Ali Maxwell

If you're changing the way that your team plays because Lincoln are your opposition, that gives you a bit of a swagger about you already.

Talk to us a little bit about Cardiff, the second team to gain promotion.

Yeah, amazing, really.

Obviously, Cardiff are a big club to drop down into League One, but they circled the drain in the Championship for a good few seasons.

Their decision-making at the top of the club has been questionable at best.

They've wasted a lot of money, a lot of managers come and go, and when they were relegated, it wasn't a big surprise, but it happened in a way that made me a bit worried that if they didn't get their act together and if they were complacent, they could get stuck, like Huddersfield, for example.

And they hired Brian Barry Murphy, whose last job, senior job, was with Rochdale, getting relegated from League One about five, six years ago.

But obviously in between, he worked at Man City in their under-21s.

He worked with Cole Palmer and players like that.

So they brought him in, and it's been one of the most amazing things I've seen from a head coach, to be honest.

They barely signed anyone.

They got rid of about 10 big earners from the Championship, underperforming players.

They got rid of them.

got about five or six academy graduates and said, you're going to be a key part of this team.

And none of them had really starred at first team level before.

And then he got buy-in from a few of the senior players that were left behind, like Callum Chambers, Chris Willock, Ryan Wintle.

And from the start of the season, they were playing what you'd call like Pep Guardiola type possession football, which in League One and League Two does not always work very well.

and they've been brilliant.

So, you know, Lincoln were the better side overall, and there was a time where they were head-to-head, about 12 games left of the season, they played each other, Lincoln won, no doubt they were the better side, but what Barry Murphy's done at Cardiff was unbelievably impressive, even if they are one of the bigger teams for the level.

For a young player in the EFL as well, right, like...