menzinho

I’d up it a bit, maybe to 10, I don’t think the English national team is in a bad place at the moment and our recent good showings in international tournaments show this. It could potentially have a negative impact, if the number is too high you risk players just being named for the sake of filling the squad. Lots of very good young players get a season out on loan in the Championship and play proper competitive matches every week at a good standard. Surely this is better for their development then just sitting on the bench each week for Premier League teams. And, it also benefits the teams further down the football pyramid too. Like George Abbott, right now it’s a win-win for scenario everyone for Spurs, Notts and George. I don’t think England will ever have a shortage of good players, it’s almost too popular in this country, so many kids play for their local grass-roots team and progress into academies and professional football. Personally, I think the good-home grown players will eventually get to where they should be, even if players don’t get the chance early on in their careers and have to take a slightly different route their talent will always shine through at the end of the day.

I can save you the time calculating my score for this week, cos I got a big fat 0! ????‍♂️????

Sounded a very lively and decent game. We did well first half and then Doncaster came back into second half, felt like that goal was coming given the pressure they seemed to put us under. I think we were crying out for some changes or something to try and turn the tide in that second half. The fact we made no subs tells its own story and not a good one, do fresh legs in Martin and Hinchy weaken us, SM clearly thought so. And Crowley clearly wasn’t fit because you’d have bought him on to help us get control, makes you wonder why he even travelled. Feels like if we could’ve made a triple change like Doncaster did, we might just have got the three points today. Still, unbeaten and I thought a point was a good outcome beforehand, we’ll just have to beat them when they visit Meadow Lane!

Great for him, not so good for us! We managed to cope without Jodi last season when he was called to the Mata squad. And with Jevani Brown in good form I’m hoping it won’t affect us too much. We should also have Austin and Crowley back by Crewe so one of them can play in behind with Brown and McGoldrick up top. But yeah, it does mean we'll basically have no other forwards for the Crewe match.

In their last home league game they lost 1-0 to Bromley and Crewe went there and got a 1-1 draw recently too so it's not like Doncaster have amazing home form. I do think at times playing away helps us because teams aren't just going to sit back, so we'll definitely have chances. That said if a team actually presses us aggressively we could really struggle like we did in the first half away at Barrow. Think Brown deserves to start, but I'm not sure he will. It would be daft to play AJ, Brown and Didzy from the off because then we can't really change the forwards. If Crowley and Austin are fit I think one of them will play behind Jatta with Didzy as he was rested against Alfreton. We're a bit short of options at wing-back, got to be Tsaroulla and Gordon here with our usual back three and keeper. We'll have a great turnout and we I think we are more then capable of beating them, even though they are a good side too. I think a draw would be a decent result.

Norwich City 2 - 0 Bristol City Portsmouth 0 - 1 Preston North End Exeter City 1 - 1 Charlton Athletic Stevenage 2 - 1 Reading Tranmere Rovers 1 - 2 Newport County Walsall 1 - 0 Crewe Alexandra Solihull Moors 2 - 0 Altrincham ???? Southend United 3 - 1 Yeovil Town

I think once you've said Notts County in the headline it's fine and I also just refer to us as Notts. And with Nottingham Forest being know as Forest, if someone says Notts it's pretty obvious who you are referring to. It's a big club feeling to be able to go by one word though, like if someone mentions "United" straight away you think Manchester, not Sutton. I guess if you were to say "County" at the minute with no reference most would probably think Derby, a few would think Stockport and us. If we can get to the stage where people think of us as "County" I'd take that as a compliment!

I definitely agree the National League North is below his level, I’d actually like to know why he dropped back into it with Scunthorpe though, were there no National League clubs in for him? I don’t think he’d work as a striker, an attacking midfielder would probably suit his game more. That said, League 2 opposition is a world away from the part-timers in the NLN. He missed a large chunk of last season too through injury I think he needs a whole season, minor knocks aside, injury free otherwise it’s a bit of a risk for me.

I’d guess Deliveroo, Just Eat & Uber Eats all operate in the same way. They will all take a percentage of their sale, no idea how much, but I guess in theory it is to cover this. But equally they could still hike the prices and make even more money because not many will double check the prices. They kind of have to be on these apps now, it’s the new way, not many young people will go onto a restaurant's website anymore. And the concept of picking up the phone to order a takeaway... What is this 2008?! When I get a curry from our local restaurant my partner finds it strange that that I walk down to the restaurant and order it in there… But it means I get to have a nice walk, a little chat and most importantly a beer whilst I wait. So I know who the real winner is!

Not one proper defender on that list... Quite unbelievable really, it's like the universe doesn't want us to be a fun attacking team! ????

It’s a really impressive throw and I don't want to be a killjoy, but I'm going to be... Is it just me seeing a foul on the keeper? The striker throws his hand into the keeper’s head? That’s a foul. There's another angle that's missing that shows it more clearly and it's missing from that clip, I guess they are trying to not spoil the feel-good moment everyone wants. Huddersfield still should’ve been able to come back from it though, they only needed one goal and if you can’t score one against a team two divisions lower than you I guess you don’t really deserve to go through.

The rating “calculated from more than 300 individual stats per player per match from Opta” has an opinion...

Just watched the highlights this morning and it looked like a bit of stroll in the end. Having watched a bit of the Tamworth game last night it’s easy to see how good teams can get knocked out in a one-off game. So that was very good night's work for us! Brown has really settled into the team now, he’s taken his chance and has looked very good in his last few appearances. I’ll be interested to see how others thought Ness, Hinchy and Martin did against what seemed to be a physical team. Any signs of improvement/promise? I’d like another home draw too but I think avoiding any team with a plastic pitch would be a good outcome!

I feel like a lot of our youngsters over the years have ended up at Alfreton due to how close it is. I'll pick one of them... Pierce Bird

Good luck to the lad! They've made a mistake showing us our shirt without the sponsor on though, where can I get one like that!?

Man United are in desperate need of direction from the top; What is their plan? What is their philosophy? What are the types of player they want to sign? Nobody really knew under Ten Hag and it's a big job for the manager to come in and solve everything. Just look at us, when Stuart Maynard came in he didn't really change much he made some subtle changes but the main reason for our struggles was that the defence was in desperate need of better players. After 1 pre-season everything has seemingly clicked into place. It’s helped by that fact it’s evolution rather than revolution at Notts now, we have a clear identity and goal. I’ve no idea what the plan is at Man Utd. Amorim, is by all accounts a very good coach, but he tends to play 3 at the back something United hadn’t planned for this season and he won’t have the luxury of a big transfer budget either when he inevitably will want to bring in his own players for his style. Man Utd would do well to look at the likes of Bournemouth, Brighton and Brentford in terms of strategy and planning. These are small clubs on the up, I can’t see the decline at Man Utd stopping just because they have a new manager.

Recruitment is the one of the most important parts of football and if you get it badly wrong in the summer, you’re basically fighting against the tide all season. We made the wrong decision to not strengthen our defence when we went up, was that the head coaches decision or recruitment? Our recruitment this summer has accounted for that now though. We are quite lucky as ever since the Bros came in it’s something that has massively improved, you are never going to get every signing right but we seem to get a lot more good players than bad.

It’s great to see he his doing well again, albeit kind of back where he started before he joined us. I still think Cal is a good player but where would he play in our team? Wasn’t this the issue we had before we eventually sold him… We don't play wingers and I'm pretty sure we tried him at wingback against Kings Lynn or Altrincham away and it just didn't work.

Sam Allardyce? No, this is the final stage of the David Moyes redemption arc!

It’s tricky because there are genuinely lots of very good candidates like you say. Jatta and McGoldrick have led the line very well, and Didzy has played in the deeper role and been just as effective there too. Bass has been very good but there have been a few games where he hasn’t actually had a lot to do. Platt and Bedeau have come in and just helped to completely change our defence. But I think because some of his early season performances were outstanding, Crowley just takes it for me.

Belshaw was Harrogate's best player, by a mile. I wonder if he'll have any regrets about not getting to ever play for us though as I'm 99% sure he also supports us! At 34 and with Bass looking like he could be our No.1 for a good few seasons now I think the chance might have just passed him.

That’s a shame the picture is too big, sounds lovely though. I’ve got a walk that I occasionally do round a lake in the woods near to where I live. I went last week and the colours of the orange leaves against the clear blue sky were very striking. I noticed the shops were noticeably busier with youths loitering around when I went out for my lunch break, so it’s half-term round here! Quiet week for me but I’ve got a Halloween party on Friday night which I’m dreading. It’s my girlfriend’s work that are doing it, so I won’t know anyone and dressing up just isn’t really my thing anymore. I really don’t understand how Halloween has become such a big event over here, I kind of understand it more for kids but for adults to actually celebrate it, I find it very strange.

Everyone actually played well so it’s harder! But that was the first time Palmer looked back to his best for me, he was the main man in the middle without Crowley today.

Think 1-0 flattered them a bit, we’ve created fewer chances than that this season and scored more! The performance was very good though, pretty much total dominance. We started the game much better than we have recent games and the tempo was good too, Brown and McGoldrick were dropping into the pockets of spaces and helping us create some decent openings. The goal felt inevitable and it was excellent play from Tsaroulla and Bedeau who dragged a defender out of position for Jatta's winner. Everytime Harrogate cleared the ball or tried to break our defenders were excellent in getting there first more often than not, they didn’t exactly have much box defending to do but they pretty much made Bass a spectator for that game. I felt a bit sorry for those Harrogate fans, they had nothing to get excited about all game a bit of a wasted journey and sadly their team take the unfortunate prize of being the worst team to visit Meadow Lane this season (so far). Funny how in 2020 Harrogate deservedly beat us in that final and looked to be going on up to better things, now 4 years later the roles have reversed.

Yep, following on from @Dripsey3's info, Harrogate have only won 1 game away this season at that was a 1-0 win at Colchester (who aren't very good), they've drawn 3 and lost 2. And they've had a pretty easy set of away games up until now too as the only decent away team they've played is Crewe (3-0 loss), the rest were teams in the bottom 8 of the table! Can't go into it thinking it's an easy game, even though on paper it is, because that's when things tend to go horribly wrong. We are pretty good at batting off these mid to lower league teams though so I'd be disappointed it we didn't win because even with or mini-injury crisis we are still have enough quality to get a good result. I'm hoping to see us more on point and fluent in attack like in our earlier home games this season.