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Blackburn Rovers 2-1 Norwich City Watford 0-1 Southampton Barnsley 0-1 Huddersfield Town Wigan Athletic 1-2 Stockport County Barnet 1-2 Colchester United Bromley 1-0 Harrogate Town 🃏 Hartlepool United 1-0 Boreham Wood Morecambe 3-1 Woking

Sound the alarm, Jatta was involved and running in the training session video from today! And yes I have already searched “can you sprint with a back spasm?” for those wondering, no not if it’s serious and in the video he looked more than fine to me.

There was an interview with him that said he wanted to move to keep his chances of getting in the Northern Ireland team and potentially getting to play in the World Cup. I think he'd be looking a touch higher than League 2 if that was the case. Also I can't see us spending £1 million to sign him, in League 2 that kind of transfer fee is madness.

I agree @Robbie we are in a really tough situation with Jatta. The funny thing is given the start he's had Matt Dennis could well be our 20+ goal centre forward this season, even so if Jatta does go we'd still need a striker in to replace him.

I do think this has potentially already affected us in the transfer window because we've received large sums for Langstaff, Crowley and Bass clubs will know this and almost add a "we know you've got money" tax. And that just completely clashes with the Brothers style of not ever wanting to overpay for a player. A bit like Newcastle in the Premiership now, they've had similar issues because everyone knows they are ridiculously wealthy.

It does seem to be quite a conflicting statement when you realise that we currently have 25 outfield players at the club (and that's excluding our youngsters). We've got to get players out as well not only for registration purposes but to avoid players becoming totally disheartened and potentially disruptive because they've got 0 chance of getting into the side. It's interesting that the two players the club spent money on recently in Jarvis and Traore are nowhere to be seen so far this season. And these are attacking players too, I do wonder if that is causing a bit of friction behind the scenes. I agree with the points about Traore he came in halfway through the season having never played or lived in England before, some players just need a bit of time to settle and I think we'd be mad to right him off so quickly. Let's not forget he's previously spent his last few seasons in the top division in Norway and at good clubs too. His last club Fredikstad lost 1-0 to Crystal Palace recently in the Europa League Qualifier, they'd beat us comfortably. I had Jarvis down as one of my players I thought would be key for us this season. At the back end of last season (outside of McGoldrick) I thought he was a real bright spark for us going forward.

Some potential fuel to the fire courtesy of the Guardian (from yesterday); "In League Two, the race for Alassana Jatta is hotting up and the striker is eager to leave Notts County. After Plymouth’s £900,000 bid was knocked back, others are waiting in the wings. Huddersfield and Bolton have shown an interest, while QPR have previously made an offer. They could face competition from Swansea or even Kayserispor."

I predict Dennis will win this one, and it’ll be well deserved. Palmer had his best display of the season too, battled well in midfield was always available for a pass and put some decent dead balls in.

I agree with @theAnticlough I don’t think we should get hung up on physicality. We only play Colchester, Bromley and Gillingham who I would argue fall into the category of being sides that basically focus entirely on being psychical. That’s 6 matches from a 46-match season. I certainly wouldn’t say we got bullied by Bromley either though, their goals had a touch of luck but the issue was in the second half we invited the pressure by playing way too deep. I listened to the post-match interview and I totally get Martin’s point about not having another forward and not being able to make the changes he wanted too. Part of this is just bad luck as assuming AJ really is injured he would’ve been back today. But why are we saying we’ve only got 2 ‘number 9s’ in the building? Does Traore not exist anymore? And when we signed Jarvis the club said he was capable of playing in a number of forward roles. But if he really thought 2 up top, so we could run the channels, was the answer could Bennetts or Kouhyar not have filled in for 30/40 minutes? Ok not genuine centre-forwards but both are capable runners who could've given the Bromley defence something more to worry about.

I'll be pleased if we manage to complete this match without conceding a goal from a set-piece. I expect Bromley will play to frustrate us, it's far from exciting but it's what they do. Fingers crossed we can race into a 2-0 lead like we did last time out, COYP!

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I’m hoping we’ve played an absolute blinder, he’ll be on the bench come Saturday and this is all just a ruse to keep Bromley in the dark. 🙏📿 I agree with @Chris you’d have thought he’d be desperate to play. If that was me I’d be necking paracetamol, rubbing deep heat in, drinking green tea, just doing all I can to be available. The timing, considering he hasn’t played but been fit all pre-season, to suddenly get a vague injury like a back-spasm 10 days before the window closes is going to make us fans think the worst.

Tsaroulla was sharp, tidy on the ball and looked dangerous going forward. Norburn looked a lot better too, I was a tad worried after his early yellow but he hassled and harried well without picking up a second booking. McDonald was solid at the back, didn’t really put a foot wrong for me. Iorpenda just didn’t stop running, I think he’s better touch deeper when he can make runs but I really him. And nor did Dennis to be fair and he reacted quick to get his goal.

Beautiful chaos I think is how I would describe the match, it wasn’t the complete performance by any means but I thought there were a lot more positives than negatives. From off we were pro-active and I liked that Norburn was pushed ahead of Palmer so we didn’t have them tripping over each other like they did against Salford. We were a little over the place at times, Jodi was desperate to play wide, he did everything to avoid playing as the number 10 by always drifting to the flank. And I still think we ask a lot of the wingbacks as it’s easy for them to get overrun especially when teams play a wide player and a full-back. The front 4 out of possession when Shrewsbury had the ball deep was better, Dennis and Jones almost operating as a front-pair being backed up by Norburn and Iorpenda, it did force them to go wide but when we timed the press wrong it did leave us exposed in the middle. Again some of the passing wasn’t great, some of it was just the obvious poor passing but more often it was down to the wrong choice or players not quite on each other’s wave-lengths but this is one of the things that should improve with time. The early goal second half settled us down, especially as Shrewsbury were looking brighter in the last period of the first half. Great move and finish though, both second half goals were crackers. I liked that we were able to make subs and we didn’t get weaker but also it allowed us to keep pressing. That is going to be key for us this season. It’s a minor and sometimes overlooked thing but just the effort and ability to outwork the opposition, we had that and if we do that most matches more often than not we'll come away with three points.

There’s definitely something still not quite right about us, I can’t put my finger on it, I think we’ve been so used to having a lot of control of the ball (but doing sod-all with it) that it’s a tad odd to see us relinquish this control and chase the opposition around a bit more. I think it’s coming from us trying to press a lot more, we seemed to have quite a different formation when we didn’t have the ball. It’s one thing doing it in training but opposition teams will be a lot more unpredictable so it’ll take a bit of time to work (or not work as might be the case). There were times when I thought the wingbacks didn’t know if they should be marking the space or charging out to close the defender down, sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t but generally off the ball they were quite deep. And I still think Jodi looked a bit lost playing as a No.10, we used to have so much control in this area with Didzy and Crowley but that is gone now so we will have to do something different.

Jason Whittingham and everyone else who was part of the Bond Group should be black-listed from owning a football club now. Really pleased for them but it should never have got to this point. I wonder if Morecambe have any players contracted? Not really had a pre-season either so it's going to be a real challenge to avoid back to back relegations.

Can't be any worse than the last time Shrewsbury came to Meadow Lane... 😰😱 We need something to give us some encouragement, I'd even take a goal in the first half at Meadow Lane - we've not had one of them since February! I really do think we need to be more positive and more on the font-foot from the off. No more 5 at the back, push the wingback's high from the start and try to pin Shrewsbury in. We've gone behind in every match so far this season, that really doesn't help, scoring first will lift the crowd and the players too.

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I don’t think we’ll be on 1 point after 10 matches, we still have enough quality in the squad and Jatta back and another potential number 9 signing will give everyone a big boost. I would say 3 wins from the next 7 matches is a minimum, but even then I'd be looking just as much at the performances as the results. If it's looking like things are improving and we draw some matches we could've won that'll be encouraging. If it gets to Christmas, the performances are poor and we are in a relegation fight I’d think he’d be gone so that’s around 20 matches… That said I can remember Doncaster looking hopeless a few seasons ago, they were 22nd at the start of February yet something changed/clicked and they completely turned their form around and finished in the play-offs that season and Grant McCann was in charge the whole time too.

I know it could get worse, it could also get better and as we are only 3 matches into the new season I'm not going to act like we've just been relegated. I'm am concerned though it feels like we've carried on from last season, where we finished with just the 6 wins from the last 20 matches, and after a full pre-season under the new coaching team I was hopeful even if results weren't great that at least the performances would be an improvement. I would be cautious about adding even more players now to be honest, the squad is already too big even with a few injuries today we had numerous players like Jarvis and Macari who couldn't even make the matchday squad. I do think we need another forward but the reason we've only picked up 1 point hasn't been because we've missed a load of chances. The issue for me is the same as last season and it's more to do with creating chances than finishing them. It's been a poor start, but that's all it is so far, nothing is won or lost this early in the season.

I was only able to listen but it Stal made it very obvious we didn’t play well, didn’t see a plan or team that knew what it wanted to do. I think the most concerning thing is how Martin has said he wants us to play with more of a press and more intensity but it’s like Maynard -2.0 at the moment. I’m no coach or expert but how can you press aggressively when you play 5 at the back and 1 upfront?

Yes really great news, pleased for all his friends and family and shows just how invaluable all the medical support he received was.

I think off the back of the second half performance against Wigan McDonald, Gordon and Luker all earnt their starts. Pretty pleased, bench looks solid too just the one glaring omission in the form of a centre forward, we'll probably sign one the same day Jatta's ban ends! Lots of players now missing out though, even with the injuries we've still got the likes of Edwards, Jarvis, Kouhyar, Hinchy, Macari just not being used. There's good squad depth and then there's wasted wages...

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No idea how seriously Wigan are going to take it, but I suspect like us they'll make a few changes for it too. We won't be expected to win so as long we avoid a heavy defeat but at least put in a better performance than Salford that would be something. And if we somehow do go and win everyone will be a lot more positive before our next league fixture. Players I think we could see start against Wigan are: Griffiths, McDonald, Hall, Grant and Luther. I'm also hoping some the players that have potentially been forgotten get included, Macari, Jarvis and Traore would all benefit from being involved. I think Jatta’s suspension counts in this match too so that’s handy (if I’ve got that right), means he could potentially be back for Bromley on the 23rd.