menzinho

Birmingham City 1-3 Southampton Swansea City 2-0 Watford 🃏 Bromley 1-1 Leyton Orient Huddersfield Town 2-1 Oxford United Wycombe Wanderers 1-2 Sheffield Wednesday Chesterfield 0-1 Gillingham Exeter City 1-3 Barnet Northampton Town 1-1 Crawley Town

I think because Doncaster are yet to win this season they'll have targeted this match as a one to win, it might put a bit more pressure on them which isn't always a bad thing. I suspect the little experiment of not playing a recognised No.9 will need some more tweaks, luckily Smyth will be super confident and fresh to start. I'm hopeful we'll have another new forward on the bench too.

I seem to remember Jonathon Forte scoring a hat-trick on his debut and I thought we'd got prime Ronaldo in League 2! Back to Finneran, it was really impressive debut. I think the biggest compliment you can give him is he doesn't play like an 18 y/o, he looked like he'd been playing for years! He seems to be really highly rated at Newcastle and he's already played for Ireland that tells me a lot. Really pleased he's here for the season, especially with our injury prone midfielders, he's probably going to have a big part to play.

18 y/o Scutt upfront for Burton & Mustapha likely playing upfront for us today! Not something I'd have expected. Has Ndlovu rejoined the walking wounded? It does look like 4 injured CMs for us now @Sheffield Pie , never seen that before.

Blackburn Rovers 2-1 QPR Watford 1-3 West Ham Leyton Orient 1-0 Barnsley Stevenage 1-1 Doncaster Rovers Stockport County 3-2 Wycombe Wanderers Colchester United 2-0 Rochdale 🃏 Grimsby Town 2-1 Fleetwood Town Newport County 0-1 Tranmere Rovers

That massive datagum duck has to be one of the worst looking sponsors we’ve ever had. I didn’t realise it was on all the shirts this season, that does spoils it for me. It makes the shirt look a bit comical. It’s not terrible but it’s just another bland strip that looked like Puma spent all of 5 minutes on. All one shade of pink and no real design to the shirt, well apart from the completely unnecessary button at the top to support the non-existent collar!

I think this match will have quite a different feel to the Luton and Leicester matches, I think we’ll probably have a bit more of the ball and control and it’ll be Burton wanting to keep it as tight as possible. Again, in terms of our starting 11 I can’t see any major changes, but that is mostly dictated by the current injuries. I’ve got a feeling Dennis will score against us, he scored a great goal from just outside the box against Leicester and it just feels typical that former players come back to haunt us. Fingers crossed one of our strikers gets off the mark though, that still seems to be the one lingering issue most have with the squad so it would be nice if one of Smyth or Ndlovu gets a goal. Another draw wouldn’t surprise me, but I’m hopeful we can get our first win of the season this Saturday.

From the post-match interview after Luton Martin pretty much confirmed Acquah is months not weeks, another freak injury in training which isn't a first for us. No idea about Dean Campbell or Matt Palmer, we've been pretty vague about them which makes me think they are hopefully more short-term. I think Rod and Beck-Ray should be back soon(ish) though, so hopefully that long-list will become a short one.

I can vouch for this, I went to a wedding the weekend before last and there were arguments because the bride was adamant about having a fire-work display at the end of the night... I didn't go ahead, thankfully! I do think the siren-alert was a bit OTT, but I do think the message needed to be shared.

My current thoughts are that I hope the recent reports about Jodi going to Bromley are unfounded.

You never know with long-term injuries how much of an impact they can have, especially with ACL injuries, I think it'll be hard for Platt and Macari because they'll be coming back in middle to back end of the season when there's no friendlies (EFL Trophy) to build up match fitness. They'll basically go from training to being thrown straight back in having not played for months. I have been impressed with Ness and I think he is more suited to playing in the middle of the back three, if he stays fit he's got the potential to really make that spot his own. A bit like with Bedeau at left centre-back, which feels like the one issue for me, who is Bedeau's main competition? Is it McDonald by default as he is the only other left-footed defender? I still see him more as being the central centre-back. To me it feels to me we’ve got Browne, Macari, Gibbons and Baker all competing for the RCB spot. Ness, McDonald and Platt for the CB spot and Bedeau is just chilling!

It was an almost an surreal feeling yesterday, and I'm not talking about seeing green grass for the first time in months, but to be in league with a team like Leicester and go toe-to-two with them was awesome to watch. Can't add much more than what has already been said, everyone played well it was a really hard-working and organised performance. I liked how we set-traps to rob Leicester of possession and were committed and aggressive with our pressing. Cooper was super unlucky and Ness must of thought he was in his own box clearing the ball! Even when we went 1-0 down I thought we'd get a chance and it seemed the rest of Meadow Lane did too because the atmosphere was great and kept pushing the team on. Subs were perfect, it meant we kept that intensity at the top end of the pitch and that was crucial to getting our equaliser. But who had Grant to down to finish like that though? Calmness personified, more of that this season please!

Everyone contributed in their own way yesterday so they are all worthy of praise. I'm torn between Cooper and Tsaroulla, I thought you could tell Cooper had played at a higher level, he really impressed me. There were moments when he set us on the attack by playing some lovely passes quickly into great spaces too. However I think because he crossed for the goal and earlier saved us from conceding Tsaroulla edges it for me!

Really good move, I thought he'd go out to a National League side, so to get potentially a good number of matches in League 2 for a side hopeful of pay-offs is great. I saw he came of the bench for them yesterday, so he's already involved. Let's hope Grimsby fans talk about him the way we talked about Iorpenda last season!

Jodi is still injured according to Martin Paterson's pre-match chat, no updates on the Palmer or Robertson injuries, it would be nice to have one them back though. I suspect we’ll see a similar side to the one that played against Burnley. Maybe even the same team, I haven’t seen enough of Acquah or Smyth to know who is the best centre forward at the club right now. Going off the pre-season and the fact he was our top scorer I’d probably pick Acquah. I’ve no idea how impressive Mustapha would have looked in training; suspect he’d at least be on the bench because prior to his arrival we were lacking attacking options. Really looking forward too it, fingers crossed for a positive result!

I'm getting in before the half-time show! Norwich City 2-1 West Bromwich Albion Portsmouth 1-0 QPR Bradford City 2-0 Peterborough United Leyton Orient 1-2 Sheffield Wednesday Gillingham 1-1 Walsall 🃏 York City 1-3 Bristol Rovers Solihull Moors 1-2 Boston United Southend United 3-1 Scunthorpe United

I've seen a number of predictions and we've been pretty low in all of them and I kind of understand that. We were the last of the teams to get promoted and it's kind of easy to think we are then the weakest of the 4 that got promoted. But In the past 10 seasons 6 of the teams that got promoted via the play-offs avoided an instant relegation. One of those in Tranmere were relegated on points per game, so that is a bit of an anomaly. Northampton, Carlisle & Crawley went straight back down. I do think we'll be down the bottom half of the table and I think we'll be in a bit of relegation battle. I still lean towards the pessimistic side when it comes to Notts, but under the brothers we have always managed to progress.

Yeah it is very strange that he was supposed to be on loan at Wigan this season... It doesn't fill me with confidence that Wigan clearly didn't mind him leaving them and he's only been there a month. The statement from Wigan is odd and doesn't provide much clarity; "after a period of adapting to his surroundings it was felt a change would be beneficial". Is Wigan really that different to London!? That makes it sound like he got sent to the moon to play football! I don't know, I feel like this is going one of two ways, he's going to be great or he'll barely play and get sent back before January.

You generally tend have high hopes when you sign a player from a top Premiership side, even more so knowing Chelsea spent £4 million to get him from Everton when he was 17! I feel like he's been bought in to play at LWB, feels like we've been looking for someone especially as we were in reportedly in for Boyes before... Doesn't exactly add a reason to be positive about JJ staying. In terms of Ishe, I hope he does well and a bit like with Iorpenda and Abbott we'll be feeling gutted by the time the season ends because we'll know he's not likely to return!

It seems this morning some reports have been going round about us potentially signing Ishe Samuels-Smith, a left-wing back, on loan from Chelsea.

Yeah I feared the worst when I saw the Burnley teamsheet, I was pleasntly surprised and really encouraged after watching that to be honest. I thought all the new players did well, mad to think Dean Campbell is still probably putting names to faces but he played like he'd been in our team for a season! In fact the trio of him, Cooper, Evans for a first-time all playing together looked really quite impressive. I'll leave my feelings about inverted wingbacks to one side but Lipsuic, up against Edwards who was playing for Sporting Lisbon in the Champions League a few seasons ago, was really good too. And Cal banging in a goal like that was like turning the clock back a few years, we need someone like him who is capable of scoring from deep every now and again and after yesterday's showing he's off to a good start. All in all a really solid performance against a team that has aspirations to go straight back up to the Premier League, if that is the kind of standard of performance level we should be able to hold our own in League 1.

There is a now a glaring difference when you look at our first team on the club website, everyone has a new photo for the season, everyone except JJ that is...

I'm guessing we'll get some sort of update about the players who will and won't be in contention for the weekend, but assuming not much has changed from last weekend it's pretty slim pickings right now in terms of first 11... Belshaw Gibbons Ness Bedeau Kouhyar Lipsuic Evans Tsaroulla Roberts Cooper Acquah Subs: Griffiths, Brown, Baker, Robertson (hopefully), Reynolds, Ndlovu, Smyth. The wingbacks and attacking midfielder positions are still a massive issue for me, zero depth at the minute and that's without injuries. I don't think we'll win, Burnley might have a had a bit of rough season last year but I think they'll have too much quality for us. If we can be somewhat competitive and even score I'll be happy.

It's a strange one with Jodi, because what I can find, and I don't trawl the depths of social media, I've not seen even a kind of half-credible journalist suggest that there are clubs that have bid for Jones. That's not to say things aren't going on behind the scenes but some journalist eventually picks up on these things. If nothing is going on and he is injured, as per Martin Paterson, then there is absolutely no reason for the club to put out a statement and that’s kind of where I’m at with it. He has had a very disrupted pre-season so I've no reason to doubt he is injured, but if it turned out he's been training all this time and the club used an injury as smokescreen for his departure, I’d be pretty disappointed.

He's an attacking midfielder and he's also pretty good off the ball in terms of pressing effectively too from what I've heard, so he sounds like a good fit. Clearly you don't play that many Championship matches if you've not got something about you. It does sound like he could be perfect for us, and from the Swansea end they said the loan is with an option to buy. Great that he's had a pre-season and is ready to go he'll probably be in the starting 11 for Saturday, assuming he has managed to avoid stepping on all the cursed relics seemingly buried under our training ground!