We saw a different kind of win by Notts on Saturday. Notts didn't win by dominating possession & overwhelming their opponents by their passing game, they won by defending for long periods, surviving an aerial assault on their goal, not playing at their best, but still coming up with a bit of quality at the end with a well taken goal by Hall.

Notts weren't allowed to show their attacking prowess in the way they would have liked but the Notts defence was outstanding with Roos having his best game of the season between the sticks.

We have seen many matches, some at ML where the opposition has done the same to Notts when Notts have dominated the match, but failed to score due to excellent defending, then conceding a goal & opponents taking all the points.

If Notts can continue to achieve positive results, just like this one, when they have been dominated by their opponents & have had to defend stoutly as a result, but still get the win, they won't be far away from the top of the league at the end of the season.

it shows the importance of defending and keeping the score level in tough games, as a chance can always change the out come of the game, such as what happened with tyrese hall scoring. defending older pieces, especially with headers away takes pressure of the keeper.

So many takeaways.

Don't underestimate Martin Paterson. He's not the smoothest talker but he's an astute reader of the game - his shape adjustments and substitutions were excellent, which is becoming a regular feature.

Tyrese Hall, 5 in 5, can score a winner away from home in the 94th minute. This guy is now one of the very first names on the teamsheet. And taking him off at any time would be a big deal - you'd be taking off one of your only match winners.

Back to Pato, saying he will not hesitate to take off his wingbacks at any time and replace them with fresher players. Brilliant - letting players know pitch time cannot be taken for granted.

Is McDonald's form this season better than Platt's last year? It's the same level IMO but not yet, because Platt sustained it over a longer time. But more important than that..... it's this season that counts and RodMac is in possession of the shirt now. No coach in his right mind would go away from a CB playing as well as he's playing right now.

I missed the first half on Saturday, but looking at the chances Barnet had it looks like we rode our luck a bit. I was pleased with our fighting qualities in the second half though - if the footbally part isn't quite coming off, you've still got to hang in there and give yourself a chance. And given some of the options we have on the bench, there's always the chance of a late winner.

I agree about McDonald too, I think he was underrated last season but this season he's made the shirt his own. And players forcing their way into the first team picture is exactly what you want - it shows the rest of the squad that the first 11 are staring on merit and that they too will get that chance if they perform well enough.

I’m not convinced it was a smash and grab win. We weren’t at our best with the ball, but that was due to Barnet’s tactics. What we did was react to the situation they put us in and did it very well. They asked us to defend and we did! In that situation we only needed one bit of quality to win and we produced it. The takeaway is that we know how to play football and win an now we know how to defend and win.

Barnet put us under pressure, they kept playing forward and putting the ball into the box but on the whole we dealt with it really well. And I know they had 18 shots but how many of them were actually decent chances, one or two? We blocked 7 of them and 11 of their shots were from outside the box too. So we actually limited them very few openings.

I think going forward we still need to work on how to deal with an aggressive press. One big bonus is that we didn't play any kamikaze passes our play ourselves into trouble and give away a sloppy goal. But equally we can't just keep clearing the ball and giving it back to the opposition, on another a day a more effective attacking team could've punished us.

I think we did get lucky in the end and I mean in terms of our winner, I think we deserved at least a draw for such a solid defence display though. Can't take anything away from Hall, it was an excellent finish and he has really grown into the team now. I’ve not heard a moan about us missing Didzy for sometime now so that is a massive compliment.

On the subs, they have been really effective this season, almost to the point that I can’t remember us ever being so effective when it comes to making subs… Is this partly down to the technical board? At the start of the season in the when it was first announced they said: “The Technical Board will also develop a process to support the coaching team in making more effective in-game decisions. This will involve supplying a variety of data-led metrics, analysis and insights to the dugout in as near to real-time as possible”. Surely can't just be coincidence?