John Smith's PNE Fans' Panel verdict: Something needs to change on and off the pitch

At its best it brings you joy by enhancing your life and making you feel a whole lot better. At its worst it it is like a lead balloon weighing down your mood to such a low extreme that it basically just sucks the life out of you.

It is not often that I reach this point when I am out for my Saturday afternoon enjoyment of a football fix. Over the many years I have followed the club I have experienced a huge number of mainly lows but the adrenalin buzz you get from the occasional high always tends to keep my interest going.

However, I’m afraid that Saturday's game with Lincoln brought my mood to the levels of despair I had felt at numerous times during the tenure of CEO Peter Ridsdale's Graham Westley when at one point it looked like the club would be heading for League Two.

At times you can tell by the atmosphere and get a gut feeling when a manager’s tenure is coming to an end. After a very satisfying first win of the season last Saturday – albeit against a depleted Rovers side- in my opinion this week gave Paul Heckingbottom his final chance to turn his, and our, season around.

The extremely optimistic hope side of my mind willed it to be possible but in reality my head thought due to his poor track record it was always going to be a long shot.

So why has this particular match made me feel so disheartened with the state of our club having experienced several bad times in the past?

As a PNE fan I don't think it is asking too much to expect my team to pick up a point at home to Lincoln, irrespective of our lowly position in the table.

They were a big, tough, physical side and on the field at times they reminded me of people you used to bump into at a 90s outdoor "love in" rave when they constantly wrapped their arms around our players and hugged them all the time, especially at corners.

They were also definitely Olympic-standard shirt pullers with the amount of bare flesh on display throughout the game being those of "Full Monty" proportions.

It was one of those games you just had to sit through watching everything on the pitch implode in front of your eyes as the game reached its sorry conclusion.

In the first half I thought we played some decent stuff but, as in the game at Watford on Tuesday, the manager’s negativity in his substitutions weakened our side. I thought Kenny, Lang and Mills were all working well and were looking a threat after we forced corner after corner in the opening 15 minutes of the second half.

In my opinion, had we persisted without the standard triple substitution on the hour mark we would have had a better chance of a breakthrough, as when Burzhog and Erabi came on both were ineffective, posing little threat to Lincoln's robust defence.

The killer goal around 10 minutes from time was another soft one which better defending could have prevented when we conceded from a long throw. After this as heads dropped both on and off the pitch we never pressed or looked like coming back to level the game, although my man of the match Alfie Devine continued to run himself into the ground.

As the game closed out many fans were either leaving the ground or just sat stern faced in the stands in numbed silence. The Alan Kelly Stand called for Hecky to be sacked before the final whistle yet when it blew many applauded the team off the pitch, which I found to be very confusing.

Although I personally thought that the manager’s negative substitutions were the key to losing this game I also believe that the players must surely take a portion of the blame for the abysmal league position which the club currently finds itself in.

I also think that overall this squad is much weaker than last season’s and will continue to struggle at this level unless something changes on or off the pitch very soon.