Former Sunderland coach David Preece returns to Lincoln City as part of Michael Skubala’s staff

David Preece has officially returned to Lincoln City as the club’s new first-team goalkeeping coach.

A familiar face to fans of the Imps, Preece first joined the club as a player in December 2012, before transitioning into a coaching role the following year. He remained on the staff until the end of the 2015-16 campaign, but it was announced on Wednesday that he would return to the League One outfit.

Since leaving Lincoln, Preece has built a vast portfolio of experience, including a key role in Sunderland’s 2021-22 League One promotion campaign. More recently, he had been working with Indian Super League outfit Mumbai City – part of the City Football Group – before agreeing to return to Lincoln to replace Scott Fry, who is expected to move to a Championship club.

Fry will remain in a coaching capacity during his notice period, or until an agreement is reached to allow him to start his new role. Preece’s coaching journey has been varied. After spells in Sweden with Ostersunds and a short stint helping out at Rochdale, he made a surprise return to Wearside in 2021, joining Lee Johnson’s staff at his boyhood club, Sunderland.

Reflecting on that whirlwind campaign with The Echo in 2023, Preece said: "It was a great start to the season. Then there was that little spell, the defeat away to Rotherham (5-1) and to Sheffield Wednesday (3-0). Evidently those became damaging to Lee because he lost his job (following a 6-0 defeat at Bolton), but I think the mood around the place, especially around the time when Lee left, because we were still in touch and only a point or two off top spot, there was never any time you felt there was a problem in the dressing room."

He added: "Of course it wasn’t plain sailing, but you go to any club and there are challenges throughout the season. I think because of us spending so much time in League One, with each season it becomes even more critical that the club gets promoted. It probably reached a point in the timeframe that that was the season it had to happen. Perhaps if it had been the first season in League One there would have been a little bit more understanding and patience with what Lee was trying to do."

That season did end with joy, however, as Sunderland beat Wycombe 2-0 in the League One play-off final at Wembley. "I’ve thought about this a lot," Preece said. "I talk about how everything was just normalised. There was never really an atmosphere in the week leading up to the final that was any big deal, or any more of a big deal than some of the big games we’d had during the season. There is no doubt there is pressure to get results at Sunderland because of the division we were in."

"We spoke about this when the staff were sitting before the game on the night time. Alex said, ‘What do you think about tomorrow?’ and I said, ‘I think we’ll win.’ It wasn’t overconfidence because we knew we’d put the work in, and we were prepared for the game as much as we could be. In football, sometimes wins just come as a relief; you don’t enjoy them. You enjoy the result, of course you do, but you don’t enjoy the game and the stress and everything. From start to finish, it was an incredible experience that you were able to fully enjoy. That was the great thing about it. I made sure that I enjoyed it and took it all in. The lads made sure that we all enjoyed it."

However, the celebration was short-lived. Just a month after promotion, Preece was informed that his time at Sunderland had come to an abrupt end. "We’d had a couple of days back in the office after the game, just tying some loose ends and then looking forward to recruitment and things like that," he explained. "I went on holiday and was away for two weeks, came back, and we were just called in."

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"I got a text message from Alex just saying, can you come in a little bit earlier the day before pre-season so we can have a chat through about what we’re going to do. I’m like ‘yeah, no problem.’ There was no expectation of anything else. It just felt like being hijacked a little bit because we came in under pretensive organising stuff, went into the office to see Kristjaan and was told, the words they used were ‘going in a different direction.’"

Preece, along with first-team coach Phil Jevons and analyst Luke Coles, were let go unexpectedly. “It was a surprise. I had no real inkling of it," he admitted. “The reason Kristjaan gave for my departure was that Alex didn’t feel he’d made a connection with me, so obviously I was disappointed not to hear that directly from him and to see him leave so soon afterwards."

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