West Ham to help Lincoln overcome Arsenal
Lincoln face Arsenal at the Emirates on Saturday having eliminated Premier League side Burnley last month to become the first non-league side in 103 years to reach the FA Cup quarter finals.
Lincoln will go through their final preparations at West Ham’s Chadwell Heath training base, which houses the Hammers’ development squad and Under-18s thanks to Slaven Bilic who approved their request.
Managerial duo Danny and Nicky Cowley are both boy hood West Ham fans and made use of their connections with former Hammers shot-stopper Jimmy Walker now at Sincil Bank as the Imps’ goalkeeping coach to make contact with the club.
“We’ve got some contacts at West Ham and Jimmy played there for a good period of his career,” said Danny Cowley.“He is a legend at that club and his relationship with them certainly helped. We’re really thankful that they’ve allowed us to use their fantastic facilities. We’ll have a good session there on Friday as preparation for the game at the Emirates.”
The pair received numerous goodwill messages from West Ham supporters
“Even before we got onto the pitch at half-time there were people wishing us good luck,” said Cowley.It’s been well documented that we were West Ham supporters as youngsters and it’s nice to know we’ll have their backing going into Saturday.”