menzinho

The back 3 were all solid, Bedeau in particular got forward really well. Abbott was everywhere like usual, Tsaroulla had one his best games and McGoldrick always looked dangerous and a threat on the ball. I think it's hard to argue against Whitaker though, two superb goals and his all-round game was really solid too.

Just popped up on my feed today (thank you algorithm). Don't think the club have mentioned this, wonder if it's because it's not been made by them? Anyway, it's a short video of a couple of challenges to see how they compare to their EA FC 25 stats...

I do like the long light evenings, the sun shining at 7pm in the summer is a magical feeling. I'm looking forward to the phone call from my dad tomorrow telling me how amazing that his phone, computer, central heating etc all changed time automatically! He'll soon realise it's 2025 and not 1975 one day!

Are they still peddling the true underdog story tagline! These finances won’t include this season’s transfers; 500k on Rathbone, 590k on Faal, 300k on Scarr, 350k on Revan, 400k on Brent, 500k on Longman, 2 Mil on Smith and Jay Rodrigues on 15k per week! Their turnover is high but they are still making a loss and with their high spending it won't have improved. Yes getting to Championship will be a big boost but they'll need to stay there to get the benefits. They've been very fortunate and that’s putting it diplomatically, I’m mean who else has 5 first-team goalkeepers!

Shocking defending for our first goal, Charlie gets the freedom of Newport he still had to finish it though and he did superbly. Second goal was great though, just wish we could see more of that at Meadow Lane. All in all a very good day today, results kind of went our way, we’ve effectively got an 8-point gap to 8th due to having a much better GD too. Still can’t see us finishing top 3 though, but you never know… I’m going to enjoy (try to enjoy!) the run in now. Whatever happens in these last 7 matches (or more) if we’re good enough we’ll get promoted.

We are supposedly in talks to sign another goalkeeper, Tyler Miller I think is a name that has been mentioned. If that does happen I would find it strange if we singed a new keeper and then didn't play him. To be fair I thought Slocombe did really well when he came on at Grimsby but he wasn't really that tested against Crewe. But I do only see him as a back-up keeper, his shot stopping is decent but he can't command his area in the same way Bass does and that has proved vital this season and taken a lot of pressure off the defenders.

The club did the right thing with Ceds, but I can’t help but feel he put a lot of pressure on himself taking the number 9 shirt and wanting to be the main man so soon after a massive injury. Obviously a big reason he moved to Carlisle would have also been to play under Mike Williamson again but that is no longer the case now. He could well be playing in the National League again next season, that might feel like another step back in his career, but it might enable him to get scoring again. The injury was something that was totally out of his control, I really hope he can get back to his best with Carlisle soon.

Norwich City 0-2 West Bromwich Albion Stoke City 2-1 QPR Blackpool 2-2 Bolton Wanderers Bristol Rovers 2-1 Mansfield Town Barrow 1-0 Chesterfield Walsall 1-1 AFC Wimbledon Dagenham & Redbridge 1-1 Maidenhead United Tamworth 3-1 Eastleigh

They are surprisingly a lot better at home than away. They’ve beaten Donny, Salford, Barrow & Crewe at home (better than us!) I can’t see a scenario where we don’t score against this lot though, they’ve conceded the most goals in the league so far, surely they can’t get two clean-sheets against us! I’m not sure I like the 3-5-2/3-4-2-1 under Stuart at the moment, the wingbacks are expected to do too much and the two attacking mids don’t do enough. But I’m not sure given the injuries how flexible we can be. We did play a 4-2-3-1 formation against Newport last season away and shoved Macca out on the left but it worked… Jarvis would excel in a freer attacking role on the left, Didzy just behind Jatta works, that just leaves the right hand-side of the attacking 3. Could Traore or Morias play wide-right?

Insane that Grimsby who have lost 15 games this season could still go up automictically! Wouldn't mind if this was the start of Colchester falling back down the table, we’ve got to go there soon so a run of bad results would be ideal. Great result for Tranmere, 46 points probably keeps you up this season just two more wins for them and I think they’ll be fine.

That's fair enough @allardyces tash I like how everyone sees the the match so differently, I seem to be in the minority though so maybe I'm wrong! But for me I thought Bedeau, from a defensive point was pretty good. Some of the fouls awarded against him were harsh, but he was part of a defence that limited Crewe to just the 4 shots yesterday.

It's odd that we are only 2 points off an automatic spot but if feels like it's much bigger margin! I'm definitely looking the other way I'd put us in a mini-league with Grimsby, Colchester and Crewe for those last two spots now. We only have a 4 point gap and if our current form continues we will drop out of them come the end of the season. That said I do I think we are good enough to finish inside the play-offs, we just need to go at teams a bit more especially at home. Right now though I think it'll be really close, I want to say yes but I'm just not sure.

I think when you get promoted, in an ideal world, you want to do it a bit like how we did it in the National League – not in the sense of it being as nerve-wracking but where the team is comfortably better than the level it’s at. If I’m being totally honest, I think we are a good League 2 side, but I wouldn’t say we are comfortably better than most of the opposition as our results against the top 10 (top 7 in particular) show. Promotion if you are not really ready for it can actually be a bad thing. Look at Carlisle when they got promoted via the play-offs they only won 20 matches in total in League 2. Unsurprisingly in League 1 they had a terrible season and now look at them. I agree that League 1 is a really strong league right now, assuming those in the relegation spots get relegated that leaves you with Northampton, Bristol, Exeter and maybe Mansfield as the weaker teams the rest are all decent/very good (a lot better than us!). I think if we were to get promoted, I agree we’d need to make some considerable changes to the squad, assuming we don’t want to just come straight back down and that puts a lot of pressure to get the summer recruitment spot on. If you already have a very strong squad that's ready to step up, there’s a lot less to do.

In response to Stuarts statement above, there were no chances to take that’s why! Didzy fizzed a half chance wide and Abbott had half decent chance right at the end but that was it, for 80 minutes prior we didn’t create much of note. But I agree we should’ve had at least 1 penalty. Whitaker is caught but the way he goes down turning to ref to appeal just makes it look weirdly suspect. The one on Jarvis, Cooney leads with his arm so it’s daft I don’t think you could complain if it had been given. First half was just a boring non-event really. We were better in the second half though, but again it took us far to long to actually start putting Crewe under a bit of pressure. We were solid and defended well, but attack wise for too long we looked a bit lost and clueless. Jarvis, who looked threatening taking players on spent too much of the match in his own half. And on the other side in Gordon we have a player who is really quick but not that skilful, yet we kept playing the ball to his feet expecting him to beat his man. He’s crying out for a 1-2 to get in behind. And particularly first half, I had no idea what both Whitaker and Grant were supposed to be doing. I feel like our way of playing, especially going forward relies too much on individual players and their quality to just be better than the opposition. I know it’s harder with Jodi and Jatta missing but we need to be more adaptable and play to strengths of the players on the pitch more.

I still like to get out and play football, I mainly do it over the winter in the evenings. It's a casual thing really, a group of us hire out a pitch for an hour and we just split into two teams. I used to play Sunday League until recently but I got a bit fed up of getting kicked and trodden on by guys who took it way too seriously... Now the summer is approaching I'll try and get out on my bike when I can. But like a lot of the UK the state of the roads where I live are poor so I need to try and find a route that isn't too busy but also has the luxury of allowing me to actually lift my head and take in some of the scenery instead of being on a constant pot-hole watch!