menzinho

I agree that was the worst performance of the season, out-played (which I don’t think has really happened yet) and out fought which is really disappointing. I still think the inverted wingbacks are more of hinderance than a help. And I hate seeing Dan Crowley spend more time in his own half than the oppositions. But the worrying trend right now is that we’ve now managed to combine our inability to create very little with the ability to concede sloppy goals. That’s three games on the spin where we’ve conceded from passing the ball into the middle of the pitch now… Todays was the worst though. I still think we can play out from the back but we’ve got to be so much smarter. We still pass it around far too slow at times, we were getting hassled and harried but knocked it about at a snail’s pace again. If want you want to beat a press, without going direct, you’ve got to pass is it so much quicker and slicker. That was also a strong team today, if Jodi started that’s arguably our best side… And I still think we’d have lost 3-0.

Middlesbrough 3-1 Millwall Stoke City 1-0 Cardiff City Charlton Athletic 0-0 Mansfield Town Rotherham United 1-0 Northampton Town AFC Wimbledon 1-1 Doncaster Rovers Grimsby Town 1-2 Crewe Alexandra Altrincham 2-1 Sutton United Southend United 2-0 Hartlepool United ????

Great little interview this, well done to the lads on Notts County Talk for getting him on, it was a very enjoyable listen. Glad to hear how settled he feels here, we know how important that can be in football so I hope that might put Spurs off from potentially recalling him to send him to a higher league...

Given the club said they were looking at players in the National League at the club forum I’m pretty confident we’ll have been tracking Jack Stevens. As the article says he has played upfront before but this season he has played more on the wing, as an inverted winger and really excelled there. Whilst he's clearly a talented player he’d either be played as an attacking midfielder or a wingback for us. So the club would need to be confident he can be just as effective in a central attacking role or be able to take on more defensive responsibility to play as a wing-back. His stats have jumped considerably this season so lots of clubs will now know about him. His contract is up in the summer but I think the wiser move would be to get him before (if we really wanted him).

We will be fresh for this one after missing out from last weeks match, so I've got high hopes! Robertson, Platt and Abbott should all be back now and we'll possibly even have Crowley back on the bench ???? It's not exactly the most intimidating of places to go and if Carlisle and Grimsby can beat them at home than we should be more than capable of picking up the 3 points!

Exclusive: Notts County plotting to sign Nottingham Forest's Joe Gardner WWW.FOOTBALLINSIDER247.COM Football Insider has learned that Nottingham Forest forward Joe Gardner is a loan target for EFL clubs ahead of the January window. The first rumours are starting... Unless we are going to move some players on I don't think we'll need that many additions. We are pretty stacked with defenders and midfielders, the issue right now is the injuries but everyone should be fit and back by January! Is Jevani Brown here on a season long loan? I wouldn't mind if he returned to Bristol so we could bring in another forward to be honest. I do think another wingback would be useful, finding someone who is great at both attacking and defending is tricky though as players at this level always seem to be better at one than the other.

Given its sportswashing and involvement in sport all over the world now sadly a world cup in Saudi Arabia was always going to happen at some point. I don’t think having the tournament across North America is that bad though, from the east coast of America it’s actually quicker to get to the northern parts of Mexico then it is the west coast. And equally both Montreal and Vancouver are right on the border with the US too. Football is a lot more popular in Mexico than the US and Canada I'm glad that their fans can experience it. I like Portugal and Spain but Morrocco is a bit meh, I get respecting laws in other places but it doesn’t mean I have to agree with them. My girlfriend suggested it as a potential holiday but I did say that given we aren’t married they’ll probably force us to have separate rooms… She still wanted to go!

Shouldn't take them long to gel as a team then! I wonder if Michael Doyle will sign any more of his old teammates in January?

MK have 2 games in hand, and unfortunately are in really good form now I'd expect them to break into the top 3 very soon. Not that surprising we dropped, had the game gone ahead and we'd won we'd be 4th - just have to make sure we do beat Colchester when the game gets rearranged!

I thought it would be a potential fire risk, I knew they’d have to do something clever otherwise it would never get approved and it seems they have… Zaha Hadid Architects: ‘Why our all-wood Forest Green stadium won’t be a fire risk’ WWW.ARCHITECTSJOURNAL.CO.UK The world has changed a lot since we originally designed the Forest Green stadium in 2016 – not leas... I don’t mind the look of it, it does feel the “bowl stadiums” are more akin to new 40,000+ seater stadiums so it’ll be interesting to see how it looks with just the 5,000 seats, it could look a touch strange. I wouldn't have thought a new stadium was high on their priorities though, they aren’t exactly selling out week after week!

Unfortunate but the right decision, had they fallen and injured someone the club would've been in serious trouble. It's only the first game we've had postponed so it's not like we have to worry about a fixture pile up -assuming the rest of the winter isn't wild!

Yes, great news indeed. From his past few appearances he seems to be back his best and we know how important he is to how we want to play. I think even had it got to the end of the season he 100% would've been offered a new contract and I'm confident he would've re-signed but it makes sense to get it all sorted as early as possible if you can. So credit to the club for getting it all sorted!

Reynolds goal from the "official highlights" - judging by the quality it appears to be have filmed by someone's webcam from the 1990s. Anyway, he was involved in the build up and it's a great finish!

???????? When you see him doing so well, it does look like a mistake. And right now Gordon who has replaced him, isn't exactly excelling. But I'm not going to deny that for a lot of last season I thought both Aaron and Jodi on the wings were a touch overkill in terms of overloading the side with attacking players. Like Jodi, he's basically a winger playing at wingback. Maybe with the new defence things would've been better, I think chances are he'd have been fine because we are a lot stronger at the back now. However he is clearly a lot more effective and happier on the right hand side, would we have seen him play here though? The wingbacks are probably the most different aspect to Stuart Maynard's coaching so it's more than likely he'd have played more on the left this season. I don't think he'd get as many assists playing here, cutting inside isn't his strength. He was all about using his pace to get in behind and staying really wide on that right hand side. The wingbacks don't get in behind as much now either and I think it would've been even harder for him on the left-hand side as he'd have to use his weaker foot more often too... Potential positional issues aside, I think the squad would be stronger with him in it.

Luton Town 1-2 Swansea City Plymouth Argyle 1-0 Oxford United Blackpool 1-1 Rotherham United Cambridge United 1-0 Shrewsbury Town Crawley Town 3-2 Stevenage Gillingham 0-1 Salford City Harrogate Town 1-2 AFC Wimbledon Newport County 0-0 Carlisle United ???? (I'd even bet my rented accommodation on this result!)

I think Walsall are a decent team and I wasn’t begrudging them of the win, but I can’t hide the frustration from our side. We started the second half well, but why couldn't we have started the first half like that? Even with our injuries, I feel this team is more capable than it shows at times! Walsall's game plan was more effective, but they didn’t outplay us, it was pretty even in that respect but we created two of their goals because we played ourselves into trouble. I think Walsall have a good chance of going up automatically because their home form is really strong and they’ve shown how they can be effective against the other good teams in this league. Saturday’s game between Port Vale and Walsall will be really intriguing.

I know we are lacking our better technical attackers, but we seem to persist with the intricate passing patterns even when we are struggling. Austin isn’t Crowley, Tsaroulla isn’t Jodi yet we play like they are. We really struggled to get Austin into the game yesterday and Tsaroulla was well marshalled by their full-back for most of the game. I think a slight change in style could've helped. Sometimes I just want to see us put the opposition defence under a bit more pressure, yesterday Walsall showed that just forcing defenders to do things quicker than they like can create problems. Don’t get me wrong I do think it’ll be a massive help when the better attacking players are back, but I just don’t think we’ve adapted as well as we could have. Maybe I'm being overcritical but I wonder why so many of our other attacking players have struggled to perform. Since the injuries Austin, Brown, Martin, Gordon and Tsaroulla have provided no goals and 1 assist between them, are they really just not good?

Considering Abbott missed out Hinchy stepped in and did very well, got a goal too. I thought McGoldrick was our best attacking threat and was generally very tidy on the ball. But Matty Palmer probably just shades it for me, didn't really do anything wrong, he just needed a bit more from the players in front of him.

It’s just not quite there is it, I know we are missing our better attacking players but I still feel like we’ve got the ability to get something from these games. I couldn’t believe for a team that passes out from the back how much we actually struggled to get the ball over the halfway line, especially in the first half. The movement and speed we moved the ball was just dreadful. It was a really poor half overall, Walsall weren’t even really pressing us they just kept their shape and we couldn’t get near their goal. I felt a bit sorry Cisse, not going to criticise him cos he’s very young but that was not the right time to put him in. I want our academy players to come through but just shoving them in when they are not ready doesn’t do much for me. Although, it makes me wonder just how bad Martin must be. Second half we were better but once again we were the architects of our own downfall, like how do you concede directly from a corner! Bass totally misjudges the flight of the ball, if Slocombe had been in goal tons of fans would’ve gone nuts over that. Their second goal came from our inability to pass it out and everyone got sucked over to right hand side for some reason. We needed a penalty to back into it but then you could see the confidence return a bit, we actually had Walsall a tad worried until we messed up again. Awful pass from Ness to Bass and then he hacks it into the middle of pitch again, when he just had to whack it into the stands… We had 76% possession tonight, I think that’s the most we’ve had all season yet Walsall had 23 shots… We had 14, that shouldn't be happening. No-one really had a shocker of a game though, there were some good individual performances, I liked what I saw from Hinchy, Palmer was probably my man of the match and McGoldrick was desperately trying to be a creative spark, but cohesively as a team it’s just not working right now.

Think our game is the biggest one in terms of position in the table tonight, MK are doing well now (boo) and face Chesterfield at home, Wimbledon at home to Newport and Port Vale away at Cheltenham. At the end of play tonight best case scenario sees us go within 3 points of the leaders and up to 2nd (if we score enough goals). Worst case scenario we go 9 points behind the leaders and drop to 7th place - let’s not think about that one though! Also, how are Grimsby only 3 points behind us, doesn’t seem possible given they’ve lost 8 games already!

Bolton Wanderers 2-1 Mansfield Town Leyton Orient 1-1 Bristol Rovers Stevenage 1-0 Northampton Town ???? Wrexham 2-2 Barnsley Bradford City 1-0 Barrow Colchester United 2-1 Swindon Town Salford City 1-1 Harrogate Town Tranmere Rovers 0-0 Morecambe

I do think this is a big moment in the season for us. Both us and Walsall have only played 6 games against the top 10 so far this season so we’re in a similar situation in that we don’t know quite how realistic a top 3 finish is. Their home form is solid though, their only loss seems to be a bit of a freak anomaly a 6-2 defeat against Fleetwood as all the other games were wins (5) or draws (2). I’m expecting Didzy to play in one of the second striker/attacking mid roles. I’d play Austin alongside him as his off the ball running pairs nicely with Didzy’s on the ball ability. Robertson and Crowley back in the matchday squad would be useful too. If Platt has to be rested I’d go for McDonald in the middle, think it’ll play to his strengths. In our last 10 league games we’ve only won 3 times so a loss would mean our form (and ability to beat anyone above us) makes automatic promotion seem a big ask. A win here though would be massive and galvanise everyone going into the Christmas period.

Always going to be tough against a Premier League Academy side, a good test for our young players and just getting to the 3rd Round was a good achievement. Just hoping all is okay with Zac Denman, sounds like a bad injury. I'm hoping well get some sort of update soon and that it's as good a news as is possible.

Yeah I feel like George Abbott has won a lot of the man of the match awards this month but Platt has been excellent overall too.

I’ve been watching Day of the Jackal and I've really been enjoying it so far, I think it's a 10 part series and right now there are about two episodes left to go. It's on NowTV & Sky right now for those who have either. The main story line is very engaging and the two leads, Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch are excellent in it. I’ve never seen the original film so I’ve no idea how true it is to that. It’s a bit gory and ruthless, if you don’t like blood or violence I would avoid it! Some parts are a tad coincidental and ridiculous at times but I think all short dramas/thrillers have to be in a way. It’s your classic things like people just being in the right place at the right time and inability of anyone (outside the leads) to shoot a decent shot… I get the story wouldn’t work if the lead characters died, but yeah it makes me laugh that these dangerous bad guys can’t shoot a gun to save their lives at times! It’s a bigger budget series and it shows, lots of locations and sets which all look stellar and the actual filming of it is great. Loads of slick camera work, which I think is undervalued sometimes in thrillers like this.