Time to reflect.

[Feral Fox]

We are all gutted. We are all fed up, but now is not the time to rant.

save that for tomorrow! 

[Fan of Big Tone]

Absolutely gutted but worse things happen in life, I’ll be there next season.

[DangerousSausage]

This is the first time I've logged on today and I can't read the posts from earlier. Just can't do it. I've been through my shouty and sweary phase, I've done my silent phase, now the therapy shall begin. And PON will help me with that.

Over the two legs Coventry were better than us. We couldn't handle them in the first half. All the same, we should have come away from Holbrooks with a 1-0 lead. Everyone reading this knows that Forte's goal wasn't offside. I wouldn't say that refereeing decisions robbed us of victory - we might have gone on to win, or maybe Coventry would have hit us on the sucker punch or on penalties - but today they robbed us of our chance. It's devastating to finally have to give up on promotion in this manner.

And yet... three automatic promotion spots were up for grabs (and we were sat in them for most of the season) and we missed out. When that happens you know it's a lottery, that promotion can depend on a fluke or the referee's whistle.

So what now? Alan Hardy and Kevin Nolan have been in situ for a year and a half now and we've made superb progress - from a good bet for relegation to play-off qualification. On top of that, we added 2000 to our average crowd - higher than in the Munto season, and only 300 shy of 1993-94, when we were two divisions higher and in the same division as Derby, Leicester and the team from West Bridgford! We may not quite have been ready for League One again, but we're moving forward. So let's build on this rather than screwing it up and returning to square one. Now we've established ourselves as a serious football club once again rather than a circus (and a promotion contender to boot), hopefully we'll attract a few good additions and make a real bid for the top three.

As I used to live in Coventry and know many people there, my Facebook feed is already full of Wembley, which is hard to bear. I don't hold anything against them though - they deserve a bit of success. Shame it had to be against us but that's football.

I was quite interested in the rest of the play-offs but I'm not sure I can stomach them now. I've got to somehow motivate myself for Waldhof Mannheim's play-offs next Thursday and Sunday (and they failed the last two years running, the last time on penalties). Think I could do with a year off of it to be honest!

[Northants Pie]

The best we played was just after half time when we stopped hoofing it and actually played some passing football, I hope we see more of thst next season as we are the easiest team in the league to defend against when we just hoof it & hope.

11 out of 10 for the season.

Hopefully we'll recruit well this summer and play some fast paced passing attacking football next year, Wycombe aside all the other teams that have gone up / reached the play off final play passing football.

As for the Ref's / lino's, surely the FA have got to look at that and make sure none of them ever officiate a Notts game ever again.

[samwatto2008]

Right then, best come out of my hole for this one. Well first of all I AM BACK! Basically got to involved with the club and emotions etc so never thought to post. However I now need somewhere to share my views and emotions with so anywhere else better than PON? No ... Ok. Firstly, I want to start off by saying what a season. At the start of the season I said to my father anywhere below play offs is a failure this season. So in my eyes we have passed. Ok, we had a decent budget and other teams around us may not have, but look at Mansfield, tipped for promotion (auto) and they finished outside of the play offs. I think this has been a fantastic season and the first time we have kept a manager all season since 2008, 10 YEARS!!!!! I praise Kevin Nolan and the backroom staff for a fantastic job they have done. I seriously think that autos is again on the cards for next year, with poor opposition coming down from league one and poor budget teams coming up from the national league, I think this could be the year next year.

However ... 

Lets start with the play offs, great day out at the Ricoh and a game i will never forget. But i said this from day one after the Luton game, you can't sit back on leads in the play offs which is exactly what we did at the Ricoh. Look at Luton vs Blackpool last year for god sake. 5-4 that game ended I think. Just simply not good enough. Ok the officials were awful and cost us 3 goals but that first half performance at the Lane is a perfect example of why we should not go up this year. We did not look threatening enough and quite frankly embarrassed ourselves. It frustrated me because it was not a good advert for the millions watching of what type of football we can play and what we can achieve. 

Another rant, I do not know who is in charge of recruitment and scouting but dear me they have got it wrong this year. I can name off the top of my head 3 players that would've fitted lovely into this years team replacing people i thought have been sub par at best this season, so here goes. Siriki Dembele > Terry Hawkridge , After watching Dembele's pace and trickery he is miles better than Hawkridge and would open up play so well as he did for Grimsby. Grimsby signed he from Nike Academy and is now on Chelsea's radar. Another one Jordan Smith > Adam Collin , Jordan was playing at National League level until last year where he made a breakthrough. He is now a well established Championship goalkeeper and should be someone we should've looked at. Finally, Danny Lloyd or Jay Lloyd McGoldrick from Peterborough United > Liam Noble, playing national league until this year and has walked into Steve Evans's side at Posh, blistering pace and now a league one standard player maybe even championship. What is so frustrating is that these types of players are not being picked up because of our lack of knowledge of the lower league markets. There is three players there that would have walked into this side. You may question how to pay for these types of players but 2 were from the national league not even a year ago and now are well established in leagues above ours. It's a complete joke I tell you. With our budget we should be swarming players like these. Not enough talent is being bought through the ranks at Notts (ie, Sam Osbourne, Alex Howes, Curtis Thompson), instead we are relying on 35 year olds to do a job up front and make an impact off the bench. More youth is needed and hopefully Kevin will see that.

All that a side like I said fantastic season and look forward to the transfer window and getting rid of the dead wood of our squad this year. COYP! See you at Meadow Lane next year!

[Chris]

Honestly, I don't want to go there.

I do want to try to recall the best bits about the game, as I don't want to ruin them because despite what happened I had a good time. The game was lively, the fact there was goals gave them game some edge to it and it was very entertaining. I felt like we could have gone onto win it, yet for me it's the poor winners mentality that Coventry fans have that really pisses me off.

Such a small club these days and they shown it yesterday.

[TheSkipper]

Notts really annoyed me with how poor they played in the first half, it was like only half of the players were actually up for it! I can't tell you how disappointing that was to see because the defending for Coventry's goals wasn't the best. Kevin Nolan should have got the players to drop a bit further back, we lacked in defence and we never pushed in the first half enough with our attacks. Coventry did deserve to be leading, but that does not make it any less frustrating.

I don't know what Nolan said at half time but he got a positive reaction from the players.

The equaliser could have changed the game completely because for the first time in the game, Notts were on top of the play and looking the better outfit on the field. If we had seen Forte's goal count, we could have won the game.

The officials ruined it with some many poor decisions and its hard not to feel robbed with what has happened in both legs!

[liampie]

the poor decisions did cost notts but really we should have dealt with coventry better. i am not going to moan about the things which cost us because i want to focus on next season. for once i feel like notts can grow and compete with the teams in this league, at the start of the season i thought the gap would be much bigger than it turned out.

[Anti-Red]

Notts bottled it in the first half and the deficit seemed to large to overcome until we got the disallowed goal.  

[Magic magpie]

Annoyed and pissed off and gutted 

[Magic magpie]

Weeks later and still annoyed and upset 

[Fan of Big Tone]

15 hours ago, UnitedPie said:

Weeks later and still annoyed and upset 

There’s always next season mate, when you’ve been watching Notts as long as I have you’ll get used to these disappointments and upsets.

Next season, clean sheet and start again, I’m just thankful that it looks like we will start with the same manager and owner for another season. #stability

[Magic magpie]

17 hours ago, Fan of Big Tone said:

There’s always next season mate, when you’ve been watching Notts as long as I have you’ll get used to these disappointments and upsets.

Next season, clean sheet and start again, I’m just thankful that it looks like we will start with the same manager and owner for another season. #stability

By today I’ve calmed down u are right we did better than first thought and we never be this good I’m looking forward to my first season as a ticket holder ... but yeah that a good perspective