menzinho

Got to win it really or at worst put in a really good performance and only lose due to factors out of our control (a.k.a a dodgy ref). We can't afford to not take the energy and sharpness on the ball from the game against MK. If Harrogate do chose to sit back and condense the space then we've just got to keep probing, committing players into their box and keep challenging Harrogate's defence - I know our defence is poor but we've not conceded 9 in one game this season! I'd go with the same team that started against MK if possible. I think we get a touch more balance having a more natural defender as one of the wingbacks. And that way we don't need to panic if the game is tight going into the last 30 cos we could potentially bring on Jones, Ceds and McGoldrick! (Good luck to the tired Harrogate defenders there). And if the midfield do look/get a bit tired, given I'm not convinced Bostock is playing at full-fitness yet I'd be bringing on J'OB to keep the energy levels as high as possible. Time is running out to get a home win and once again this feels like a massive chance. Off the back of a positive result against MK, this can't become another missed opportunity/false dawn.

I think when Palmer got injured, we all suddenly realised just how important he is. In terms of eye-catching play he doesn’t do that much but his positioning and ability to just keep receiving the ball is insanely good. I’m hoping the injury won’t have impacted his ability, because a player of his ability can only improve us. And I’ve said it before but I think him and Robertson will form a formidable partnership. The hope I’m still clinging to is that bar Mansfield this season I don’t think we’ve been outplayed by anyone and although the results recently haven’t been great, I still don’t think we’re that far off being a good side in L2. It’s reassuring to hear Stuart Maynard talking about addressing a lack of physicality too and that work is going on behind the scenes to address the recruitments short-comings this season. Add a couple of top defenders and goalkeeper (easier said then done) and we’ll have a really decent squad. Now I just need to see a good end to the season to give me confidence that SM can be successful here.

If Macca really wanted to leave he would've turned our contract offer down and either asked the club to sell him or he'd just wait until he could leave on a free. So I too think he's quite happy to stay for the time being. No-one knows if his contract has a release clause in or what the valuation is. The £1.5m figure was banded about over the summer, he's likely to finish the season on 25 goals (hopefully more) so yes there probably will be interest in him and I think the valuation won't be far off that. However we're under no pressure to sell him and he won't be cheap if clubs are serious about signing him. We won't sell to league 2 club and the only way most league 1 clubs will be able to sign him is if they sell a player for a couple of million. And it's probably still a bit of risk for Championship clubs with him jumping two levels. I think a lot of it all comes down to who moves where over the summer, and which clubs ultimately have the finances to buy him.

I had been reading more social media comments after the Swindon game so I feared the crowd on Monday would be pretty flat with a significant number less in attendance but that didn’t turn out to be true. In fact it was pretty much behind the team for the whole game, a few mumbles and grumbles when MK’s 3rd goal went in but that is only natural. Once we started attacking again and pushed for the equaliser the crowd urged the players on. It’s nowhere near as "toxic" as social media makes out, which to be fair is impressive given our struggles second half of the season. I’m still waiting until the end of the season until I make my mind up, but if we carry on/improve in the last 5 games I don’t think all these threats of “SM out or I won’t renew my season ticket” will come true. Sure they’ll be a handful of stubborn people, but finances are still very tight for a lot of us so maybe it’s just the ideal excuse. If we sign two defenders at the start of the window, off the back of a positive end to the season, I think that will reignite the hope with most of the fans.

Can’t really fault the first half, they score out of nothing but we were a lot more pro-active in trying to create chances and deservedly equalised. But we kind of sat back too much once we scored our 2nd. I get that it’s natural to sit back and protect the lead, but we still needed to provide a threat on the counter and keep the intensity with our pressing. We had a really poor 30 minutes where MK were in control and grabbed 2 goals. Their triple sub helped them, whereas I thought for 20 minutes Bostock really slowed us down. At least we showed a bit of character and got the equaliser but it’s a tad frustrating to score once we went behind. Overall given our second half performance a draw was probably a fair result. You can’t fault the effort and there seems to be no issues with the relationship between SM and themselves. Missed opportunities is how I feel best sums up SM time so far and seeing that Sutton put 3 past Swindon makes that result even worse. Today was better and MK are a good side but we desperately need a home win before the season is over.

We’re either getting an Easter miracle of our own or I’ll be watching some poor bloke get crucified… The maddest thing about all of this is since LW left in those 3 months we’ve picked up 9 points yet somehow, we are only 9 points off the play-offs! It could be 6 if we win against MK! How is that possible given we’ve only picked up 2 wins this year? We should be something like 20 points adrift by now! I agree with @Robbie pride is all the motivation you should need especially when people are doubting your character and ability, you should want to show the fans you care and whilst I don’t think lack of effort has ever been the criticism given the results have been so poor we are desperately need a performance to be proud of on Monday.

I don’t want to get to end of the season thinking the sensible thing the club should’ve done when Swansea approached us was to lock LW in his office, smash his phone and let him out after Swansea had appointed someone else! But it's looking that way, 6 games left now and Swindon was one of our easier games there…

I had a horrible feeling about the game. Two sides in poor form going toe-to-toe and we just gave Swindon the easiest win they've had all season. It was painful viewing, the continuation of the defensive howlers is now combined with possession for the sake of having possession. That's the complete opposite of what this team used to be. At least if we'd attacked, created a load of chances and drawn 2-2 there'd have been some glimmer of hope but we just passed the ball slowly like we were trying to put the Swindon players to sleep. It's criminal we didn’t make a poor Swindon team defend, their defenders didn’t have to run or worry about balls in behind because we just played the game out in front of them. I would really like to know what were we trying to do, because I couldn’t see it. Swindon only made 150 passes all game, that is bad for a professional football club, but what’s even worse was we made over 600, had 75% possession and managed to have less shots then them! I get we’ve had defensive issues all season but out attacking threat and incisive, pro-active football has just gone. We don’t defend well and after that, we don’t attack well either. I know it's Easter and Jesus dying and coming back to life was considered a miracle, but I'll tell you what will be more impressive us putting in good performance and getting a win against MK Dons!

First goal will be massive here, possibly to the point of who wins the game, as both teams need that confidence boost a goal brings. We've got nothing to fear, they've slipped down the table as badly as we have and even though there's nothing left to play for pride should be all the motivation you need. And let's be honest SM desperately needs a decent result to take into the game with MK on Monday. We've had our better results and performances away from home, so I'm hoping that trend continues tomorrow.

Yeah win percentage isn’t always a great way of viewing things, it’s all relative. He managed to get a part-time team in a pretty much full-time league, having just recently been promoted, to mid-table. All things considered he actually did very well at Wealdstone, but maybe the step up has just come to early for him. The Reedtz Bros have stated they are here for the long-term and they definitely have the clubs best interests at heart. We've always had a competitive squad and they’ve spent a of lot money improving and building new infrastructures at the stadium. Our better players won’t be sold just because someone bids for them, I’m sure we turned down offers for the likes of Wootton and Rodrigues because they thought them staying was more beneficial. I’m 99% certain we will only sell a player if their valuation is met. Our owners are human too, they’ll make mistakes and fans have to accept sometimes that’s going to happen. It’s about how you deal with the set-backs and I don’t think they’ll be panicking too much because the summer transfer window is a big opportunity to strengthen us and address the defensive issues. If we sign some good defenders and even add 1 or 2 new attacking players we can only improve! The question will then just be is SM the right man to take us forward?

Yes, I saw this too, glad he got to live out a lifelong dream and have one last great memory to cherish. And whilst it's hard to come to terms with for him and his family and at least he can look back on a life filled with great moments and achievements. Too many have gone far too young suffering from this horrible disease.

I'd avoid looking at the fees if we do sell one of our players over the summer @Wheelbarrow repair man cos I think you'll be very disappointed! We bought Macca for £50k, so if we did sell him for 1.5M we'd have profited £1,450,000. That's a mark up of 2,900% (if I've done the maths correctly). The closet kind of deal we can look at is Al-Hamadi who went to Ipswich from Wimbledon for "a fee of just over £1 million" according to East Anglian Daily Times. Whilst he's not scored as many he's 5 years younger than Macca... And @Robbie I understand why fans would want a head coach to do the recruitment, like you say it's fine if you've got a head coach with a track record of good recruitment. I'm not sure this was LW's strength when he signed, he just wanted to coach. And with our current approach it allows head coaches to do just that, focus their time and energy on coaching the players and preparing for games. It must be knackering and time consuming to also have to fit the recruitment in. I'm sure our recruitment process is a collaborative effort in that the head coach definitely gets a say it's just he doesn’t spend all the hours researching/looking for players. A big bonus is that if there’s a stand out player the club can also make an executive decision if there is no head coach in place like they did with Langstaff. If we’d have waited for LW to be appointed and then left the recruitment to him chances are Langstaff would’ve already signed for someone else… Pros and cons to both, but I think it's working well for us so far.

It doesn’t help that Luke Williams has jumped up to the Championship and in 14 games he’s got 17 points and moved Swansea up the table. He’s basically gone from managing in the NL to the Championship, Stuart Maynard has only stepped up one level and he’s not been able to hit the ground running. Who knows what would’ve happened had LW stayed maybe we’d have gone on a similar run, but given the fact he’s doing quite well at Swansea I think it shows he was able to get more from this group of players. In terms of SM I’d like to see us get 4 wins from the remaining 7, I’d take 3 as long as we performed well and picked up something like 3 draws too. When you look at the remaining fixtures we play Swindon who are poor, Harrogate nothing special and it’s at home and the last two are against Colchester and FGR. Yes they’ve potentially got more to play for assuming one/both haven’t been relegated, even so they’ve been down the bottom of the league all season for a reason. We also get to play Stockport and MK at home. If we can play well and got something from either of these that would be a massive boost. In LW last 2 home games we beat Morecambe 5-0 and Doncaster 3-0. We’ve had some pretty easy home games and off the back of the Bradford game Salford was a massive missed opportunity. If SM can’t get a home win in the next 4 games I would worry for him as that would mean the last home win fans watched was in December…

No recruitment team is ever going to get it perfect, but @Wheelbarrow repair man I think it’s a whole lot better than previous regimes. For years we had Che Adams playing next door and we signed Tyrell Waite instead! This season has had some issues and agree it could’ve been better. I’ll assume we missed out on some defensive targets because I can’t imagine we didn’t try, credible journalists have said we bid for Keeley and offered Vancooten a contract over the summer but they didn’t sign. And it’s always harder to recruit in Jan as no-one is out of contract and we won’t over pay for anyone. Sometimes data can only act as an insight to help make a judgement, I guess the club made the judgement over the summer that we need to just see if our players can play in L2 and having done so well last season it would’ve been bizarre not to at least give them a chance. And this team were in the play-offs when Luke Williams left... As for the head coach I believe the Notts board deal with that and right now that is made up of the Bros and Richard Montague. Not sure the recruitment team as a whole has much to do with hiring coaches, maybe they help to identify targets but they won’t get a say.

I wasn’t at the game but I got a message from a friend who said the best three players on the pitch (for us) were Macari, Robertson & Crowley – all signed this season so the recruitment team aren’t as bad as some make out. Overall performance was poor and he said you'd have thought that was the last game of the season. I know it was a very outside chance of making the play-offs but there was surely some motivation there today. I think the most disappointing aspect was how we didn’t kick on after equalising – what happened there? Did we just sit back or feel like a draw would do? And then to not get at least get a draw is a real downer. Very much feels like one step forward, one step back (after previously taking a few steps back). It’s not a great situation to be in a season just petering out (having nose-dived). It doesn’t get the fans excited for next season and the worry will be it'll be more of the same. It’s an odd situation because we’re not getting particularly outplayed by the opposition but at the same time we keep losing. Does this just mean some better players will fix it? I hope so... Oh and @Fan of Big Tone I think the luck in that hat has worn out now! ????

I'm 95% sure Jodi Jones will win it when it comes to a supporters vote (and equally importantly the PON Poll!). A record breaking season of assists is hard to argue with really. Interestingly FotMob has Crowley as our highest rated player with an average score of 7.54 across the season so far. Second is McGoldrick with 7.43. Then Jones with 7.38 and Macca on 7.23. I think these are the main four contenders that will be vying for the award too.

I think Salford had their “new manager bounce” after going 8 unbeaten they are now in a run of 1 win from the last 6. A better time to play them, especially with us also coming to the end of our run of losses. Matt Smith sticks out as the obvious threat and it’ll be no surprise half of his 23 goals are headers. He’ll be a massive danger in our box, expect him to lurk at the back post from set-pieces too. Could be Warner’s time to shine here, he’s probably our biggest CB so I’d put him on him. I guess the positives are he can’t really run anymore so there’s no threat of him pressing and with our high-line we really do need to keep him out of our box as much as possible. Watson and Watt are likely to play as the two holding midfielders, so I’m hoping the energy of Robertson, Austin and Crowley will get the better of them and we’ll be able to dominate in the middle of the pitch. I think I’d keep the same team, only freshen it up if needed. Think I’d keep Baldwin on the bench due to aerial threat from Smith, weirdly I’d be more confident with Warner against him. Can’t see Cameron getting dropped and Macari was excellent in the LCB role against Bradford. That said I won’t be surprised to see him in the team, same for Bostock. I certainly don’t think we’ll be over confident going into this one, just that we should go into it with a bit more belief. They will definitely be a threat when it comes to crossing balls into the box so if we can stand up to that we should be able to get a positive result.

A win and clean sheet! That’s more like it! No-one can argue with that result, it was completely deserved after the second half performance. I thought there wasn’t much in the first half but I liked that we seemed to try and shoot instead of going down the overkill of passes route and you know Langstaff will always be in the middle to pounce on those loose balls. About time we scored direct from a set-piece too and for someone whose heading got down played on his arrival it was a cracker. Then we just looked like our old selves, it’s funny what scoring a couple of goals does to the confidence. We had really good 15 mins and probably should’ve scored our third a lot earlier than we did. The recruitment team has taken a lot of stick this season and maybe he wasn’t the player we needed by on early showing Jatta looks really good. A case of acting before other clubs get the chance again, I’m very impressed so far. So that’s a draw and a win in two away games, just got to cap it all off with a first home win for Maynard now...

Accrington had 23 attempts overall and in the second half and there was a 30-minute period where we didn’t have a shot. So, I think I can just about count that as fluking something! First half sounded a lot better than the second, when it seemed the ball just kept coming back. It sounded like we played more more long balls and struggled to keep possession for long periods. Seeing lots of positives about Jatta, he’ll still be settling in but if he can keep his place in the team and keep performing well that’ll be something to be positive about for next season. I also read that Jodi went straight down the tunnel when he was subbed, no idea if it’s injury related or just frustration. By all accounts him and Nemane were managed quite well by Accrington for most of the game. I’ll take a point after the run of losses. Hopefully it’ll provide a little boost for the players. Just playing for pride (and some of them contracts) for the few remaining games now. Let’s hope that can start a little bit of good form (but not to the extent where we miss out on the play-offs by a point or goal difference cos that would be bloody annoying!)

The thing that really sticks in my memory from when we played Accy at home was how big they were. I guess on that day skill prevailed over size but we’re not going into this game with much, if any, momentum. Robertson is suspended and will be big miss (granted Crawley wasn’t his best game) since his arrival once he’s settled into the team he’s pretty much been carrying the midfield. Hopefully Bostock will be fit (and fresher) for this one. I’m not sure I believe the rumours about a falling out that involves him and Didzy. Doesn’t fit either of their characters imo, and Didzy got taken off with an injury recently so that surely is the issue. If Bostock isn't fit shove Colkett in, what have we got to lose (expect actually losing of course). Maybe he’ll have a masterclass… Or get injured. A back 4 or 3? It doesn’t seem to make much of a difference at the moment, I still think we look slightly more solid in 4 as we aren't as vulnerable to balls in the channels. But three CBs, Baldwin (hopefully), Cameron and Rawlo/Warner will help deal with their aerial threat, could possibly put Tobi in at RWB for more height too... Am I confident of a win, no. I’m now into the territory of “surely we’ll fluke something at some point”. Hopefully that is this weekend.

A bit late to this now, but I agree with a lot of what's been said. The performance was ok up until the red card, so that is on Robertson because it changed the game. Crawley were better in the second half but once we went down to 10 their belief jumped it was just attack after attack until they scored their 2 goals. With 11 maybe we grind out a 1-0 (possibly even score another if Crawley had overcommitted trying to equalise) I’d argue the chance of that happening was pretty much 50-50 though. But losing 2-1 with 11 men I’d have said 20% chance given the time left. So here we are again, another loss, another fine margin but when things happen over and over again like this it can’t just be that we are unlucky though? Under LW (at times) we looked miles better when we played some teams in this league. We’ve not been outplayed by anyone since SM took over but other than Newport away have we actually performed better than the opposition? It’s still very early under SM but right now, considering he said he backs himself tactically, that feels like my biggest concern.

I understand why the club offered the players it did new contracts in the summer. And given we’d not played in League 2 for 4 years we had no idea how they’d perform. Yes we probably should’ve been more ruthless but I’m not sure how well that looks. It’s almost disrespecting to those players who really did have a great seasons for us, a kind of thanks but don’t let the door hit you on the way-out attitude. Potentially it could’ve caused a few players to become upset, if that’s a way a club treats its players who got them promoted. I do think we’ve been very unlucky with injuries this season too, that has not helped, I think that between Nov-Dec-Jan we fielding almost the same team every week, which probably did lead to players being overplayed. I think Didzy has kind of now fallen victim to this, you’d think he’d have been able to rotate more with Austin, Scott and Morias but due to the injuries this seasons he’s pretty much had to play when he can. But yeah, it’s incredibly unlucky to have 3 season ending injuries in one season. I don’t remember that ever happening in my time supporting us. And with them all occurring into the season pretty much all the good players would’ve been signed by other clubs so replacing them last minute is not easy. January then became a bit of a fire-fighting effort in terms of the recruitment, securing Macari and Robertson has been good but I agree signing Colkett and Ashby-Hammond not so. I don’t know why we didn't bring in a "proven" defender either, did the recruitment team struggle to identify a good player or was it simply no-one good was available and affordable? Recruitment’s probably the most important part of what makes a club successful. On the whole it has been very good and you’re never going to be perfect and unfortunately for us it's dipped this season. But you can only learn from your mistakes and we can only hope and assume the owners and recruitment team will be fully aware of our issues this season and why it's gone so wrong – they’d have to be pretty much blind and stupid to not notice this! You can’t get it right all of the time and as bad as it sounds considering we were in the play-offs if we don’t go down (still mathematically possible but surely not…) then the season hasn’t been a disaster, just very, very disappointing. And I think depending on how the season ends we will have to revaluate whether SM and his team are right for us going forward. That said I’m still confident with our owners and how things are going. I'm sure in 2/3 years’ time we’ll be a lot closer to league 1 than the NL.

We need something to kick us on again, as much as I'm hoping for a win even something like a clean sheet (which would guarantee us a draw) would be a massive boost. I know it's probably hard for the players because it's not like they aren't trying but they've just got to stick with it and keep positive. You can't go into a game with doubts, believe this is game that starts a run of good form. They know they can do it because we've had some really great results and performances this season. Please, please, please, let this be the game where something clicks again and we come back to Notts with something to cheer about!

Now he can run again tape that knee up so tightly he can't feel it and get him in the team for Crawley! ???? We really have missed him though, so it'll be great when he is back for next season. Bajarmi also running alongside him in the video, all in all it seems we're over the worst with concerns to injuries now.

I didn’t think under Stuart Maynard the results would have been as bad as they have been, he’s in a bit of tough situation now but if he can turn it around it will show he possess the qualities that probably got him the job in the first place. I agree I don’t think demanding Stuart Maynard to be sacked really achieves anything. Why when you want the club to succeeded why would you make his job harder by not supporting him. Fair enough if you have doubts or don't think he's the right man for job, but actively trying to get him removed is counter-productive. That said, I don’t think our owners will be influenced by those just shouting the loudest. We know they aren’t ones to make quick and rash decisions, I don’t think they’ll be panicking yet, if anything I think they’ll be thinking more about how they can potentially help SM and his coaching team through this tough period. I remember in a rare interview it was revealed one of Chris or Alex had written a study as part of their degree about the effects of sacking managers. I think a large takeaway point was something about how lots of clubs sack a manager when he’s not actually the real problem but they do it because it’s the easiest thing to do...