Simon Clark

Go on, hands up if you thought Kyle Wootton would turn out to be this good when Notts County signed him on loan from a struggling League Two side at the end of August? Granted, one of the things fans have constantly complained about is the lack of a big, strong target man. Someone who can hold the ball up, bring other players into the game, win the headers and generally lead the line in a way which helps the poachers like Kristian Dennis and Wes Thomas find the space to play their own game. At the point of signing him, Wootton had a League record of 15 goals in 101 games and 2 goals

What a contrast to our previous regimes. For all his rights and wrongs – and I think there were more rights over his tenure – Ray Trew found it difficult to stay away from social media and club message boards, often falling into the trap of over promising some new signing. He also seemed pretty keen to hit the fire button as the revolving door rarely slowed down on the manager’s office. Then, of course, we had the ego which took the club out of the league and almost out of existence, alienating our closest neighbours and making the club a laughing stock while retaining the trigg

I should nail my colours to the mast before we start here. I’m firmly on the side of ‘Ardley In’. In the last 10 years we’ve had 15 managers and he’s only the third to last over a year. In that time, we’ve been to the brink of League One play offs and now face our first season in non-league, having to qualify for the FA Cup proper and making our first appearance in the FA Trophy. We will never prove this, but in my mind one of the reasons for that is the lack of stability caused by changing manager so many times. When a new one comes in, they inevitably want their own players wh

Michael Doyle 1,2,3,4……… A man who has certainly divided opinion, if a scan through social media is anything to go by. The main signing of the January transfer window, and the man touted to keep our Football League status, he made the perfect start by led by example as Notts won 7 points in his first 3 games, all against promotion chasing sides. We all know what happened after that and, in my opinion, he tried to do too much, taking all the set pieces (not particularly well, either) and not giving other players the space to operate. At the time, I would have been quite

The National League, cha cha cha…….. 10 games in, and what do we think? I guess to keep thing in perspective, we need to look at the starting position, let’s say the end of July. A week before the season started and you should be organised, settled and ready. At that time, Notts still had an owner who was more famous for accidentally putting a picture of his genitals on social media than anything he’d done in football, hadn’t paid the wages for 2 months, we under a transfer embargo and were in ready danger of being liquidated. Now, when a team is relegated they are very rar

It’s certainly a fact that a toxic atmosphere within a ground has a negative effect on performances, we only have to remember back to the brief tenure of Jamie Fullarton. At that time, it felt as if a reasonable number of fans were turning up wanting us to lose. Now, I’m not suggesting that was the case this season. In fact, quite the opposite as I think our supporters – in the main – have been really supportive and patient, far more than the performances have deserved. It’s an expensive hobby to follow a football team. Even if you only watch home games, it’s approaching £500 a year

I’m a huge fan of the work Jorge Grant did when he was on loan with us, and by all counts, he’s a genuinely nice bloke, which is great to hear. In 2016-17, when we were in trouble following the John Sheridan fiasco, he missed only 2 minutes of the last 15 games and was instrumental in pulling us away from trouble. In 2017-18, he played 21 full games (plus an 88 minute game) and came off the bench 5 times, scoring 14 times and making 5 assists as we took our place at the top of the league and had one foot in League One. Although I think Jon Stead’s role in this is vastly under-rated.