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The loss of the coaching staff isn’t great, argue amongst yourselves whether or not you rate them but now Stuart can only really lean on Joao Alves for advice and he's at the very early stages of his coaching career. I’m surprised we haven’t added another first team coach, it’s been over a month since both Saunders departed. Richard going is a blow but I can’t see how it directly affects the current on-field issues. Perhaps there’s been a slight downturn in morale, but I’ve no idea how close he was with the current players. Crowley going for me has been a blow, ok by all accounts some players weren’t overly impressed with him and if he stayed he’d have left for free in the summer. That said replacing a player of his quality in January is far from ideal, we’d have had to have paid over the odds for someone and we know the club doesn’t operate like that. We’ve taken a bit of a gamble with Whitaker who shows promise but I agree that right now he’s nowhere near the same level. I'm not always sure you need a captain to scream and shout to be honest, no-one has really had an issue with Palmer in that role. We do have a younger squad now though, take today for example Matt Palmer was oldest player in that starting line-up, maybe a tad more experience is needed. Also I feel we rely too much on individual performances, we suddenly seemed to get back on track when Crowley returned from injury. And now look at us with McGoldrick (and Jones) out, it’s like we are just waiting for them to produce moments of magic. Look at the assists for this season, right now both Palmer and Abbott are joint 1st on 4 (only because Crowley has now left) the rest of our attacking midfielders and wing-backs have got either 2 or 1 - that is shocking, especially when we are 35 games into the season. Same goes for goals, we rely too much on Jatta and McGoldrick, Jodi is still our 3rd top scorer and he hasn’t been fit for months!

Tuesday's results: Hull City 2-0 Plymouth Argyle Preston North End 0-0 Swansea City Charlton Athletic 1-0 Barnsley Mansfield Town 0-0 Wigan Athletic Colchester United 1-0 Chesterfield Newport County 3-1 Gillingham Aldershot Town 0-0 Dagenham & Redbridge Solihull Moors 1-1 Sutton United --- Congrats to this round's winners @Robbie and @william1984! --- This is our table overall. @ARLukomski has built up a healthy lead, while I've graciously allowed @Robbie to spend a few days in the top three... --- Saturday's round is also done and dusted and I'll post the points for that in the next day or two. Our next round will be this coming Saturday, so keep your eyes peeled for that. Have a good week

#waffle1143 5/5 streak: 332 #wafflewizard wafflegame.net A1

Wordle 1,359 4/6

Looks like no-one wants to get promoted this season!

Connections Puzzle #637

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Wordle 1,359 3/6

Everyone was below par today. It’s not really much of an achievement for this match but I feel I’ve no other option than to give it to Rod McDonald who at least defended well second half.

Funny how that happened today @Robbie, I thought Hinchy was a tad unlucky to be taken off at half-time as well. I get things needed to change but sadly no-one really performed very well against Wimbledon.

There is just something missing lately. We need to win against competitive teams. And for that we need either Didzy or Jones to be back.

You could have wrote was going to happen in this game before it happened. The one bright spot was a change of tactics that improved things slightly in the second half. We'll be lucky to make the playoffs.

It seems a bit of a setback; this current form isn't good at all. I can put aside my frustration, because it won't help in the long term, but it seems almost like Notts are failing to meet the grade needed to finish in the automatic promotion places. I really don't believe it's because we are not good enough; I wonder if the players have doubts themselves, though. Wimbledon have pulled off a great result, they have good momentum going forward, and I wish it were us. I don't believe it's all doom and gloom, but the players must respond. Wimbledon, going into the game, had similar form to our own. They still do, to a degree, so there's hope that we can turn around these disappointing performances. A single shot on target is poor, especially with 64% possession. Something just isn't clicking right now, but the starting lineup looks more than capable of getting a result. Notts needs to start making the possession count, instead of sitting on the ball. Even the bench looks fine to turn things around, but the absence of Mai Traoré seems interesting. We can't afford any further injuries, and again it shows how much we are missing David McGoldrick. McGoldrick and Jodi Jones would be big boosts; Stuart Maynard must try to spot when things are working during games before it is too late. I wonder if fans who attended felt it was like Salford all over again? We responded well after that, so I hope we can move forward, but it's the wrong time to be losing form.

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Wordle 1,358 6/6 tough one

On the disallowed goal, having just seen the replay from @Piethagoram's clip it hits the Barrow player and no-one is in the keepers eyeline. The most telling thing is the reaction from the Barrow player who has the best view (standing on space on the right-hand side) he instantly puts his head in hands, he knew… I’d have liked to have seen a touch map for Traore, I’d be surprised if he got into double figures. Not his fault though but in Jatta and Traore we had a physical striker and a quick striker yet we didn’t use either of their strengths enough. I know they'll need time to get used to each others game, but I really don't know why we took so long to get the ball to them.

It's disappointing that Notts could not execute many of the chances. Truth be told, defensively we have been ropey for over a month, and performance-wise we are back to being very inconsistent. It highlights how much we miss David McGoldrick, whose experience helps us manage games a lot better. I don't want to write about the officiating, as it might come over as excuses or bitterness, but Barrow had a game plan and worked well despite Notts controlling the ball. They took their chances, and Notts can't make a high amount of possession work in games like this. I don't think it's just the injuries; Stuart Maynard needs to sort out the consistency. I am not calling for his head, but if he can be stronger, I believe it would help us with slipping further. The results as of late are not good enough if we want to aim for automatics, and the pressure is clearly part of the problem. I can't put into writing how frustrating yesterday felt. I can take losing, and not every game will go our way, but we are simply handing draws and defeats to the opposition.

When it's been warm, records have been broken and those really hot days we had - it made it hard for me to adjust to them. They were way too hot, but it's been okay. A little too much rain for me.

Wordle 1,359 6/6 Them wrong choices again!