Lincoln head coach Tom Shaw had no complaints with the first-half dismissals of Tom Hamer and Conor McGrandles after the nine-man Imps were thrashed 6-0 at home by West Ham in a one-sided Championship encounter.
Disaster struck for Lincoln after three minutes, in the first league encounter between the two teams for nearly 70 years, when the recalled Hamer was shown a straight red card by referee Andrew Kitchen after he lunged recklessly at right-back Joel Veltman.
City were then reduced to nine men after 23 minutes when last man McGrandles dragged back Jarrod Bowen after shanking his pass back to keeper George Wickens.
“They are incredible fellas and top pros – they didn’t let us down and they will learn from this as will we as a group and we’ll move forward,” Shaw said. “These things happen.
“They were both red cards and two decisions the referee definitely got right. There were some I didn’t particularly agree with in the first half, but the big decisions looked like they were correct.”
On his team’s efforts, he said: “After three minutes I thought we responded pretty well with 10 men. I thought we had 20 minutes where we competed with West Ham.
“That’s the overriding frustration of the evening where we didn’t get a proper game. That 20 minutes makes me think we really could have troubled them. It was a tough night for everybody. We need to take a little bit of learning from it because we can do better, especially the goals, even with nine men.
“We have got to bounce back and pretty quickly as this was a pretty brutal experience against the best quality in the league.”
West Ham broke City’s resistance on the stroke of half-time when Bowen’s corner was headed in from close range by Konstantinos Mavropanos.
The Hammers doubled their lead three minutes into the second half, when sub Edvin Austbo curled a powerful effort into the top corner.
Bowen made it 3-0 a minute later, scuffing a left-footed shot that somehow trickled into the Imps net past an unsighted Wickens, before Pablo added a fourth, finishing off an Austbo pass.
Tomas Soucek’s brace completed the scoring, first lifting a shot over Wickens and then following up to slot home after the Imps keeper had parried a Joel Piroe shot.
West Ham boss Nuno Espirito Santos was satisfied with his side’s evening, although he praised opponents Lincoln.
“I credit Lincoln as even with one man down they were in the game and still creating a lot of problems for us,” said Nuno after watching the Hammers’ biggest away win for 103 years. “It became difficult to find the gaps.
“I think we made mistakes in terms of trying to rush things, trying shots from long range because you want to score so desperately.
“It changed after the second goal and we played much better, in terms of being patient, recycling of the ball and being clinical, which is what you want.”
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