to help them level the playing field over time against clubs with far vaster resources and deeper pockets. Others have followed, including Purendure, a real fruit energy gel collaboration which Lincoln announced at the end of last month. "We as a club are always going to have to be overachievers - and we don't like the term underdogs, we'd rather see ourselves as overachievers - and it's about finding those ways that we can do things differently that will give us a chance of further success on the sporting side," he says of the challenge. "It's [about] accepting that we have a unique place in the geography of this country, we have a catchment area around us that's relatively ours so there's various things at play that make this [approach] unique and right for Lincoln City." READ MORE: Inside Derby County's academy success as Championship club eye next generation The club's Elite Development Pathway is the key to unlocking the potential of that catchment area Scully speaks of. There is an appetite to ensure that the best local talent can grow in sync with the club; something that has not always been the case. Ryan Yates of Nottingham Forest is an example: the midfielder was born in Lincoln but at Forest's academy from a young age. Lincoln's mission statement underlines the desire to give "all boys and girls across Lincolnshire" a platform to grow and develop as people, not just footballers. 11 talent centres - all of which are targeted to be open by September - will be crucial to said mission. Crucially, the Imps have a burgeoning reputation for player development: their total of 18 per cent of league minutes played by academy graduates is the best among all category three academies. At senior level, Morgan Rogers and Brennan Johnson are just two examples of young players who have developed and gone on to play for top Premier League teams after loan spells. On the pitch, innovating the way they approach their set-piece tactics is just one area of the club's 'game model' that has been refined. Other ideas are already in the pipeline to try and get ahead of the curve as football itself continues to evolve. "I think the game is massively changing," Scully adds. "In three, five however many years time, one of the things I personally believe is that we're not going to see head coaches on the touchline that much anymore; I think people are going to be higher with elevated access to more in-game data, because I just think that's the that's the way the game's changing. "It's part of the evolution of football and as the industry matures, teams will continue to try and find different ways to compete with each other and and get those three points for a win on a Saturday." On the pitch, the goal remains the Championship after finishing last season in the havens of midtable. Off it, the aim is for innovating to be "in the DNA of the club". Lincoln unveiled their new home kit on Friday with a tribute to the city's own mathematician, George Boole, with the inclusion of binary code. Said code spells out We Are Imps and underlines the sense of community Scully and Co continue to foster from the top. In an era where clubs in the lower echelons of the pyramid have made a habit of imitating those at the top table, Lincoln are happy to continue thinking outside the box. "Technology innovation we're not quite there but for many many years the club has been innovating," Futers concludes. "We push the boundary with great courage, we try new things. We would like to have innovation as a key thread throughout our thinking and decision-making on a day-to-day basis. I think on that front, we're pretty close."
Leader Live
04-05-2025
- Sport
- Leader Live
Player ratings as Wrexham finish season with 2-0 win
Promotion to the Championship has already been secured and Elliot Lee and Ryan Longman struck after the break as the Reds won 2-0 on the final day of the campaign. Here's how the players rated. ARTHUR OKONKWO: Made a couple of key saves to keep Lincoln out and added another clean sheet to the collection. 8 MAX CLEWORTH: Lincoln were the better side in the first half but the Reds' defence stood strong. 7 DAN SCARR: Wrexham were solid defensively in the main and restricted Lincoln to few clear cut chances. 7 LEWIS BRUNT: The was no way through the Reds' back-line as they kept the Imps at bay. 7 RYAN LONGMAN: Got a lot more joy down the right in the second half and set-up opener before netting his first Wrexham goal. 8 GEORGE DOBSON: Wrexham's midfield stepped up a gear after the break and the attacking quality shone through. 7 MATTY JAMES: Lincoln struggled to cope with some of the passing when Wrexham went forward second half. 7 OLLIE RATHBONE: Another lively display as Wrexham took control after the interval. 7 JAMES MCCLEAN: Supported attacks and set-up Longman for his goal following a neat passing move. 7 ELLIOT LEE: Played off striker Sam Smith following recall and broke the deadline with well-taken header. 7 SAM SMITH: Worked hard for the cause in Wrexham's attack. 7 SUBSTITUTES RYAN BARNETT: Took over from Longman down the right and straight into his stride. 6 STEVEN FLETCHER: Denied a goal by Imps goalkeeper George Wickens. 6 TOM O'CONNOR: Fresh legs in midfield and put a chance over the bar. 6 JACK MARRIOTT: A late substitute for Smith. 6
BBC News
20-03-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Lincoln loanee Cadamarteri likely to miss run-in
Lincoln City forward Bailey Cadamarteri is expected to miss the remainder of the season because of a groin on-loan 19-year-old will return to parent club Sheffield Wednesday for further assessment, but Imps boss Michael Skubala says his "season is probably done".Cadamarteri has scored five goals in 23 League One appearances for Lincoln in an injury-interrupted season.A 10-minute appearance off the bench in a 4-1 win against Crawley earlier in March is all he has managed since he was first sidelined with a groin issue in mid-January."When he had his groin injury before we knew there is a high recurrence rate with that," Skubala told BBC Radio Lincolnshire."He obviously came back for a little bit but he has felt it again, so we think that could be pretty bad news for him." Skubala said the latest injury setback is a "big shame" for a teenager that was "really starting to get going"."We saw some good moments from him before he got injured and then unfortunately he has got injured [again] and that will be it for the season," the Imps boss added.
BBC News
28-02-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Imps doing 'everything in their power' to keep O'Connor
Lincoln City are doing all they can to keep captain and "warrior" Paudie O'Connor, but Imps director or football Jez George admits that may not be 27-year-old Irish defender is into the final four months of his contract and is in talks about his future with the mid-table League One constantly being linked with a potential move to numerous League One rivals and Championship clubs, which reportedly included a £250,000 bid from Plymouth, external in January, O'Connor has remained an instrumental figure for the has made135 appearances for the club since arriving in 2022 as a free agent after leaving Bradford City - where he turned down the offer of a new contract."Paudie is the big focus at the moment," George said in a wide-ranging interview with BBC Radio Lincolnshire."I understand the the frustration that supporters may have - we are not daft, we know how good he is, we know how important he is."He is an unbelievable leader, what he has done for us over three years - but especially over the past 12 months - how he has grown, he is fearless, he is a warrior, he makes first contact, and there are games where the way he defends his box is incredible."Are we talking to Paudie, of course you wold expect us to do that and of course we are doing that, but the challenge is that he is 27-years-old and the next contract is going to be a really big one; a pivotal one in his career." George says Lincoln, a club that generated just under £7m in revenue and reported a financial loss of £2.9m for last season, lack the money to compete with what O'Connor could potentially be offered elsewhere."If I tell you that the top six, eight or 10 clubs in this league have got double our budgets, therefore they can pay players double what we can, and that is the truth," George added."It's a really difficult one for us. We are trying to and are doing everything in our power to keep Paudie at our club, but we have to respect his situation and the fact it's his career as well."The constant attention on O'Connor meant the Imps "kept plates spinning" in the winter transfer window."January always creates problems and when transfers start getting to the levels they did, then someone could put something on the table that was impossible for us to turn down," George sad."That didn't happen, but it could have done."I don't want to play this out in public, I just want the supporters know that we are doing what they want us to do and doing that really respectfully with Paudie because we couldn't have more respect for him as a player and as a man."
