Notts Joe: John Sheridan still seems unsure of best Notts County line-up

Once again Notts stumble back to the drawing board, yet as a club, do we ever learn?

It doesn’t seem that long ago that Jon Stead was League Two's Player of the Month, in fact it was only last September - but things seemed a lot more optimistic back then.

With back-to-back defeats at the hands of Blackpool and more recently Newport County, it seems the Magpies are destined to pitifully play out the remainder of the games until the January transfer window opens up.

The injury to Stead has proved a massive blow. I said this at the time and even warned prior to this misfortune that we were relying too much on him.

That said, away performances have largely made the difference during the 2016-17 campaign and that's when we saw Adam Campbell step up from Stead's shadow.

Twice he’s been our saviour, he helped earn Notts a replay against Boreham Wood in the FA Cup, but we haven’t seen many other players step up to the plate.

Problem is, Notts are largely inconsistent and when things are merry, John Sheridan speaks of praise and, during lean times, he speaks of how it's unacceptable – even going as far as comparing the squad to a pub team.

There’s nothing at all wrong with this, but I am increasingly becoming frustrated by his lack of faith in certain players, whilst others retain a starting place week in and out.

He spoke more recently about welcoming the selection headache when it came to the squad that could be put out against Newport, with only Genaro Snijders, Robert Milsom and Graham Burke coming in after the terrible away performance to Blackpool.

You may be wondering why I haven’t included the likes of Jordan Richards. I haven’t because I largely feel he’s been in and around the first team for a while and is well within the deserved list of having a run in the Notts squad.

However, Robert Milsom and Graham Burke have largely been disappointing whilst Sheridan has been at the helm as the manager.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s right people are calling for his sacking or resignation – much of the issues we see on the pitch is largely down to years of mismanagement and poor decisions from various parties involved.

It’s easy to point the finger, but the fact is we crave stability and this only comes in retaining someone who can carry out the required work. There’s not a big queue of good candidates out there prepared to come in and do this.

I do wonder what has gone wrong these past few weeks, however all season it’s been quite poor with only patches of good spells – it's easy to forget when you're winning games and sitting in and around the play-offs.

At this stage of the season Sheridan should have had the chance to experiment, yet it would appear as if he doesn’t know who is deserving of a starting place or even who should make our best eleven.

Certainly I don’t feel Adam Collin should be number one, and yes I hear the phantom moans of ‘Scott Loach isn’t much better’ – however even he managed to make a small difference last year round.

I at least hope to never hear or witness Alan Smith starting in any form of attacking position, which is another shame because I do feel at times he could have helped in midfield. Just not as someone regularly starting, as we have only just managed to out Alex Rodman from his favourite position – another player who along with Carl Dickinson I would hope remains out of the squad until they learn to fulfil their roles better.

As things stand, I expect to see a few more disappointing performances and no doubt this will include some woeful results.

I just hope that things start to pick up sooner or later, as these winter months are the perfect time to gain form – with the return of Stead and eventually the opening of the transfer window.

Fingers crossed we can rid ourselves of some of the underperforming players who barely reassemble professional footballers in the hope that we can replace them, provided we don’t have further speculations of ‘ghosts’ appearing at Meadow Lane in the form of meaningless takeovers.

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