menzinho

We always had close games against Bromley in the NL, but we never won there. The artificial pitch has gone now so that slight advantage has been levelled and I think we're more adapt to playing against the physical sides with our new recruits. Bromley's style won't have changed and Stuart Maynard and co will have faced them in the NL numerous times too so they'll know what to expect. I'll happily take a game playing against them when Cheek doesn't score, cos that seemed to regularly happen!

Sheffield Wednesday 1-2 QPR Swansea City 2-2 Norwich City Bolton Wanderers 1-0 Huddersfield Town Rotherham United 2-0 Burton Albion ???? Carlisle United 0-1 Fleetwood Town Port Vale 1-1 Chesterfield Southend United 2-1 Sutton United Tamworth 0-1 Maidenhead United

To be fair to them Boreham Wood massively underachieved last season, I don’t think anyone would’ve predicted they’d get relegated especially after they were just minutes away from getting to a play-off final the season before ???? I wonder if Luke Garrard thought he would’ve got another job in the NL over the summer. He’s been at Boreham Wood for so long I kind of think a change wouldn’t have been a bad thing. Maybe he’s looked back on the relegation and wants to make up for it by getting them promoted again. It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out for him second time around.

I can think of two players that are yet to be mentioned. So I'll go with the slightly less obvious one for now: Zak Brunt, he went on loan to Bromley the season after he had a short loan with us.

Wow! I couldn't quite believe it when I saw it this afternoon, it's a fantastic job by the club to get him tied down to a longer contract. He'd have had a queue of clubs lining up for him in the summer when his contract expired so I'm glad that won't be an issue now. He's clearly very settled and happy at Notts, and players with his level of quality can help take this club to the next level.

I do wonder if we’ll see Jatta and McGoldrick paired at some point but we’ve played a rough 3-4-2-1 system for most of the season so far. I wouldn’t be opposed to it, but I do think it’s harder getting them both into the same team as it would require a change in formation. I love the idea of McGoldrick and Crowley behind Jatta on paper, the level of quality would be fantastic on the ball. But Edwards/Austin give you that tireless running and press I don’t think either Crowley or McGoldrick can provide. I would say a team with Edwards/Austin provides more balance. I think McDonald will be surprisingly solid but he's yet to play. Gordon has the unfortunate job of trying to displace Jodi. I actually like him playing on the right-hand side, but I’d still like to see him on the left as well, shame we can't clone him! That said Tsaroulla looks good and I think he'll be much more comfortable on the left. Abbott and Hinchy have started brightly for young players and we’ve got a lot of attacking quality to pick for limited spaces! If fitness was no issue this would be my team… And this wasn’t easy! Bass, Macari, Platt, Bedeau, Jones, Palmer, Robertson, Tsaroulla, Crowley, Edwards Jatta. Honestly though, it's so close between McGoldrick and Jatta, it does feel a bit wrong to leave out a player who's scored 4 goals in 2 games!

Sam Sodje was also involved in match fixing, not sure if it happened when he was at Notts but he intentionally got sent off whilst playing for Portsmouth. I’ve heard the podcast advertised on BBC5Live but I’ve not got round to listening to it yet, I will though because it does sound very intriguing. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar story came out in a few years, with betting in football and footballers being involved again. Given you can bet on pretty much anything occurring in a football match now yellow cards, penalties, number of offsides, goal kicks inside the first minute...

Got to feel for him, came on missed a sitter and then possibly injured himself after mis-controlling the ball… He's looked like a player that's missed a season of football to me but he needs game time to get back into it, similarly to Palmer, so another injury setback is the last thing he needs. Hopefully it's more of a niggle than anything serious.

I'd like to know who does the recruitment for Morecambe because they signed both Crowley and Bedeau before we did and given the size of them I wonder how they managed to get them in the first place! He's a rare player in that he's got the size, physicality and pace - like a dream centre back really. He's made a very good start to his career here and I agree he looks like the sort of player who can hopefully move up the league with us.

McGoldrick for me, I agree with the other names suggested they all did very well but ultimately McGoldrick showed that touch of class to put Accrington away. I thought it was one his best performances for a while, he didn't just drop deep all the time he even ran in behind and continuously got at the Accrington defence. And both goals from outside the box too, it's never as easy as he makes it look!

I think Accrington might be in for a long struggle of a season, the fact we beat them so easily with Crowley, Jodi and Jatta all missing is pretty telling. It was a very comfortable performance in the end, probably should’ve scored more and that’s really all I can complain about. We just seemed to cruise through that match and maybe better opposition would’ve given us more of a game but it felt like a bit of a training session at times only broken up by an Accrington player flying in late. I didn’t like the inverted wing-backs much to be honest, I thought both Austin and Tsaroulla were very ineffective, more so in the first half where we struggled at times to really move the ball down both flanks. Tsaroulla was more of a threat second half but I think Accrington had tired by then and the player marking him was on a yellow! McGoldrick was just in a class of his own in terms of ability again, I only wish we could’ve had him 6 seasons ago! And Hinchy and Abbott did very well too, we ask a lot of our centre mids in this system. We know how key and tricky it is there, but they dealt with the pressure from the Accrington press. All in all a very impressive start to the season.

A bit from Stuart Maynard addressing the controversy. Notts County head coach Stuart Maynard defends Jevani Brown signing WWW.BBC.CO.UK Notts County boss Stuart Maynard says Jevani Brown "is trying to become a better person" after admitting to assaulting a woman last year. He explains the club's reasons for signing him, it's slightly more reassuring. I hope the statement about him getting help was genuine and not just a token gesture.

I don't have any rituals as such now. I can remember back in the days when the Jimmy Sirrel stand was open to us and it was a case of pick your seat cos of how unpopulated it was, I never used to sit in an odd number seat except for number 27 which I would actively seek out (cos that's my birthday day). And if we we're losing in games I would also switch seats to a higher number because that was obviously going to make a massive difference to the on field result! I was only about 8 or 9 so it made perfect sense to me!

Desperately trying to create a story out of nothing, but then it’s become the norm now to report trivial things that supposedly matter to someone somewhere! I’ve got no issues with national anthems, they are a touch dated in some case but our one is rubbish. Asking an all powerful being to take care of the most privileged man in our country… Not for me.

Barnsley 2-1 Bristol Rovers ???? Charlton Athletic 2-0 Rotherham United Cheltenham Town 1-1 Harrogate Town Colchester United 1-0 Bromley Doncaster Rovers 2-1 Gillingham Braintree Town 1-2 Woking Gateshead 2-1 Barnet Hartlepool United 2-2 Halifax Town

He's 27 not 26 as per the article. Going straight into the Championship was never going to be easy for him, the standard of play is much higher and the defenders he'll be facing are better too. No-one can really draw any proper conclusions yet as we are only 4/5 games into the new season. I am interested to see how it all plays out for Macca though and I really want him to succeed there. I'm not sure he'll totally regret joining Millwall, he's got a pretty solid deal. I'm sure it's a 3 year contract and the pay will be a lot more than Notts could ever offer.

Are Carlisle sure about that? I know Shaun Derry gave him a lot of the credit for his success when he was here and that great escape season. But they weren’t able to build on it, the recruitment (and football) the season after was truly awful. Shaun and Greg were a lot more involved with that side than our head coaches are nowadays. I just looked it up, we signed 6 players aged 33 and over and players like Taylor McKenzie, Cieron Kean, Jordan Cranston and Elliott Whitehouse who had either zero or minimal experience of men’s football. To try and rectify the disastrous summer we then bought in 14 loan players that season after the summer window closed! It was a total mess. When Greg returned to be Neal Ardley's new assistant I was pretty shocked to be honest as I always felt his style of coaching was the complete opposite to the Bros vision, no surprises they didn't last the season... Anyway, seems his job at Carlisle is pretty safe!

I’ve not watched Accrington this season but statistically I don’t think they’ve been quite as bad as their current league table position suggests. They’ve lost a few of their better players though and I don’t think they’re as good as they were last season. I’d expect them to come and play a bit like Fleetwood did, play two banks of four, probably be more like a bank of 4 and 5 with 1 upfront (chasing lost causes) as they’ve played 4-2-3-1 this season. So we need to be brave on the ball, make runs into spaces and actually pass into them too! Constantly passing it to feet all the time will make it easy for Accrington to defend. We’ve definitely got the quality, if we play right, to hurt them. McGoldrick or Jatta will be the potential dilemma for Stuart Maynard, do we stick with the induvial quality or return to a player who probably suits our style the better and gives us the ability to switch things up more? I think if the game pans out as expected it won’t be end to end and we will dominate the ball so McGoldrick who can provide a bit of magic in tight spaces could be more useful. But I get that Jatta will be more of a threat in the box. Tough decision!

I agree, I'll be seriously impressed if we manage to re-sign both of them midway through this season. I'm sure we'll try but I can't see it happing personally, I think they'll want to see what other offers they could get. Assuming they have another good season they'll pretty much have the pick of any League 1 club... I think we'll need to be in League 1 too if we want them both to stick around.

I notice we haven't released a video or even had a write up interview with Jevani yet. We interviewed George and that was done after his first day of training... ????

And if you're driving I'd recommend getting to Meadow Lane early to find some parking - nothing worst than driving around when you don't know the area. Traffic wise it's notably busier now with the attendances reaching 5 figures...

The UK might have got lucky with the jet-streams this year but weather in mainland Europe was far from cool. I was in Malaga over the summer and that was ridiculously hot, it was 40° one day and I'm pretty sure it didn’t drop below 30° for the period I was there. I think the big picture is that 2024 is on track to be the hottest on record, again… So not good.

Like you say that's football, you're never going to get your number 1 targets all the time but I think we clearly prioritised the defence hence the early signings of the likes of Bedeau, Platt, Bass, Tsaroulla and McDonald (looking forward to seeing him in action when he reappears!) By the end of window most of the better players out of contract have already moved so it's a case of weighing up the next best options and that will then sometimes involve a fee. The Bros are very sensible in that they won't overpay for a player and at the same time they won't just sell off our best players because a bid has been made. Keeping Crowley and Jones was just as important as bring in players too. I think Notts have done pretty well over the summer and I'm confident we've got a stronger squad than last season.

The 2nd McGoldrick goal was the first shot we had in that second half, we barely got out of our half by the sounds of it! But at least we defended well, clearly they deserve credit after being under the cosh for periods of that game. Bass sounded very commanding again, I think he’s made a massive difference. I’ll be interested to hear from those who went/watched it if we were as ropey as it sounded 2nd half in particular or were Swindon just not very good... We’re not going to win every game playing total football so it’s a great result, that's the kind of game we'd have lost last season.

Thought this was going to be about Birmingham City bidding £10M for Jay Stansfield, that's more money sense especially when you consider Liverpool have just signed a Euro winning Italian international in Chiesa for £10M! But back on topic, not exactly great for Macca if the signing were to happen. He seems to already not be in Harris' favourites, but I'd back him to make the move work. Macca's a strong, good character who'll get his head down and do everything he can to prove he's capable.