menzinho

Interestingly at Norwich he has played as their left-back in a back 4. But we played him as part of our back 3, maybe this was a mistake. Should he have been utilised at wingback for us? When you hear he used to play as a winger as a kid it makes you think… Like I said before I’d never seen him play for us but I’ve seen him on the EFL highlights show for Norwich and he’s very slim, I know looks can be deceiving but he definitely seems to be lacking that physicality you associate with most centre-backs. I guess in a way even if he had got into our team, if he’s championship quality/ready, it’s likely he’d have attracted bids and moved up at some point. We’d have made more money I guess but it makes it less heart-breaking for us fans.

Yeah, it’s a tough one I can see both sides to the argument but I get that losing to Accrington is extremely deflating, it’s a massive loss. If you can’t beat an equally poor team, at home, where is your next 3 points coming from? They’ve been averaging a win a month, but it’ll be zero for this month and that recent loss also extended their winless run to 10 games. Knowing all that I can’t exactly say I’d have any faith in Nigel Adkins to keep them up, you’d basically be reliant on Morecambe and Carlisle to keep losing.

I'm still amazed that considering Jodi has only started 10 matches this season (and played 13 in total) he's still our 3rd top scorer and joint 2nd for assists! Luckily I don't think Bedeau's injury is too serious and I'm hoping McDonald just felt a bit off tightness and came off so not to make it worse.

I agree that the result is not the end of the world, but the performance was worrying. I thought we’d show a bit more about us after Port Vale, where we were unlucky to lose. We just about got what we deserved last night. We had the luxury of having more time off after Port Vale but we looked like the team that had just played on Saturday. It was like once we went 1-0 up that was it, we were expecting the final whistle to blow, we just passed the ball around pointlessly and sloppily at that too. There was a worrying lack of urgency to attack them. We gave Jatta pretty much nothing all game, he was far too isolated. But it didn’t help that almost every pass was to feet, it was so risk averse that we ended up going backwards far too often. We looked like we lacked confidence and ideas, especially last 20 minutes when Colchester had pretty much decided to settle for the point. It’s interesting that Stuart says we need the whole squad, I think our first 11 is very strong but for me last night showed the squad is lacking that extra bit of quality. Traore, Whitaker and Jarvis all look promising but it’s harder coming into a team halfway through a season and constantly coming off the bench but I am hopeful they can help us have a positive end to this season.

Richard will be heavily involved in who the next head-coach will be, if he gets it wrong their owners and directors will just blame him… A really tough start to his new job. I really am surprised they’ve sacked Luke Williams this early though, maybe he wasn’t the right fit but there’s a lot more wrong at Swansea than just the head coach. Surely the plan was for Luke and Richard to link up and look at how they can improve the squad over the summer. That’s all out the window now. It shows Swansea owners and directors will no way be as patient as Chris and Alex and I think Richard will be fighting against them a whole lot more than he’ll expect. I wish him all the best in his new job, because I think he'll need it!

Generally speaking when we lose we do tend to quickly bounce back, we’ve only had back to back defeats once all season and those were away games. Colchester have improved but I think a top half finish is their peak, they’ve only won 3 times away this season, equally only lost 3 too, so they basically set up to not lose away from home. They would 100% take a draw and I think a 0-0, 1-1 is the kind of result they will be looking to get (grind out). And whilst the win against Walsall was impressive since January, they’ve had a very favourable set of fixtures (Carlisle, Accrington, Morecambe, Harrogate, Tranmere…) Be interesting to see who just randomly drops out the squad through injury for this one, I’ll go for Bedeau, he’s due an injury… Hopefully not the case though! I was surprised to see Mai Traore in the squad so quickly, suspect he’ll be on the bench again but might possibly get a bit more time on the pitch this time out he was unlucky with that chance against Port Vale, clearly will score soon. Really hoping at least one of Didzy or Whitaker is back for this one, their creativity in that final third will be massive boost.

There was nothing stopping a club approaching Notts to ask for permission to speak with Matt Saunders about a potential head coach role. If that scenario had occurred, I don’t see the club blocking a move as we’d have probably made some money out of it. Now he’s just waiting and hoping, when he could’ve still been a part of a successful team, if anything staying only enhances his reputation. I’m not convinced he chose to walk away to be honest, unless he really thought he was a shoe-in for the Wealdstone job, it doesn’t make any sense to me. He seems very confident in his ability, which I guess you need but at the same time to claim his "blue-print" is complete is a tad odd, especially when you are claiming an away win at mid-table Cheltenham finished it. If it was that good surely we'd have been able to deal with Walsall's man-to-man press second half when Matt was still here, yet we all saw how that ended.

Blackburn Rovers 2-2 Plymouth Argyle Middlesbrough 3-1 Watford Blackpool 1-1 Mansfield Town Stevenage 2-1 Peterborough United Carlisle United 1-1 Colchester United Morecambe 1-0 Accrington Stanley Gateshead 2-1 Altrincham Woking 2-0 Tamworth

On paper when you look at the fixtures, we certainly haven’t got the easiest of run-ins, I’d say only Tranmere, Newport and Harrogate are what you’d class as easy (but that’s never always the case!) There’s a mini run in March that looks like the toughest period. Wimbledon away will be a challenge, Grimsby are unpredictable, Chesterfield is always a close one and then Crewe are likely to still be challenging too. And then in April we’ve got Salford and Bradford back-to-back. The Doncaster at home on the final day is the intriguing one, cos it’s either going to be massive, like a must win or pretty inconsequential as the autos will already have been settled... I’d have 100% taken play-offs come the start of the season and I still think we are more likely to finish there, of course I’m hopeful but I think our constant injuries and inability to take points off those in and around us will be our undoing.

So frustrating! 1st half we really needed to take of advantage of Port Vale being so passive and not scoring one of those chances ultimately cost us. 2nd half was just a scrappy game off football really, Port Vale just put us under a bit more pressure and we really struggled to play out. That said we defended pretty well, they didn’t create anything other than the goal which was one mistake getting punished. I think we absolutely missed Didzy or Whitaker up top. We needed a bit more composure and someone to help drive us forward a bit more. For me Edwards looked more and more off the pace of the game as it went on, I know he’s just come back from a long lay-off but I’d have taken him off a lot earlier. Not sure what Gordon did wrong to get subbed either, Bedeau was played out of position for the whole game, he was fine but it’s not his natural game. It was strange that Stuart decided not to play our two wingbacks at wingback when Tsaroulla came on... Just gutted that Port Vale have taken 6 points from us, you can hardly say they dominated and outplayed us on both occasions.

I do feel like I'm in a minority but I genuinely feel Marias could do quite well for us if given the chance. He's pretty quick, he's pretty strong and he is capable of scoring and assisting goals too. His first goal is a corker and the second is a tidy finish. I hope he does really well there and if he does we'd be stupid to not to give him a chance, surely!

We have had a slightly favourable run of fixtures up until this one, it’s easy to get complacent though unlike us Wimbledon couldn’t beat Accrington and Port Vale couldn’t beat Swindon, so I’m definitely not dismissing our recent good results. It has been great run of form but Port Vale are different challenge, they are better than the teams we’ve faced recently. Part of me sees it going two ways, crashing back to reality with a damning defeat, or the run has installed so much confidence we just plough on and keep our run of good form going. I also hope Didzy can come back in, it might just be case of not giving too much away to keep Port Vale guessing. I think Jodi is more likely to miss it though but I’m hoping Tsaroulla will ok because I think he’ll provide us with a bit more defensive nous. I’d be happy to come away from this one with a point.

It's not out of the realms of all possibilities that his first job there could be to tell Luke Williams he hasn't got one anymore. Swansea are in really poor form at the moment and they lost at home again tonight mustering up just 3 shots all game! It's all good having future goals but they can't keep on losing, they are yet to win a home game in 2025. What happens if Swansea get to the end of the month and they still haven't won any of them? There's hardly going to be a buzz around the place and most fans will want something or someone to change...

Swansea will want our owners next! Just put some black stripes on their home shirts and that’ll be job done. It is a shame Richard will soon be departing; he’s been one of the reasons we’ve been successful over the years. It does feel like there’s going be a tipping point at some point, especially if we keep losing key members of staff and players over a short period of time. Yes, they are replaceable but it's not always easy to replace them, surely at some point it’s going to have a negative impact? Or do Chris and Alex just have some sort of super-human ability to seemingly never make a wrong call...

I think the Port Vale game will give us a good indication as to where we are heading... If we are serious about top 3 we simply can't afford to give all our rivals 3 points against us. From the current top 10, we've got 4 home games and 4 away games left. I think we'd need to be looking at something like 14 points to keep us where we are, anything close to that would be a very good return in my opinion. That would mean something like winning 4, drawing 2 and only losing 2. Possibly a big ask considering our current form against the top 10... It would help massively if we can get a positive result at Port Vale.

I was thinking a bit more about this yesterday too. Richard Montague has a very senior role at this club, he basically has a say in everything that goes on. He obviously leads our recruitment but being on the board of directors along with the Bros he does a lot more than just that. The relationship he has with the Chris and Alex is clearly very good, he knows the project here how well it's going, it's only going to get better. He wouldn't get that at Swansea, he'd likely get more money but I'm guessing his roll would purely be in recruitment, coaches and players, but with likely less control as those higher up are likely to want a say too. I don't know what Richard's personal goals are, maybe his dream is to be involved in a Premiership clubs recruitment, so maybe this does potentially get him closer to achieving that... Swansea needs a massive rebuild though, they might only be step away from the Premier League but in reality the gap is much bigger.

I think Palmer, Bedeau and Whitaker would be my top 3 from that match. Bedeau edges it for me, really strong performance from him.

It was far from vintage but I think considering how physical Morecambe were, I’m pleased we didn’t let them bully us no matter how hard they tried. I agree with those have already mentioned the ref (or lack off one!) that the first fifteen minutes was really poor, he set the tone that let Morecambe get away with pretty much what they wanted… Whitaker is settling in nicely now, again showed some really nice touches and I think there’s still more to come from him. I thought Will Jarvis did really well considering he had to replace Jodi, he looked comfortable on the ball, not sure wingback plays to all his strengths, he did have Bedeau in top form behind him who pretty much stopped most their attacks down that side. Defensively very good again, a couple of moments where we switch off but we are lucky to have Bass in goal, he makes it look easy at times when it really isn’t. And I think that Jatta goal summed up just why we needed to keep him. Who else does that for us? Holds off their centre back and turns him, brushes off another defender and then calmly rounds the keeper. He created and finished his own chance.

I’m hoping we’ve learnt a few lessons after our last home game against a team in the relegation zone. I wonder if the players had a touch of over-confidence going into Carlisle, it’s all too easy to see how badly they are doing and think it’ll be a straight-forward game. I hoping we’ll be more switched on and up for it this time out. Derek Adams is the kind of manager who sets his teams up according to the opposition, I couldn’t really tell you their style or what they set out to achieve but they'll be looking to stop us. Interestingly they’ve lost to everyone in the top 8 1-0, aside from Wimbledon who they lost 3-0 to. So maybe a 1-0 wouldn’t be a surprising score, but I’m hoping we can somewhat buck that trend and go the way of Wimbledon! I wouldn’t expect many changes from the team who performed so well at Gillingham, unless someone has picked up an injury or a knock I’d go with that same starting 11.

Burton Albion 1-1 Blackpool Huddersfield Town 2-1 Reading Barrow 0-0 Gillingham Fleetwood Town 3-2 Cheltenham Town Salford City 2-0 Tranmere Rovers Aldershot 2-1 AFC Fylde Dagenham & Redbridge 2-2 Yeovil Town Solihull Moors 0-1 Oldham Athletic

Are Swansea fans just thinking because they got their head coach from us that because they’re now getting a new football director he’s probably coming from Notts as well? No mention of a name in the interview but there’s lots of people it could be and the great news Luke talks about could just simply be that they are now getting a football director, something he thinks Swansea really need. Richard Montague has only ever had to recruit for us, he’s not had experience signing players to get a team into the Premiership (or other equivalent top division), which is the aim for Swansea. I’m not saying he wouldn’t be capable but I’m just not sure he’d be Swansea’s first choice…

Sky Bet League Two Manager & Player of the Month January winners - The English Football League WWW.EFL.COM The Official home of the English Football League You'll never believe who won it... (Yes, the pic is the spoiler)

You know how in the other topic about our recruitment efficiency, it’s all really positive. This is the one current case that bucks the trend! Someone clearly doesn’t rate him if he’s out on loan again. I wonder if they’ll be some sort of mutual agreement to leave in the summer otherwise I guess he'll just be loaned out again. I agree, it doesn’t look like he’s going to have a future here.

Having been into the National League I think it makes a lot of sense now. The difference between the bottom half of League 2 and top 10 in the National League is minimal. But more importantly as bad as being relegated is, it will make it easier to get promoted again. For me the issues would be more with the National League Board which was pretty shambolic at times, when anything didn’t go as planned they had no idea how to deal with it. Their communication was shocking at times and the distribution of funding with the COVID payouts was scandalous. The teams might be EFL standard, not sure behind the scenes the league is though.

Last roll of the dice really, they need more than just the potential new manager bounce to stay up. Given how his time ended at Bradford, it doesn’t fill you with confidence either. I say last roll of the dice but I genuinely wouldn’t be surprised if Hughes got sacked before the end of the season! Be interesting to see how this all plays out for Cedwyn too, I’m guessing a large part of why he joined Carlisle was not only to be closer to Newcastle but to play under Mike Williamson. No idea how Mark Hughes will play and if he see’s him in his first team, they have about 30 players so he’s not short on choice.