menzinho

Carlisle are doomed! Classic error of switching play-styles in the middle of the season. They've gone from direct under Simpson, to possession under Williamson (or are at least trying too!) It was like us with Nolan to Kewell, utter disaster. No-one can say for certain what would've happened if Mike Williamson had joined us instead but I'm glad we ended up with Luke Williams! I heard he wasn't too keen on our recruitment style, I think he wanted more control. I find it very strange to be honest because this recruitment team has provided our coaches with some really good players over the years, better than any induvial manager has done in previous seasons.

2-0 probably flatters MK in the end, especially after a very good second half showing from us. McGoldrick just didn’t read the flight of the ball but should’ve put us 1-0 up after about 60 seconds in the second half. And then Tsaroulla crossed one onto to Jatta’s foot and he put it wide, I bet in training sessions he finishes them all the time. I think we were decent in the first half, we were solid enough but something wasn’t quite right attack wise. Maybe a bit too safe as we lacked runners, Crowley had a lot of the ball in good positions but he was forced to play backwards to often. And then a lot of our attacks ended up with Bedeau and Macari playing the final ball, not who you ideally want. We changed that second half and looked a lot more of a threat though. It was a really solid and impressive win in the end. That was the exact type of performance we’ve been after, the style and substance was back. And please let this be the death of inverted wingbacks now, Austin and Tsaroulla look so much more comfortable playing more with their stronger foot. If MK do bid for Crowley like they allegedly did in the summer, I’d be really disappointed if he joined them cos on that performance only one team looks like they have a chance of getting promoted. He will be playing in League 1 next season – hopefully with us! Bench is really weak at the moment, again… SM clearly doesn’t favour Gordon or Brown at the moment and Martin and Cisse are just making up the numbers. But given all the matches coming up in this short space of time I was amazed McGoldrick wasn’t subbed for Brown at 70 mins. Also, what has happened to Scott? Having recently just come back, he's disappeared again.

Yeah, I'm with @Fan of Big Tone. No idea whether we'll benefit from playing so closely, is it the start of a bad run or will they react and put in a good performance a bit like us against Bradford. That said I'm amazed they conceded 6 to Newport. When we played Newport, they could've played for 2 weeks and I think they'd have done well to have scored... I don't think MK will sit back though, so as long as we can deal with their attackers we should get plenty of space to hopefully hurt them. No idea where we stand with injuries but given we've got a good run of games in a short space, I'd want to change a couple of players - no idea who is and isn't fit though. And I hope Scott is ok because he seems to have just completely disappeared.

Just realised the title of the topic is Jan '26, either I'm missing something or are Notts boycotting 2025?! ???? Brown was slowly eased in and then against Alfreton, after playing so well, his confidence should’ve been high. But he’s just not done it for us, no goals and no assists in the league, I can’t see him drastically improving either so I'd be using that break in the loan deal to end it. I agree Martin should leave, just for his own good, he needs to find a club that will play him. Cundy is basically our emergency centre back, feels like he’s only going to play if everyone else is injured and so far this season our defenders have been pretty much injury immune! I’m still not sure about Gordon either, I know the chances of him leaving are minimal cos we’ve only just signed him, but he seems to have struggled since joining.

Blackburn Rovers 2-1 Sunderland Bristol City 1-1 Luton Town Huddersfield Town 2-1 Stockport County Rotherham United 3-1 Wigan Athletic Carlisle United 0-0 Morecambe Walsall 2-0 Doncaster Rovers Altrincham 2-2 Halifax Town Maidenhead United 2-1 Wealdstone ????

Luckily I haven't had to battle the food shoppers this year as I'm away for most of Christmas. I did go out for a few things yesterday and it was packed, I was in and out in about 5 minutes, so I survived. I should've left to go to my parents about 1 hour ago but they are still tidying and don't want anyone round yet! Good job I only live 20 minutes away. Back there for Xmas day and then starts a small tour of visiting other family members and friends. I hope everyone has a peaceful and joyful Christmas break ????????

I would say the level of the poorer teams in Scottish Premiership is low League 2 level. Kyle Cameron went to St Johnstone and was immediately made captain! I don't think it's quite worked out how he wanted it to but it tells you a lot about the standard in my eyes.

Yep, it's much better for him to get lots of game time than the odd couple of minutes he'd likely get with us at the moment. He's in a team challenging for promotion, that will give him the added experience of playing under pressure too.

That's your Charlie Adam booted from Fleetwood after they lost yesterday... Charlie Adam: Fleetwood Town sack former Liverpool man after poor run WWW.BBC.CO.UK Charlie Adam is sacked by Fleetwood Town after a run of one win in their past 11 league games Unsurprising but I think the issues run deeper than just the manager at Fleetwood. They peaked when they got to League 1, but they only got there by spending a lot of money. Now the money isn’t being as freely splashed out, I think they are likely to slowly slide back into non-league. It was never going to be sustainable, the fan base just isn’t there, this season they have been averaging about 2,750 for home games. It’s pretty much impossible to not lose a lot of money and have a competitive team…

No-one had a bad game today, a complete role reversal from last weekends outing! Could make a case for a lot of them. Bass helped us by coming and catching everything, Platt was a rock-solid in the middle of defence, Crowley showed how effective he can be when he's on the edge of the oppositions box and even the wingbacks in Austin and Tsaroulla looked dangerous today! But for his goals and all round game I'll give it to Jatta.

It's always a good sign when the players are behind a manager, or head coach in our case now! I think the culture we have at Notts means this should be a thing of the past for us, every player knows what they are signing up for in terms of playing style when they sign for us. We've seen it countless times before when players just give up and are no longer inspired or believe in the managers' tactics.

That was a much-needed win, and after that crazy 5-minute spell that effectively won us the game we had a really solid second half and didn’t let Bradford create a clear-cut chance. We did struggle to play against the Bradford press at times in the second half but we didn’t do anything stupid this time. And we probably created the best chance of the second half too. We didn’t control the game in manor we perhaps want to but we made up for it by being well organised limiting Bradford to half-chances and long shots. I think we missed an out-ball in that second half, someone with pace who could punish teams when they step up on to us. Feels like Martin is just here to make up the numbers and Brown just isn’t having much of an impact. I saw an article in the week about Baldwin and Platt and how both clubs got a good deal. Now I’m grateful for his time with us, I’ll always remember his goals saving us in the Boreham Wood play-off, but my word we absolutely got the better deal! Today Platt was just super solid, won pretty much all his duels and made some vital clearances.

Burnley 1-0 Watford ???? Queens Park Rangers 2-0 Preston North End Blackpool 0-0 Stevenage Northampton Town 0-1 Charlton Athletic Chesterfield 1-1 AFC Wimbledon Morecambe 0-1 Bromley Hartlepool United 2-1 Yeovil Town Wealdstone 0-2 Dagenham & Redbridge

Would he want to come back? He’ll have experienced being part of our relegation squad that was a total mess and given he never played I can’t imagine he enjoyed his time here. I know we are under a completely different regime now but sometimes these memories can put you off.

Bradford managed to stop a 6-game winless run by beating Swindon (and they are poor) 1-0 last weekend so they aren’t exactly in great form either. In their 10 matches they’ve played away they’ve only won twice. They don’t score many goals and equally they don't concede that many either, Andy Cook is their biggest threat he’s scored 42% of their goals so if you stop him chances are you’ll be ok. Just looking from the outside you’d expect this to be a poor game, with few goals. Let’s hope that’s wrong! Here’s a small list of things I would love to see: 1) We don’t concede a goal from Bass playing the ball out into the middle of the pitch to a central midfielder being pressed. 2) The inverted wingbacks provide a goal/assist. 3) We play with a good tempo and intensity. 4) We create more chances/have more shots than the opposition. I’ll take 3 out of 4 of those things… Because in theory that should produce a decent result for us! It’s a weird scenario to be in, as we haven’t really played that well of late that so right now I want to see a performance that reflects what this team is trying to achieve. However, we desperately need a win too. Luke Williams last game was on New Years Day, when he left he had won 13 matches in League 2. We are nearly at that point again now and Stuart Maynard is still on 12 wins. We’ve got 4 matches before we hit NYD, he needs to get past that.

What a touch that was, sign him up! I think he’s saying it to get a reaction, he didn’t make the mistake of criticising individuals, rather the whole team which I think is fair. They are still doing pretty well, 10th in the table is solid for them considering they don’t really have a big budget or a great team anymore. I get the aim is to push for play-offs, they would do incredibly well to achieve that. They haven't got close since Steve Cooper departed and that was when they still had all the financial benefits from being recently relegated.

Gordon was absent from the squad on the weekend, Cisse got the nod as one of the back-up wingbacks. And I noticed Cedwyn Scott was missing too surely he'd have been involved as, defensive options aside, the bench for Salford was pretty weak. It would be strange decision to just leave him out if he's not injured.

I thought Haji Mnoga played well and he was on trial with us for a period during pre-season. And Tyrese Fornah, on loan from Derby, in midfield was very good for them too.

Yeah I thought he was a talented player, he had the physicality to compete in the lower level English leagues but he was a lot more skilful than the average player. I think he was just not very confident when he first arrived and when he did depart it sounded like he never really settled here which was a shame. That scorpion kick goal is arguably one of the the best Notts' goals, he was robbed by not evening getting nominated for the puskas awards! ????⚽

It's like they thought maybe if we change the name to something that unites the fans, they'll go for it... On Tuesday, A22 said the latest plans for the Unify League would see 96 clubs take part in the men's competition in four leagues. The top two leagues, "Star" and "Gold," would each include 16 clubs, divided into groups of eight. The "Blue" and "Union" leagues would host 32 clubs each, also in groups of eight. In the league stage, teams would face the others in their group, home and away, before qualifiers progress to the knockout stage. The semi-finals and final would be one-off matches, played at neutral venues. Clubs would qualify based on annual domestic performance, with matches taking place in midweek. So is this the elite clubs effectively taking over the Champions/Europa League? Or is the plan to have it alongside the current Champions/Europa League, domestic leagues and cups! It's totally bonkers and the big clubs constantly moan about having to play too many games, but if a big pay check comes its ok is it?

I really don't know, it can't just be Rodri getting injured, even though he is a fantastic footballer, City have a whole squad of great players. Clearly the players aren’t very confident, I only watched the second half of the Manchester Derby and I was amazed at how little they actually passed the ball forward, or took a player on and just avoiding doing anything with an element of risk. They were slow and made the wrong choices on the ball a lot – it was nothing like the Man City that have been so dominate. Pep is probably just knackered now, he had a break after managing Barca but then he’s done 11 straight seasons with Bayern and City. And at the top level where it’s been high pressure to constantly win titles & European trophies. Klopp left Liverpool because he needed a break, I think Pep probably needs one too.

Bit harder for the younger fans to compile a list of their greatest Notts managers... ???????? Ian Burchnall and Keith Curle get into my top 5 by default!

I think everyone will behind the team come Saturday against Bradford and whilst we are still in a good position I can’t lie and say I don’t find our recent form worrying. We are falling into some bad habits now, like the slow starts, kamikaze passing from the back and just general hopeless to put the opposition’s defence under pressure. Even earlier in the season before we lost most of our attackers, we had games against Port Vale and Gillingham where we really struggled to create any clear-cut chances. Yes we have been better defensively, but for me it is coming at a cost to our attacking play. I understand we’ve had injuries to key attackers but we've still had a large amount of possession and we should be able to do so much more with the ball. We've provided Jatta with very few chances in the last batch of matches, the inverted wingbacks don't really cause teams any issues and I don't understand what our attacking midfielders are supposed to be doing at times now. Of course, Dan and Jodi will improve us, but we can’t just rely on these two all the time. I mentioned the lack of assists from every other player bar McGoldrick in another post. Is everyone else awful or has the coaching not adapted well enough to get the best out of our other players?

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 ????