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Such a weird match, first half we just looked off the pace everything was a tad too slow and we struggled to really get into Harrogate and put them under too much pressure. That said we still created the best chance and their goal was a bit out of nowhere as Grant slides in and ends up playing their forward in on goal. Second half was just all us, we must have had about 90% possession. Harrogate were done by about the 60th minute or so and we just lacked that bit of bravery or magic. We were regularly at the edge of their box but the final ball wasn’t great and Harrogate were just so deep by the end there wasn’t much space for anyone in and around the box to even get a shot off. I was unsure about the penalty when it was awarded, and having watched it back I'm still not sure. The Harrogate defender puts his hand in the back of Jarvis but it didn't look like it was with much force, if anything him then falling over causes the Harrogate player to go over and that makes it look worse. l I think the pressure got to the ref, there were a couple of shouts for pens (all which I think he got correct) and he didn’t give them. Fair play to Harrogate, they’ll be gutted after that. I think their defensive resilience merits a point but my word how did the ball just not fall to us at all, not one deflection or anything went our way. It feels like had that been us playing so deep for 30 minutes we’d have conceded a couple.

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Great news to start the weekend, he's been really good since returning to the side. It's great to actually be in a position now where we are renewing contracts before the end of the season too, means we definitely won't lose him on a free as I'm pretty sure League 1 sides would've been interested in him. I wonder if we in talks with any other players whose contract is up at the end of the season? 🤔 Tsaroulla and Platt will be out of contract next year...

Yeah, the he calls for his return have quietened down now he hasn’t scored a goal or provided an assist in the League since August… If we had an unlimited budget I’d say yes, but I just can’t see how we can justify paying his wages (he’s probably on even more than he was at Notts now) knowing he can’t play every 90 minutes anymore. There’s also an argument that due to how we press more and play more direct he might also be less effective now.

I’m going to go for the obvious one; Rod McDonald. Probably the best small fee signing for years. This is tricky, genuinely can’t think of many players here. The only other I can think of (here’s a little clue for someone who is maybe scratching their head) currently plays in League One…

Top of the form table v bottom of the form table and the possibility of Martin Paterson and Jatta being announced as manager and player of the month. Talk about tempting all the fate here! That said, by the sounds of it Harrogate will do well to put 11 players out for Saturday. From reading an article about them and the build up for this match they have a number of injured players I think about 8 as 3 players limped off in their trophy match this week. 2 players are on international duty one being their top scorer Duke-Mckenna (you need 3 to postpone) and Jack Evans who played all 15 matches previously has 5 yellow cards so is suspended for them. We could well be in a situation where we can make 5 subs and don't really lose any quality and Harrogate are bringing on academy players. That's the way it goes sometimes but it looks like there's not really a better time to play Harrogate right now.

Yeah I’m not overly fussed about it, I like the navy trim matching the sponsor and pattern but the outline of the old magpie badge just looks too basic considering it’s a special fan shirt. It just looks like an away kit to me, the sponsors and current badge don’t really give it a special one-off feel. I’d have just used the old magpie crest in place of the current crest so it wouldn’t be so prominent and then designed a retro patterned shirt with a one-off unique sponsor. But it's selling and clearly quite popular so what do I know?!

I think after last night Iorpenda has moved himself back into a strong position in the pecking order but it's still Palmer and Robertson in the central midfield positions for me. I think we’ve got a good number of possibilities for the attacking midfield spots. Hall is the standout at the moment for me and whilst Grant may lack in finishing he makes up for it with great pressing so you get a nice balance with him and Hall. I agree about Luker and how unfortunate him getting injured was. I thought he was someone who would’ve grown into that attacking midfielder spot and by the end of the season could have been someone we were desperate to sign. I still think Jarvis could work in one the attacking midfielder roles because he’s very good technically, it’s just Martin really likes to see that desire to run non-stop and press and that probably doesn’t come naturally to him.

That really was an excellent away performance overall, Cheltenham were always going to change after half-time because we totally dominated them in the first half and had Tsaroulla’s header been centimetres to the left it clips the post and we go in 3-0 up. Iorpenda showed just how important mobility is for a midfielder, it was the right choice to start him alongside Roberston. He was like a gazelle just breezing past Cheltenham’s players at times. No idea how likely it is but I’d be desperate to get him in permanently at the end of the season. The oldest outfield players in the starting 11 last night were Tsaroulla and Bennetts, and they are only 26, everyone else was younger! We've got a core of really promising young players here now. The only blemish was the goal, I'd imagine with VAR it gets given as a foul but the ref gave us pretty much every 50-50 after so it was probably playing on his mind and that helped us. No idea why Ness heads it back into the danger area though, that was really poor from him and was probably his only real mistake of the night. Good to see us get back on track in such encouraging fashion though, we are looking really solid in the league right now.

I saw after the match Jatta and Hall being interviewed for Sky and I think Hall carried a trophy away. I’d have Jatta, Hall and Robertson as my top 3. Could make a case for all of them really, but I think Robbo just shaded it for me.

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We’ve played with a variation of a 3-5-2 (3-4-2-1) for years now and it’s worked for us so far. Also when you look at the teams that were promoted last season Bradford, Port Vale and Wimbledon all played some variation of a 3-5-2 as well. Every formation has its strengths and weaknesses, I think the 4-4-2 covers the pitch well but you can be overrun in midfield if you face a team that plays with 3 centre mids or a box midfield. With the 3-4-2-1 we are very solid in central areas but it demands a lot of the wing-backs because they almost have to do the job of two players and they sometimes get pinned in if facing a full back and a winger. I’m not overly concerned with the formation, I think it works well for how we want to play, the two attacking midfielders and two central midfielders mean we should be able to get a lot of control in the middle of the pitch and dominate. Sometimes I just wish the wing-backs play a tad higher, they were really deep under Stuart and that seems to have followed on with Martin. Maybe Luke Williams has warped my mind as to how wing-backs should play (because under him they were basically wingers!) I think the approach to how you play is probably more important to us and that is to be brave (not sit too deep) play forward and be relentless with the press to pin-teams in. We’ve done it in phases and stages this season, just in the last two matches the intent and bravery hasn’t quite been there for me but there's no reason to suggest we can't get back into a positive approach.

I’d do well to give anyone a 7 after that, maybe Ness or Bedeau but again at times even they struggled. The fact our defenders were our better players against a team struggling in the League below is pretty tragic. Even after sleeping on it I can’t get over how poor we were going forward. We didn’t manage to put them under any real sustained pressure, or cause their keeper and defence to panic like ours did. If we’d have created a host of decent chances and missed them or forced their keeper to make a number of saves I’d have felt a lot better getting knocked out. But our super-fit side which made all the subs still couldn’t get the better of a tiring team that bought on Connor Hall who looked completely unfit and effectively made the match 10 v 11. We can add this to the collection of "FA Cup Horror Matches", which already is pretty full...

Being 2-1 up with just the couple of minutes to go didn't feel like a fair reflection of the match. I thought we were really poor, we spent the last 20 minutes with a lot of the ball but we were totally incapable of killing the match off. I don’t think we even managed a shot after the penalty. Other than making a save from JJ’s freekick and picking the ball out his net twice their keeper had nothing to do. We looked scared of them, we were pretty awful on the ball and totally deserved to lose in the end. We got lucky with the officiating too, they had a goal ruled off for no obvious reason and it was a really soft penalty for us, it doesn’t even look like there was contact on the replay. Just another horrific night for us in the FA Cup, can we just not enter it next season.

Clearly hasn’t been through lack of interest that Shrewsbury hasn’t sold, especially as he says 18 different parties have met him. I think he’s trying to get the sympathy vote a bit here, because it’s not going well at Shrewsbury now. Of course, the abuse he gets isn’t right and it’s not on, but at the same time he clearly isn’t that desperate to sell the club. A number of years have passed since he put Shrewsbury up for sale so he could’ve done a deal if he really wanted to. I wonder if the club hasn’t sold because he has an unrealistic valuation, is he just holding out for as much money as he can get?

Unfortunately I think the return of Macca is a bit of a pipe dream for us, especially as we are still in League 2. Pretty much every club in League 1 would be happy to have him (assuming they can afford him!)

I think because we’ve got a Trophy match against Man Utd Academy on Tuesday and no league match until the following Monday (yes a horrible weekend without Notts awaits) we’ll see a strong side. As Platt hasn’t played for weeks Ness is likely to start and I hope this finally a turning point for him in terms of staying fit. That said I feel like it can’t just be a coincidence that he’s injured all the time, unfortunately some footballers are just more susceptible to injuries. He really needs to get through a number of matches now, following on from his return last weekend. I’d keep the midfield the same, maybe change one of the wingbacks or attacking midfielders but keep Jatta upfront, in the hope he’ll be able to bully their defence. Dennis coming on for the last 30 when they are tiring is perfect, he can run and that’s the last thing they’ll want. Can't say I know much about Brackley, my guess would be they'll try and 'get at us' from the kick off but we've got enough quality to get control of this match. I know it's on the TV and these FA Cup outings usually end up as shockers for us but I'm quietly confident we'll have enough about us to get into the second round.

If he waits for a few weeks Bristol Rovers might be looking for a new manager, that’s just over the border for him. I think it’s mad that no football academy or head-coach has been on the phone to get him because he’d be absolutely perfect for that. He’s already said he’s not that fussed if he’s a head-coach or part of a coaching team in his next role. And given how he’s switched career entirely he’s got no ego or sense of entitlement, he strikes me as being a really good team player as well as someone who can lead.

The back to back away matches to end the year almost doesn't seem fair, but that's how it goes... It does look tough on paper right now but fingers crossed one or more of these teams is in a bad run of form by the time we face them. MK would be ideal seeing as we play them twice in the space of a few weeks. I can't remember the last time we played a team with such a short break between them, especially in the EFL. I know in the National League we had the same team for the Boxing Day/NYD fixture, but I wasn't a massive fan of that.

Yeah, I'd be really interested to know how his departure played out because as it turns out the summer recruitment seemingly hasn't been the massive issue we all thought it would be. It's funny that Cotter previously played under Paterson when he was at Barnsley and he signed after Paterson arrived (Iorpenda did too, but he signed before MP got the head-coach job). It's highly likely this move was instigated by our head coach and it's arguably one the poorer signings this season...

I think we can improve when it comes to defending set-pieces and I’m sure a lot of work goes into it. I've spoken about how I think Roos can do more but it's just as important that the players know their man and they stick to them. At times against the physical teams, we do look more susceptible to conceding from set-pieces, but that is a massive part of what makes those teams successful and they’ll score the majority of their goals from this. I think our average of goals conceded from set-pieces will be always be slightly higher and that is down to how a lot of teams set-up against us. The majority of the teams in the league are going to sit deep, try and counter and make the most of their set-pieces. It was exactly what Cambridge (tried to do) and what Oldham and Crewe did with varying success. And to be fair, against Barnet they had 12 corners and number of decent free-kick positions and they got nothing out of us. I’m not overly hung-up about set-pieces right now because overall, we are in a good place when it comes to our defence this season. We are the joint 4th best in the league in terms of goals conceded with 15. Oldham are top with 12 but it’s coming at cost for them as they’ve only scored 12 goals too (that’s the joint 2nd worse). We’ve scored 25 goals, that puts us 2nd best. If this trend continues, we’ll be in strong place come the end of the season.

Yeah, I think my mini-shortlist would be Jatta, Palmer and Ness. But considering we didn’t create many chances it meant Jatta had to be clinical and he was.

I'm with @McPie I feel a great amount of satisfaction when a team comes to Meadow Lane, sits back has very little attacking intention and goes away with nothing. Cambridge can set-up however they like, they are entirely within their right to do it but it never makes for a great match. It’s always hard when you come against a side that sits really deep, we had little space to play through the middle or even wide. And when we tried to pick up the pace with our passing it tended to go astray. Still, we were very comfortable without really creating much but the longer it stayed 0-0 the more you’d have thought it would’ve turned in Cambridge's favour. But we kept at it, the subs came on and freshened/livened us up a bit and Jatta was the difference maker in the end (get ready to knock those bids back come January). It’s hard to explain but we feel more like a team this season, we undoubtedly lost some talent in the summer but you can’t fault any of the players attitude and endeavour. 2 points off top spot, does that mean we are good now?

I feel a bit sorry for him because he’s not had a lot of time to change much, but equally from what I can gather from some of his post-match interviews it didn't sound like the squad had taken to him. Surprised he even ended up there to be honest, to go from League 2 to the Southern Prem is a bit of drop, even to be head-coach. As the article says they’ve had 4 managers in 17 matches and the results haven’t improved. That tells me the real problem lies with the quality of the squad.

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