Game 7 - The Fishermen (H)
Team - Fleetwood Town
Date - 06/09/2025 14:00
Where - Meadow Lane

What would your starting line-up be? What will be the key areas for the Magpies to get a victory? What do you think the final score will be?

Have your say below, join in with the Pride of Nottingham match discussion.

We have to do something different because Jodi is off on Malta duty.

It's not easy thinking up the best combination. As it's a home game, we should make sure we put out an attacking line-up. I'd rather not see the double pivot of Norburn and Palmer. I'd probably go for Palmer, then Iorpenda and Hall just ahead playing behind both Jatta and Dennis for this game. If the WBs are Tsaroulla and Gordon, that's not too gung ho. What do I expect? Norburn to start, and Grant, Jatta on the bench.

It's a good opportunity for Notts to keep the unbeaten run going & a win would be Notts gaining ten out of twelve points possible.

Fleetwood will be another tough game. Every game in League 2 has it's challenges & Fleetwood will make it as hard as they can for Notts on Saturday.

I would like to see Martin play Jatta & Dennis together once more as a twin striking partnership. I think Lucas Ness should replace Aljofree at the centre of the Notts defence, & give loanee Hall a start as an attacking midfielder behind the front two.

I think it is a positive development for Notts to vary their tactics during a match, by not just playing out from the back but going long on several occasions during recent matches.

I'm hopeful that Notts will keep their unbeaten run going with a dominating win, where they can play well for long periods, especially in the first 20 minutes of the match, which is so important.

I forgot how to count in my post on another thread, you can't have a midfield diamond, a front 2 and WBs obviously! :)

Agree with @Robbie, let's see Hall (standing in for JJ) playing behind Jatta + Dennis for this one

But we need that vertical, up and down the pitch movement if we're having 2 up front, so I don't see a place for Norburn is this one, Iorpenda to be Palmer's sidekick please, especially for a home game.

If you think about it, you can't have a front 2 plus Norburn and Palmer in a WB formation, that's heading for 4-4-2.

The other solution is bringing back Dennis as an inside forward No.10. MP might do that.

Edited September 5Sep 5 by theAnticlough

You could be right on the formation @The Anti-Clough & it could give some headaches for Martin on his selection, but I think that could be a good thing. Martin could play Dennis as an inside forward or he could go to two forward either from the start or later during the match if circumstances demand it. It does look like Martin will have several options on Saturday.

Interesting that Robbo did the other chat.......his he in MPs thoughts to start???

On 04/09/2025 at 16:07, theAnticlough said:

We have to do something different because Jodi is off on Malta duty.

Now’s a great time to keep Jatta and Dennis playing together. They work well as a team and could help us score more goals. The problem is, we don’t have many choices if one of them can’t play. Unless we put a young striker on the bench, there’s no backup.

As much as I would like to see two up front, I have a feeling Jatta will be on the bench. If he is that does give us two options for the game. Jatta can either come on and make it two upfront or if necessary he could replace Denis if he is not playing well. Play them both from the start and there's no one on the bench to bring on.

Friday night optimism is kicking in again. Notts are going to run them ragged, a brace each for Dennis and Jatta. Palmer involved in the build-up for all them. All this after an early gift from a corner for Fleetwood. Not sure Robbo will start after playing the full 90 on Tuesday in his first game back. Expect him to come on though - good competition for Norburn whose not been stellar so far despite having the best pedigree of our signings.

For a few of those who played on Tuesday (youngsters aside), if they aren't on the bench tomorrow, that's probably the last we'll see of them - likely going out on loan or contract cancelled. Tough being a lower league pro.

I don’t want to say Notts has to win, even though I do think we’ve got a good chance against Fleetwood. The team still needs time to settle and get better, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we have a few problems before things start working properly. I’m hoping we can at least get a draw, but I do think we might deserve a win. What matters most is making good chances and defending well. The defenders need to do all they can to help Kelle Roos.

I’ll be wearing my new home shirt for the first time, it’s the first one I’ve bought for years so I’m hoping it brings us luck. If we win you can thank me.

I’d also like to see Jatta and Dennis up front but I rather think Jatta might be on the bench, we will miss Jones though, whatever the formation I hope we put in a good performance and get another win.

I hope Notts takes the game like I plan to spend the day: nice and easy.

Fleetwood are a good counter-attacking team; they have previously surprised me by focusing on playing the ball on the floor. I would suspect that if they feel completely overwhelmed, this will kick in, as any club will see that Notts doesn't like it. I really hope they stick to keeping it grounded and that the game has an open-ended feel to it.

Jodi Jones, for me, isn't a big loss. I hope his time representing Malta sees him come back refocused.

I will be curious to see if what happened to Will Jarvis (hand, I think) will keep him out of the selection or even from appearing on the bench. We should be able to give someone else a chance to step into Jodi's shadow. Maybe someone who might see it work a bit better, as I know I said we need to give him time in his new role, but if someone else does better there, then there's no harm in reverting back to him on the wing. Just a case of how do we protect him there? But that's not a problem we face against Fleetwood.

6 hours ago, Chris said:

Jodi Jones, for me, isn't a big loss. I hope his time representing Malta sees him come back refocused.

I will be curious to see if what happened to Will Jarvis (hand, I think) will keep him out of the selection or even from appearing on the bench. We should be able to give someone else a chance to step into Jodi's shadow. Maybe someone who might see it work a bit better, as I know I said we need to give him time in his new role, but if someone else does better there, then there's no harm in reverting back to him on the wing. Just a case of how do we protect him there? But that's not a problem we face against Fleetwood.

Interesting point @Chris, JJ has underwhelmed so far inside but there's no clamour to move him back to WB. He's just about done well enough to deserve a few more games inside, especially if he's going to have both Jatta and Dennis ahead of him now.

But what are the other options? Luker's out. Grant and Traore can't really be relied on to produce, Hall's unproven. Iorpenda might not give us the stats we need, Jarvis can't seem to get going, Edwards is gone. The loss of Didzy and Crowley in the space of a few months was a massive blow, if you think in terms of replacements.

It's going to be interesting what we get from that/those positions today and from whom. I think we're going to see Dennis there sooner than later.

@Chris, I agree, don’t think Jodi will be a big loss. He’s not yet firing on all cylinders so to speak. It gives MP some interesting team selections without disrupting the overall momentum. He could replace him with Jatta and play two up front. He could give Hall a start to see what he can do. He may though play safe and put Grant in there. Also I wonder if he’s thinking about replacing Aljofree with Ness or Norburn with Robertson. We wait with anticipation!

Edited September 6Sep 6 by McPie

Personally, I think the answer is Dennis to an inside-forward slot. He holds the ball up, gets involved, closes down and coming from deeper might open up different scoring opportunities for him.

One thing's for sure, we can't make a promotion challenge without goal output from those two positions. And from all the options, he's the only one who's shown he can put the ball in the onion bag at the rate we need

Edited September 6Sep 6 by theAnticlough

Fleetwood are one of those teams that will win the majority of their games against the weaker sides and are unpredictable against the better sides. They beat Barrow away in their last game. I expect a tough game today. The fungus from outer space is the unknown quantity. How will the surface hold up? A poor pitch will suit Fleetwood.

Very nice to bag the 3pts today.

Nobody let us down today, everyone put in a shift in a solid team performance. I thought our front players all did well on not a lot of service. Weakest area I felt was the WBs, but you can't have everything and those players tried.

Are league 2 teams clones? I could swear I saw exactly the same set of players in Tranmere, Shrewsbury, Bromley, Barrow shirts

GOOOOOAAAAAL DENNIS

Full time. The unbeaten run continues.

Latest League 2 Table. Notts up to eleventh place. Big test next week against the league leaders Gillingham.

I thought we did well against a well-organised team that liked to leave an elbow or boot in every challenge they went for. It looked like we could score, and we played like that was the mission. Instead of trying to force play, I thought Notts looked like they were working towards creating a chance, although the first half didn't work out.

Fleetwood Town were far better defensively than they were attacking. They looked awful in both departments in the first half, but they did enough to keep them out.

The teamwork between Alassana Jatta and Matthew Dennis looks really promising. I thought we played pretty well on the attack, and we played okay in defense today. The reason Fleetwood Town grew into the game later on was simply down to us making too many poor decisions, but that comes from pressure, and the changes made to bring on fresh legs will see it happen.

Kelle Roos made some very decent saves, but was largely untroubled. Yes, he dropped the ball twice, but we need to think beyond that because of how positive the performance seemed in the grand scheme of things. The overall performance was a big step forward; we look very dangerous in attack and could have caused more problems had things fallen our way.

There are areas to improve; I wouldn't take Martin Paterson's post-match comments approach. I think in games like this you need to accept and call the baseline in terms of how you want to play. I thought it was one of our better performances this season, and the reason why we didn't finish Fleetwood off more is down to them being decent enough when it mattered.

Solid performance and hard fought win. We’d have drawn, or even lost that last season.

Whilst never really igniting any spark, we plugged away and produced the sharpness we’d lacked to get the early 2nd half goal. Excellent individual displays from Palmer, McDonald & Iorpenda. Very robust and gritty contributions from Tsaroulla & Norburn in the 2nd half too.

Grant & Robertson showed some quality when they cane on as well.

Maybe not the most fluent performance but a well deserved and hard fought win & clean sheet. Good stuff from the team and the manager today.

Fleetwood was really annoying. They kept doing stuff to stop Notts and mess up the way we were playing. They weren’t that good, but they did just enough to get what they wanted. I still think Notts played well.

It was the first match this season where I thought we could win and not let any goals in.

MP's best match so far. Really nailed the game management element.

Notts' really rallied in the 2nd half, subs were effective and all deserve a special mention. Dogged from Robbo which assured a tiring midfield, Traore enabled their back line to sit further back as not overwhelm us and made some excellent touches (on that note, I saw him smile after progressing the ball, it's nice to see him get a bit of happiness from all this) and Grant made some excellent final third plays.

We're not getting too much from the WB's, for me they seem really inconsistent - one match Tsaroulla can be great but the next a complete liability. Thought we could have taken Gordon off and brought Bennetts who may have helped us kill the game off.

All in all, a good game, with a good crowd and good weather.