Notts County's manager Luke Williams praises Wealdstone's challenging set-up

Notts County's manager, Luke Williams, has cautioned fans against expecting a repeat of the scoreline from their earlier fixture at Grosvenor Vale as they prepare to host Wealdstone in the East Midlands this coming weekend.

In October, the Magpies had dominated their game in northwest London, scoring six goals away from home for the first time since February 1924. Macaulay Langstaff, Adam Chicksen (2), Matty Palmer, Aaron Nemane, and Geraldo Bajrami were among the scorers in the one-sided match.

However, Stuart Maynard's Wealdstone team has had a commendable campaign so far, being one of the few part-time teams in the league and vying for a play-off spot as they occupy 10th place, eight points behind Eastleigh. In their previous encounter, Maynard had admitted that the Notts squad assembled by Williams was the finest he had seen in the National League. Nevertheless, the Magpies' coach praised Maynard for the job he has done with his team this season.

Speaking to the Nottingham Post, Luke Williams said: "Without a doubt, he has done a brilliant job because when you watch them you can clearly see the work unfolding in front of you on the pitch, and they have a different set-up to us, more challenging actually.

"We are extremely well catered for and we know that and appreciate that and they have more challenges than ourselves, so really the work that Stuart has done there is excellent and of a very high level."

The playing style adopted at Grosvenor Vale has been compared to Williams' method of patient, possession-based football with a counter-attacking ability. Wealdstone showcased their excellent footballing skills in their recent fixture against Oldham, with Sonny Blu Lo-Everton scoring the winner off an 18-pass move.

Despite Notts County's impressive 6-0 win against Wealdstone earlier in the season, Williams has cautioned fans against assuming that the outcome of their upcoming fixture is already determined by the previous encounter.

"There is a lot of respect and I think to put the game at their place into context, we started the game very well and were able to score goals early on.

"The other thing we should remember from that game is that we scored goals that are very difficult to convert, so on a different day that would not have been the case.

"It was almost like the perfect storm in terms of the way we started and in terms of taking difficult opportunities to score being converted, but everything fell into place for us and once you are in front very early, you have a different confidence and play with a different freedom, and we were able to be very dominant on the day.

"We don't look at the game and think everything is going to be fine, or that this team are going to be easy to play against, we don't - we are not naïve enough to think that we were that good on the day that the result was inevitable.

"It was a combination of us playing well and good fortune that gave us that great start, so we look at them and know this team is very well coached and are a very difficult model to play against and we know that."

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