From just like Juve to Udinese: Notts County L2 Return

[JustLikeJuve]

I don’t believe one person can pinpoint everything that’s currently happening with Notts. Performances have shifted from being quite entertaining and yielding some excellent results at the start of the season to being absolutely dreadful. When Notts collapses, they do so dramatically, and I find no solace in seeing our club struggle. We’ve transitioned from resembling Juve to a struggling Udinese within the same season. What might be pressure, injuries, fatigue, loss of manager etc. is starting to become a more serious issue with more fans increasingly losing their patience. So, how does Notts navigate this complex situation? It’s not as simple as winning games or sacking Stuart Maynard. Results could go a long way, but at this stage in the season, I can’t foresee a dramatic change in form. The simplest thing anyone can suggest is to win the remaining games, but considering just how many the club has lost recently, there needs to be a more collective solution.

[Joshua]

I don’t believe that dismissing Stuart Maynard would make a difference. The subsequent manager would have to work with the same team, and form isn’t something that can be altered swiftly without effort. A lot of this effort needs to come from the players themselves to begin seeing the necessary improvements. I’m not concerned about this season; my focus is on backing the club and hoping for the best.

[Chris]

There's a collection of different aspects, but ultimately it comes down to the defence and the concerns echoed by @Piethagoram at the start of the season.

I think we missed the chance to further strengthen the back-up in the January window; teams who required a striker did so and have benefitted from that, but I do think we needed Alassana Jatta. That's nothing against him personally; I just feel it would be easier to see signs of improvements had we brought in experience in the defensive department. We might have been able to sign two centre backs and a defensive midfielder for the fee spent on Jatta.

It's possible the club didn't identify any realistic targets in defence, but we must at the end of the season.

Outscoring the opposition is never a smart choice to chase in football, especially when you leak goals and unfortunately Luca Ashby-Hammond is no better than Sam Slocombe or Aidan Stone. He's not experienced enough for what we need. Ashby-Hammond shouldn't be starting games, if I were Stuart Maynard I would bring back Sam Slocombe for his experience. I would stop switching the formation and settle the back three down, try to work with them.

More emphasis needs to be placed on our wing backs to defend, both Aaron Nemane and Jodi Jones are barely existent in this department.

Check back on the goals conceded, and you'll see many of which Jones should have done better with, including that awful pass which is Richard Duffyesq. Love him as an attacking option, but more discipline in defence is required from the whole team but especially the wing backs.

Some managers might be tempted to focus more on structure than the actual performances, I don't know, Stuart Maynard has a big headache and 99% of the issue for me is out of his hands. He can only try to weather through the awful results, which ultimately will cost his head if it's not fixed - not the players.

[Robbie]

I believe that we have enough points to be safe in this league for another season, so in the last 12 games we should just go for it and go back to the "total football" plan A, with one exception to before.

Dear Defence,

Nothing fancy, nothing too clever, just get rid of the ball, by kicking it into touch and reset.

[Fan of Big Tone]

I totally agree with everything @Chris says.

• Signing Jatta instead of bolstering the defence was a big mistake by the recruitment team.
• If he’s fit Slocombe should be reinstated as No. 1 choice goalkeeper as soon as possible. Now is not the time for inexperienced keepers.
• Jodi and Nemane need to up their game defensively.
• Maynard needs to decide his best system and stick with it.

[DangerousSausage]

I disagree with the OP in one thing - it really is as simple as winning games. The trouble is, we can't because we're always giving the opposition a head start!

Stuart Maynard has already pointed out that you defend as a team. However, we've spent years recruiting players who are good on the ball but not so strong off it. This gave us a soft underbelly under Burchnall, and now those problems have come back to bite - except this time the opposition is better able to exploit it.

As @Chris, Jones and Nemane barely exist in a defensive sense. Part of our troubles is that we've been playing them as wing backs, giving defensive responsibility to players who aren't up to that task, leaving the back three exposed frequently. A head coach has to work with the players he's given with all their strengths and weaknesses, so surely the logical thing to do would be to play a back four so they each have a full back behind them, allowing them to concentrate on their attacking play. SM has recognised this too, but we haven't seen the full benefit yet as he's switched formations during games a bit too often.

The defence has been poor and definitely needs strengthening, but they've suffered from being exposed as I just described, as well as from having three different goalkeepers behind them (none of whom have covered themselves in glory). In light of all that, I'm not convinced that just changing the personnel of our back line would have made much difference.

[menzinho]

I think not adding to our defence over the summer was a mistake, it's easy to say in hindsight now but at the same time I totally understand why you'd give the players who got you promoted the chance to prove themselves. The recruitment team (overall) have done a pretty good job. The January window is far from ideal to be doing a lot of business. The simplest reason we didn’t sign any defenders in their peak could just be because we didn’t have/find any good available options. (Insert joke about a statue being better than our defenders here) But imagine we signed two CB’s permanently because “we thought we had too” but there were doubts about if they were good enough and that turned out to be true, that’s another 2 players on the books for x years. I’m sure it’ll be addressed in the summer when we can get the right players in.

I don’t think we need to deviate too far from what’s made us successful since the Reedtz brothers came in and I don’t think we will. It’s just cutting out stupid mistakes and playing safer at times, just knocking it out for a throw or clearing a ball into the stands every now and again won’t change our style.

In terms of defending, yes, we need induvial quality but I also think we need proper wing-backs if we’re going to stick with the 3-4-2-1. (Basically we need to play some more defenders and not just 3!) We were able to play JJ and Nemane in the league below because our quality was a level above and the oppositions quality was not great. Neither really play like wingbacks let’s be honest they are wingers who just drop back occasionally to make up the numbers when we aren’t on the ball. When was the last time an actual wing-back had 20 assists? It just doesn’t happen.

[liampie]

going into the transfer window, i did have hopes that we would sign an experienced defender but we brought in jaden warner and lewis macari permanently. both looked okay at the time, i did hope that we would still make a signing that made us feel that the defence would have someone fresh and experienced to help reduce the mistakes made in games.

i like jaden warner but i think we dont help him at times with repeatedly changing where he starts. i think we need to figure out who the best player is in the middle of the back three and when that turns to four or whatever it does not lose shape for certain players.

i love that our owners are ready to invest but my point about the jata fee, we could have spent it adding depth to cover the injuries and avoiding some of these pointless loans we have had. its been a poor season for bringing in players on loan, almost like its been an after thought or panic signing.  

[TheSkipper]

The football has still been pretty good, I mean we’ve come a long way. At the start of the season, there were fans who complained that Macaulay Langstaff hadn’t scored and questioned if he could make the grade at League Two level. Then there was the worry about not being able to score, despite the form being good and us maintaining a healthy top 3 place.

I don’t remember when exactly more people started complaining about the defence, but I’ve never seen any comments blaming this on Luke Williams, even though it was a problem before Stuart Maynard took over. Our football hasn’t changed all that much, we just let in goals and need to score more than those who find our defence easy enough. It means that it’s much harder to get results, but we aren’t performing all that badly. There are games where we are quite poor, but it’s because of our attack that we aren’t struggling to score. If this was the case, I would be more worried, but I think we’ll improve soon.