An excellent podcast from Paul Mace this morning. It's well worth a viewing.

He discusses an excellent point made by a supporter that Notts don't have to play well to win anymore.

"Winning ugly" is better than playing great football but still losing. Wimbledon, Bradford, & Port Vale won promotion by playing ugly & they got promoted but Notts didn't.

Do PON members think that getting a win is more important than playing well & dominating possession but failing to win. Has there been a subtle change in the Notts footballing philosophy under Martin Paterson?

Do you all think a change such as this can be successful & would you welcome it.

I'll give it a look a bit later, but the club were upfront about the changes before the season started and with the appointment of MP.

Everyone was saying that they need 'possession with a purpose' and need to look to play forward a lot more.

And who wouldn't want to be more resilient, tougher and focussed on winning?

So yeah, there are changes - ones they spoke openly about and seem to be delivering on.

End of the day, it's whether you win or not. Even in the days of Spain winning everything, people got complacent and bored with the tiki-taka style of play.

We found ourselves bored to death win Maynard, we even got rid of Curle not long after his undefeated away record, so as much as aesthetics have an involvement, I much preferred celebrating at the final whistle than looking at the stats of a match last year and seeing 67% posession to lose 2-0.

We played some largely, quite attractive stuff with a lot of technical players doing a lot of hard work. I can really see myself falling in love with this team, it's all down to consistency and luck from hereon.

It can be a tough watch at times with the the ball flying aimlessly in the air from one side to the other like a tennis match. But to be fair to Notts league two opposition tend to force you into that style of play with there constant physical approach that stifles football. So I think the penny has dropped with the owners that to get promotion, you have to match that style. The old saying that you have to earn the right to play football seems to be true. As we develop as a team lets hope we can add some decent football to the physical side and get promoted.

I welcome the subtle changes. I loved the all attacking style under Luke Williams, but I do think the owners have recognised that to get out of League 2 a side has to be much more unpredictable, & a little more unpleasant to the opposition at times to get positive results.

Possession isn't the b all or end all in League 2. It's what you do with it when you have it, & when it's time to defend or protect a lead a team has to resort to all the tricks to brake up play, waste time, & to disrupt the flow of the game as much as possible.

And I like the fact that Notts seem to be going more direct this season. It's better to have surprise in your locker than being constantly predictable.

I think if we can strike the balance between a slick footballing side with a physical edge it would be perfect. If we suddenly became a team that falls on the side of being defensive, spoiling and playing for set-pieces I’d find it a hard watch even if we did win more than we lost.

In the terms of where we are now we’ve definitely lost that control we used to have but because we are a lot more pro-active off the ball it’s working for us at the moment, I still think we can control and manage matches better when we do go a goal up but that'll come with a bit more work on the training pitch.

I think the aim is to be a much more intense team than last season (not that hard given how slow and ponderous we were at times) you do need a bigger squad because fitness and freshness is probably more important than individual quality. It’s a big change from last season, we had a much smaller squad but at the start but the individual quality was very high.

It’s weird now in football that being entertained is almost as important was winning though. I don’t know how others would feel but I would certainly rather see a 3-3 than a 0-0.

Fans will still complain about performances even if we win; it is a simple fact. I think playing well is important, but I can accept ugly wins. I don't think Fleetwood was a bad performance; I think it's the best we have played at Meadow Lane so far this season. We did play exceptionally well for 30 minutes, or in brief glimpses. The performance was there throughout the game, and although times were difficult to watch, it was still by far more enjoyable to watch than games I have seen where we have been very poor.

There's always a fair point to take from games, even if we haven't played our best or been that exciting. Football is a game where fans should be entertained, but the main thing will always be about doing well enough to be at the right end of the league table.

Another point is you have to factor in the opposition when they have done well defensively.

I have been watching a lot more football lately, and the quality of defending isn't as high as people seem to think. Teams who attack tend to be exciting to watch, but the main area where teams struggle is beating good, standard keepers. There are good defenders who make mistakes; there are teams with a good set of defenders that are organised enough, and teams that struggle to create chances.

There's no art in defending these days, keepers are vastly underrated, and fans are obsessed with stats to the point that it dilutes pure football.

Performances, both team-based and individual, are just as important as winning.

"Notts don't have to play well to win" is the wrong message; the correct message is about being resilient enough to win games when the chances are few and far between, but defensively you just have to be good. If you say we don't have to be good enough, it will lead to inconsistency and players failing to reach an acceptable performance level.

Even when performance isn't great, it's good to keep in mind that Notts still managed to grab a win. But let's not forget how rough it was when the season kicked off. A lot of fans seemed to overlook the fact that we brought in 11 new players, most of whom were midfielders. That was definitely a big deal, since midfield was where Notts had the toughest time.

I gave it a listen @Robbie.

I've really enjoyed Magpie Circle this year, it's been getting better and better, but a large part of that is the ever-consistent Stall. I've watched the vlogs too, the Friday preview - all alright and worth watching

For me though, this 'Sunday supplement' is a video or podcast too far. Too many of the opinions seem over-egged to me and football takes seen through the sole prism of Paul Mace's slant on the game rub me up the wrong way. I found myself disagreeing too often to find it enjoyable!

@The Anti-Clough I agree that it works well with Stall onboard where you have maybe two differing opinions & with Paul asking the questions. I think he's testing the water to see how this particular podcast goes. His match previews are first class but this could be a podcast too far.

Saying it’s fine to win ugly doesn’t help in the long run. It’s okay now and then, but if a team relies on luck or one good chance, it sends the wrong message. That said, fans should enjoy the odd scrappy win when it comes. Against Fleetwood, we looked like the better side, so I don’t really get why MP said the performance wasn’t “good”.

27 minutes ago, NortonNCFC said:

Saying it’s fine to win ugly doesn’t help in the long run. It’s okay now and then, but if a team relies on luck or one good chance, it sends the wrong message. That said, fans should enjoy the odd scrappy win when it comes. Against Fleetwood, we looked like the better side, so I don’t really get why MP said the performance wasn’t “good”.

Agree with most of that @NortonNCFC, apart from the bit right at the end. I'm glad Pato said that.

Going forward I thought we got really good performances out of the front three on little service. The build up play just wasn't happening all that much. Gordon and Tsaroulla seemed to get trapped out wide, the defenders were reluctant to move into space ahead and Palmer and Norburn are hardly going to break the lines.

Great win, but narrow, we eked out the 3pts for once.

It’s an old saying and just common sense, of course we don’t need to be perfect to win. But we’ve made good progress since that first win, and things are clearly getting better. I don’t think we need to panic like some fans do, as long as we keep improving. Still, saying Notts don’t need to play well to win feels like the wrong message, especially right now.

On 07/09/2025 at 18:25, menzinho said:

It’s weird now in football that being entertained is almost as important was winning though. I don’t know how others would feel but I would certainly rather see a 3-3 than a 0-0.

Of course. There have been some great 0-0 games over the years, not many but still there has been a few, but a 3-3 shows attacking football from both teams and more than likely an end to end game which is always great to see. That's how football used to be and why it was so much more enjoyable to watch than today's game. Teams used to live by the saying "if you score 3 we'll score 4". Especially during the 90s/00s this was the case, it was a faster paced end to end kind of game back then. Now, as has been said, the game today is more about stats and teams seem to be falling in line by playing a generic style of play where it's play out from the back possession based game. Which doesn't always make for great viewing seeing how slow the building up tends to be.

Sometimes you do have to win ugly. Obviously managers don't plan out their teams to go out and win ugly they still want to play the style they've worked on in the training ground but that all just depends on how the opposition sets out, how well you can keep them out defensively and how effective it can be to execute the game plan set out by the manager.

Sean Dyche has mentioned it on a podcast, I can't remember it word for word but it was something a long the lines of teams must set up for the opposition rather than sticking to a game plan. It's hard to argue with that especially when, as I've already said in this, teams set up generically by playing a build up from the back possession style won't necessarily work against teams that press high up. Sometimes you do just have to re-adjust and ping it over the top due to the high line of the opposition to get in behind. I get the feeling that's what Paterson was referring to in his post-match interview when he said "there's a reason I play Jatta and Dennis together, you can do the maths on that one". Big man little man partnership, unless I'm mistaken by that.

It's always good to have the winning habit. If you're in the habit of picking up points in games you didn't have the better of or were on a knife-edge, you can't sustain a promotion push.

That said, our recent good run isn't a result of us suddenly deciding to turn into Wimbledon. We're not booting the ball up the field or into touch because it's part of some grand plan, but because our passing and possession of the ball isn't on point. We're all happy enough because we've got 10 points out of the last 12, but the mood can turn quickly if the results stop coming.

In the last few games we've developed a habit of giving the ball away or, when we're under pressure, just aimlessly launching it up the field (and thus losing possession) rather than trying to keep the ball. We won't always get away with that. However, it's early days and maybe we should have a bit of faith that this team will bed in some more.

6 minutes ago, DangerousSausage said:

In the last few games we've developed a habit of giving the ball away or, when we're under pressure, just aimlessly launching it up the field (and thus losing possession) rather than trying to keep the ball.

That could be solved. It sounds like something that needs to be worked on on the training ground. Pressurised play keep ball. Aligning the players in areas to make options visible and having a get out rather than having to boot it aimlessly long. But, it could also come down to not quite having the suitable players able to carry those tasks out.