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menzinho

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menzinho last won the day on March 6 2023

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  1. Accrington had 23 attempts overall and in the second half and there was a 30-minute period where we didn’t have a shot. So, I think I can just about count that as fluking something! First half sounded a lot better than the second, when it seemed the ball just kept coming back. It sounded like we played more more long balls and struggled to keep possession for long periods. Seeing lots of positives about Jatta, he’ll still be settling in but if he can keep his place in the team and keep performing well that’ll be something to be positive about for next season. I also read that Jodi went straight down the tunnel when he was subbed, no idea if it’s injury related or just frustration. By all accounts him and Nemane were managed quite well by Accrington for most of the game. I’ll take a point after the run of losses. Hopefully it’ll provide a little boost for the players. Just playing for pride (and some of them contracts) for the few remaining games now. Let’s hope that can start a little bit of good form (but not to the extent where we miss out on the play-offs by a point or goal difference cos that would be bloody annoying!)
  2. The thing that really sticks in my memory from when we played Accy at home was how big they were. I guess on that day skill prevailed over size but we’re not going into this game with much, if any, momentum. Robertson is suspended and will be big miss (granted Crawley wasn’t his best game) since his arrival once he’s settled into the team he’s pretty much been carrying the midfield. Hopefully Bostock will be fit (and fresher) for this one. I’m not sure I believe the rumours about a falling out that involves him and Didzy. Doesn’t fit either of their characters imo, and Didzy got taken off with an injury recently so that surely is the issue. If Bostock isn't fit shove Colkett in, what have we got to lose (expect actually losing of course). Maybe he’ll have a masterclass… Or get injured. A back 4 or 3? It doesn’t seem to make much of a difference at the moment, I still think we look slightly more solid in 4 as we aren't as vulnerable to balls in the channels. But three CBs, Baldwin (hopefully), Cameron and Rawlo/Warner will help deal with their aerial threat, could possibly put Tobi in at RWB for more height too... Am I confident of a win, no. I’m now into the territory of “surely we’ll fluke something at some point”. Hopefully that is this weekend.
  3. A bit late to this now, but I agree with a lot of what's been said. The performance was ok up until the red card, so that is on Robertson because it changed the game. Crawley were better in the second half but once we went down to 10 their belief jumped it was just attack after attack until they scored their 2 goals. With 11 maybe we grind out a 1-0 (possibly even score another if Crawley had overcommitted trying to equalise) I’d argue the chance of that happening was pretty much 50-50 though. But losing 2-1 with 11 men I’d have said 20% chance given the time left. So here we are again, another loss, another fine margin but when things happen over and over again like this it can’t just be that we are unlucky though? Under LW (at times) we looked miles better when we played some teams in this league. We’ve not been outplayed by anyone since SM took over but other than Newport away have we actually performed better than the opposition? It’s still very early under SM but right now, considering he said he backs himself tactically, that feels like my biggest concern.
  4. I understand why the club offered the players it did new contracts in the summer. And given we’d not played in League 2 for 4 years we had no idea how they’d perform. Yes we probably should’ve been more ruthless but I’m not sure how well that looks. It’s almost disrespecting to those players who really did have a great seasons for us, a kind of thanks but don’t let the door hit you on the way-out attitude. Potentially it could’ve caused a few players to become upset, if that’s a way a club treats its players who got them promoted. I do think we’ve been very unlucky with injuries this season too, that has not helped, I think that between Nov-Dec-Jan we fielding almost the same team every week, which probably did lead to players being overplayed. I think Didzy has kind of now fallen victim to this, you’d think he’d have been able to rotate more with Austin, Scott and Morias but due to the injuries this seasons he’s pretty much had to play when he can. But yeah, it’s incredibly unlucky to have 3 season ending injuries in one season. I don’t remember that ever happening in my time supporting us. And with them all occurring into the season pretty much all the good players would’ve been signed by other clubs so replacing them last minute is not easy. January then became a bit of a fire-fighting effort in terms of the recruitment, securing Macari and Robertson has been good but I agree signing Colkett and Ashby-Hammond not so. I don’t know why we didn't bring in a "proven" defender either, did the recruitment team struggle to identify a good player or was it simply no-one good was available and affordable? Recruitment’s probably the most important part of what makes a club successful. On the whole it has been very good and you’re never going to be perfect and unfortunately for us it's dipped this season. But you can only learn from your mistakes and we can only hope and assume the owners and recruitment team will be fully aware of our issues this season and why it's gone so wrong – they’d have to be pretty much blind and stupid to not notice this! You can’t get it right all of the time and as bad as it sounds considering we were in the play-offs if we don’t go down (still mathematically possible but surely not…) then the season hasn’t been a disaster, just very, very disappointing. And I think depending on how the season ends we will have to revaluate whether SM and his team are right for us going forward. That said I’m still confident with our owners and how things are going. I'm sure in 2/3 years’ time we’ll be a lot closer to league 1 than the NL.
  5. We need something to kick us on again, as much as I'm hoping for a win even something like a clean sheet (which would guarantee us a draw) would be a massive boost. I know it's probably hard for the players because it's not like they aren't trying but they've just got to stick with it and keep positive. You can't go into a game with doubts, believe this is game that starts a run of good form. They know they can do it because we've had some really great results and performances this season. Please, please, please, let this be the game where something clicks again and we come back to Notts with something to cheer about!
  6. Now he can run again tape that knee up so tightly he can't feel it and get him in the team for Crawley! We really have missed him though, so it'll be great when he is back for next season. Bajarmi also running alongside him in the video, all in all it seems we're over the worst with concerns to injuries now.
  7. I didn’t think under Stuart Maynard the results would have been as bad as they have been, he’s in a bit of tough situation now but if he can turn it around it will show he possess the qualities that probably got him the job in the first place. I agree I don’t think demanding Stuart Maynard to be sacked really achieves anything. Why when you want the club to succeeded why would you make his job harder by not supporting him. Fair enough if you have doubts or don't think he's the right man for job, but actively trying to get him removed is counter-productive. That said, I don’t think our owners will be influenced by those just shouting the loudest. We know they aren’t ones to make quick and rash decisions, I don’t think they’ll be panicking yet, if anything I think they’ll be thinking more about how they can potentially help SM and his coaching team through this tough period. I remember in a rare interview it was revealed one of Chris or Alex had written a study as part of their degree about the effects of sacking managers. I think a large takeaway point was something about how lots of clubs sack a manager when he’s not actually the real problem but they do it because it’s the easiest thing to do...
  8. Yes, get well soon @Piethagoram, you didn't miss much against Wimbledon so here's to hoping for a win or a clean sheet (the latter will be more impressive) against Crawley to help boost your spirits!
  9. It’s like we can only do one or the other at the moment, either set-up to try and stop the opposition (which we did overall, set-pieces were our downfall but in open play Wimbledon didn’t create anything) but at the expense of our own attacking game. Or we go out to score goals and concede at the same rate… I will say we created the only really good chance in the game and Macca should’ve scored it. Feels like Stuart Maynard hasn’t had anything really go his way since his appointment. But I can't get over how Wimbledon just sat back and played like a team that were more than happy to leave with a 0-0. They were there to attack but we didn’t really have them that worried, everything was to feet and a touch too slow. We needed to really quicken the pace in the last third try some more balls in behind, 1 touch passes to get us through their defence or even just getting more people in the box at times. Langstaff looked a bit of a lone figure amongst their CB’s. A draw would’ve probably been a fair result but sadly that feels like the story of Stuart Maynard’s time so far. We’ve not really been out performed by any team, in some of the tougher games we’ve done ok and been unfortunate to lose by a goal but equally we’ve lost to some pretty poor teams who didn’t put us under much pressure and didn’t create many good chances either. I get we’re probably not good enough to go up but we’re not the 15th best (or worst for the pessimists) team in the league and it’s disappointing to see us there right now. Morecambe, Crawley, Bradford and Newport are all now above us in the table and we’ve beaten all of them (some at a canter, some even twice!) Right now I’m just clinging to the fact I’ll get to see Robertson paired with Palmer next season but that amazing thought is going to wear off soon! We’ve now not won at home in 5 games (1 draw 4 losses) and today was our 4th loss in a row. I don’t want to compare it to previous regimes but I’d be really surprised had that happened under LW…
  10. I had doubts about this going head today given the current state of Bradford's pitch, so it's a real shame to all those who travelled for nothing. Do they play rugby league there or do they train on it in the week or something? I can't understand how a pitch that is used weekly can get into such a state.
  11. The momentum and confidence from last season seems to have worn off now, that was probably always going to fade at some point though wasn’t it? I think it’s slightly over-exaggerated about how easy the step-up is and maybe we were a tad blindsided by our record-breaking season achievements. The bottom half of the NL would really struggle in this league and I’m not sure some of the better teams would do that well either. Mansfield might finally get promoted this season and they’ve spent 7 seasons trying, by no means will I consider this season a massive failure if we don’t finish in the play-offs, it's about progressing, by basically not getting relegated we’ve done that. Then it becomes about making sure that progression continues each season and we’ll get promoted when we're ready. Now to actually answer the question, no! But like you say never say never in football…
  12. I think not adding to our defence over the summer was a mistake, it's easy to say in hindsight now but at the same time I totally understand why you'd give the players who got you promoted the chance to prove themselves. The recruitment team (overall) have done a pretty good job. The January window is far from ideal to be doing a lot of business. The simplest reason we didn’t sign any defenders in their peak could just be because we didn’t have/find any good available options. (Insert joke about a statue being better than our defenders here) But imagine we signed two CB’s permanently because “we thought we had too” but there were doubts about if they were good enough and that turned out to be true, that’s another 2 players on the books for x years. I’m sure it’ll be addressed in the summer when we can get the right players in. I don’t think we need to deviate too far from what’s made us successful since the Reedtz brothers came in and I don’t think we will. It’s just cutting out stupid mistakes and playing safer at times, just knocking it out for a throw or clearing a ball into the stands every now and again won’t change our style. In terms of defending, yes, we need induvial quality but I also think we need proper wing-backs if we’re going to stick with the 3-4-2-1. (Basically we need to play some more defenders and not just 3!) We were able to play JJ and Nemane in the league below because our quality was a level above and the oppositions quality was not great. Neither really play like wingbacks let’s be honest they are wingers who just drop back occasionally to make up the numbers when we aren’t on the ball. When was the last time an actual wing-back had 20 assists? It just doesn’t happen.
  13. I’m pretty optimistic in general but I’m struggling to find the positives after viewing that. It had all the hallmarks of what seems to been ingrained into us this season; give away an early goal, a defender with an assist for the opposition’s striker and conceding a penalty (must be like the 20th we’ve given away this season). It’s so frustrating given we have to work really hard to score goals with all our passing and movement, the opposition just needs to cross it into our box and they’ve got 50/50 chance of scoring. Conceding goals has been a problem all season, even before Stuart was appointed, it’s just becoming too deflating now. It’s almost like it’s added motivation/confirmation for opposition too, they’ll know before a ball is kicked that they can score against us! I really hope this season doesn’t nose-dive, play-offs looks a world away at the moment but we can’t fall into a slump, we desperately need to show a bit more nous and desire.
  14. Fine margins there. If we score one of our early chances that could’ve been a different game. On the whole we did well 1st half, we struggled a bit in the second half early on, Wrexham just kept us penned in and we were all over the place defensively at times. They were able to get the ball into the channels and go down the wings too easily which is exactly what they wanted. But then we took control back and we had a lot of the ball in the last 20 but struggled to really create much (our legit goal aside). Which brings me onto the ref, I don’t like to moan too much as it’s not an easy job but he got two big decisions wrong. Lee should’ve been sent off for a second yellow, in the second half he was dispossessed, we broke and then when he was running back to try and stop our counter he just grabbed Robertson round the neck and dragged him to the floor. And I think our goal should’ve stood, looks like the top of the arm at worst and that’s on the shirt line so it’s not handball. Like Stuart Maynard says the reactions tell the story for you, no Wrexham player appealed yet Didzy goes absolutely mental at the ref, why would he if he had handballed? Someone like Jatta in the 2nd half would’ve been perfect, our crossing was poor but the cross had to be perfect when all our attackers are smaller than the 3 Wrexham CBs. Wrexham defended well, we actually defended better too. I just thought going forward at times it was too slow, like we almost wanted to create the perfect chance. Like we’ve shown recently with our defending we need a bit more grit and determination about our attack. Our attack gets a lot of credit but against the better teams in this league we’ve struggled to score. And I’m really starting to like Roberston. He was excellent again, covers the ground well, really good on the ball and wins a lot of challenges too. Early days but he looks to be a really good signing.
  15. Wrexham are blessed with the ability to play with no real patterns of play, it’s just about getting it close to the goal to someone with quality like Lee, McClean, Mullin etc. Or failing that a set-piece so one of their massive defenders can cause some chaos. They haven’t been playing well, but I think it’s their away form which is more likely to hamper them for the rest of the season. They have got that ability to just churn out results and they only need a good 10-minute spell and before you know it they’ve scored 2. I’d expect Wrexham will try and bombard our backline from the off, they’ll make us defend 50/50 balls as much as possible so we really need to be up for it defensively. We've got threats too though although I suspect Jodi will need to wear a 360° shin pad tomorrow! We’ve always had close games with Wrexham and I expect tomorrow will be no different, a draw would be a good result for us given our terrible form against the top 10 in this league.

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