Exeter City back in League One action after ten years

IT was the former Rochdale and Barnsley manager – and now Chesterfield chief – Keith Hill that often claimed that Exeter City were a ‘League One team playing in League Two.’ Hill has often came up against the Grecians in the past five years or so and is well-equipped to offer such judgement. Given that City reached three play-off finals and narrowly missed out in the League Two play-offs twice in the past five years, the evidence is there to back up Hill’s claims.

But now the Grecians can show that they do deserve to be in English football’s third tier following their promotion at the end of April. It’s been ten years since the Exeter were last at this level and today, they make their return at Lincoln City, a side that City know well after some epic battles against the Imps prior to their promotion from League Two in 2019.

It is also said that, the higher you go, the more football you can play, so with all that in mind, are this well-versed Grecians squad as well equipped as anyone to cope with the new challenges that will come their way in the next nine months or so?

“It’s a great question because people talk about the levels and how it’s different," Taylor said. "It would suggest that the teams towards the top end of League One play more football and are more possession-based, they have better players and don’t give the ball away, or kick it into touch.

“It might suggest that it is a cleaner game, which you might hope will suit some of our personnel, certainly the ones with a slightly different physical profile and in clean games in the past, we have always seemed to produce relatively good performances on good surfaces."

He added: “But there is another aspect of football and that’s the increase in the physical