Former Lincoln City Women head coach Lee Mitchell has said changes at the club were not in the best interest of the women’s game following his sudden summer departure.
Mitchell, who has been appointed as manager of rivals Lincoln United, spent four years with the Imps before leaving for pastures new at the end of the 2023/24 season.
He and his coaching team of Steven Hardie and Alan Murray led City to a third placed finish in the FA Women’s National League Division One Midlands in 2021/22, ending the campaign just two points short of promotion to the third tier.
Top half finishes followed, but the highs of 2022 proved to be the peak of the Lee Mitchell tenure at Sincil Bank.
A Turbulent Summer For The Imps:
It was a summer of change at Lincoln City as new directorship came into the football club. When quizzed by The Linc on the nature of his departure, Mitchell said: “I think the overall goal and the changes weren’t in the best interest of the women’s game and for us as coaches and our ethics really. But, that’s just football, there’s nothing right or wrong about that but you’ve got to stay true to what your ethics and beliefs are.
The Imps appointed Jon Pepper as the women’s technical director, bringing the women’s pathway under the same umbrella as the men’s academy. Under new head coach Charlotte Dinsdale, City have won just one game this term and sit rock bottom of the league without a single point.
On his new role at local rivals Lincoln United, he added: “Every staff member that’s here is passionate about the women’s game specifically. We want to see the women’s game thrive, we want it to thrive in Lincolnshire and we want to take it forward.
“Hopefully Lincoln United share the benefits from that and we’re now at a club which share that vision again.”
An Amicable Split:
Leaving Lincoln City was perhaps a move that came out of the blue to some, but Mitchell was keen to say it was he and his staff’s decision to leave the club rather than anything else.
He said: “I was gutted at the time, we’d been there a long time and obviously we had an affinity to the club. It was just our goals no longer aligned with the club ultimately.
“Nothing bad there, nothing negative really to say, I have lots of good memories as do a lot of the people who were involved with us staff and players, and I’ll take those memories with me and lots of experiences, but you have to move forward and we’re at Lincoln United now.”
Familiar Faces:
Several Imps players followed Lee Mitchell and his staff out the door in the summer window. Some of which have since signed for The Whites, meaning there are already a few familiar faces on the training pitch for the new manager.
“We now quite a few of them, either we’ve coached recently at Lincoln City or in the past at other clubs. And the ones that we haven’t worked with we’ve played against, and we wished we’d have had them with us. We’ve even tried to get some of them before so excited to get to work,” he said.
Lincoln City Rivalry:
The big fixture everyone will be looking forward to now is the second all Lincoln derby of the season, which is on February 12, 2025 at the Sun-hat Villas and Resorts Stadium.
Mitchell will be hoping for a repeat of the first derby of this term, in which United were runaway winners.
On facing his former club, who currently sit bottom of the table with no points after nine games, he said: “We’ll look forward to that of course, but whichever team you align with that’s your focus…You can’t underestimate derby games they’re unlike anything else and both teams are playing for pride and give that extra ten percent.
“We had that at City sometimes when our players didn’t quite have that extra bit that United did, because when you’re on top its sometimes easier to be the ones chasing.”
Lee Mitchell will begin his tenure as Lincoln United boss when they face Boldmere St. Michaels on Sunday at Ashby Avenue.
