Notts County’s form in the EFL League Two 2023/24 season has been a bit of a rollercoaster. After a disappointing defeat to Sutton on the opening day, the team seemed to have found their footing with a strong start to the season. However, recent defeats, particularly the home loss to Mansfield, have been a cause for concern.

The team’s performance at Meadow Lane has generally been strong, with the crowd support undoubtedly playing a part. However, the Mansfield game was a disappointment and highlighted some of the issues that Notts County faces away from home.

In terms of goal scoring and conceding stats, it’s clear that the pressure of conceding is impacting our attack. Despite this, Notts County has shown they are capable of scoring when they need to.

The current form of the team heavily relies on players like Jodi Jones, John Bostock, and Macaulay Langstaff. Matt Palmer also deserves a mention, despite some inconsistent performances.

Looking ahead to the upcoming fixtures against Gillingham and Newport, it’s hard to predict how many points we’ll pick up. The pressure of being at the top end of the table may be impacting the team’s performance.

Overall, while there are certainly areas for improvement, it’s important to remember that no team can win every game. The most important thing is that Notts County continues to enjoy their football and plays to the best of their ability.

I think any other Notts manager might have a bit of a backlash with some of these defeats, yet we need to take account of that we are in a good position and doom/gloom just adds to the spiral that winds up and then brings everything down with it.

Some games I think we should write off, Mansfield isn't one of them.

The majority of players did put in effort, it was the best attacking football we played and there was noticeable difference in efforts from certain players.

My thoughts on future games are that with our support, we can overturn any difficult period - provided the players work hard. Along with Luke Williams encouraging the players, without it being a case of being too critical (from us too) we should pick up. Luke Williams mentioned in his pre-match interview that he felt questions made it seem like we weren't doing well and perhaps were at the other end of League Two. That is the feeling I get from what I read, but really this is what competitive football is like.

Our next win will be a major turning point, it will put us back on track and if we can build an undefeated run. Half of this worrying will be forgotten, if the worst happens just remember it took us four years to get out of the National League. Provided we are competing, it should be easier, if we keep this togetherness and talented squad to make it to League One.

Luke Williams said in his interview that we are still finding our feet in this division, playing teams that have former Championship and even Premiership players in them, he also said he had been keen to keep the team that gave us success in the National league a chance to perform in this league but going forward there would be casualties and we would lose some players and new ones would come in. To me this is the clearest indication yet that we can expect some new signings when the window allows.

As Luke said we are still 2nd (at the time of writing) in this league so let’s not carried away with negative thoughts. Not that I’ve seen any negativity here but I do think some fans are not seeing the positive side of things especially after the Mansfield game.

At the start of the season I was quietly confident we’d have a good season, I didn’t think we’d start as well as we have done though.

A lot of opinions have been voiced about our defence, there’s definitely room for improvement but I still think a lot of that comes down to how we set out to play. I think regardless of individuals we will always look a bit susceptible at the back because we load our team with attacking players and push everyone forward leaving space in behind. This season the quality of opposition has also improved, our defenders have pretty much stayed the same. It was always going to be more challenging.

But right now our attacking prowess, one of the reasons we are very enjoyable to watch, is seeing us through. If you look at the stats we are actually very efficient in attack; given the high number of goals we’ve scored we haven’t actually had that many shots. I think in only a few games this season we’ve had more shots than the opposition; those were Grimsby, Tranmere Salford & Colchester (we lost that one!) – I know stats can tell their own stories, dangerous shots would be more interesting and better stat (but I’m not going to re-watch every game to compile that). Quite a few teams we’ve played have been happy to shoot from distance but we don’t tend to just hit and hope, be it in crossing and shooting, we’re much more likely to be patient to try and create a genuinely good goals scoring chance.

I agree with Luke Williams that we haven’t hit our peak performance yet, probably Salford away and Swindon at home were stand-outs, overall I’m very pleased with our form!

I had us down as starting the season slowly and finishing outside the playoffs by the end of the season, so I’m delighted with the way we have started. One thing that worried me all summer was the fragility of the defence and that has proved to be correct, but I hope and expect Notts to start addressing this in January. Whether or not we do enough to go up isn’t an issue for me because I can see us being even stronger next season and I would rather see us get out of this division stronger and only need to change 3 or 4 players, rather than need 7 or 8 as that has been a recipe for disaster in the past.

We will get better, just need to keep picking up as many points as we can before the transfer window opens. LW has been spot on by giving the players who got us promoted a chance to prove themselves, and half a season is more than long enough for them to do so. 

Early Santa wish list

https://www.irishmirror.ie/sport/soccer/drogheda-united-reject-multiple-bids-30814275

A "Bostock style" central midfielder