Northants Pie

There has been a big change in how some clubs assess whether any potential player could possibly make the grade, our own chairman recently commented on this very subject on his Twitter account. Even a club the size of Manchester United have taken this new style approach which critiques a player's mainly physical attributes and that is the grading for whether or not a player is good enough. They all forget the one golden question that you cannot coach into anyone. Can he play? You can coach explosiveness into a player, hire a sprint coach and do specific muscle training, same as strength etc etc but you cannot coach ability onto a player. As a Football Association and football in general we seem to always be trying to recreate another country's system but with a fatal flaw, being smart about it. Ask yourself how many of the Spanish, Dutch, Brazillian or Argentinian national sides would meet the frankly ridiculous criteria this country is adopting? What do you think the first question Barca ask? Is he 6ft plus and an athlete? No. Can he play? Yes. The first question the Arsenal academy ask is can he play? Our own Jimmy Sirrel asked this as a quality not being able to run around a lot. Next time you watch kids playing whether in the street or on a pitch, just ask yourself one question. Can he play? Share your thoughts about this feature on Pride of Nottingham by signing up to the website, visiting the forum and joining the conversation.

To usher in the Alan Hardy era I thought I'd start a new piece that will be a fortnightly ramble about all things football and also some things slightly away from football with the focus being on what effect this has or could have on Notts County. This week I will be starting with the January transfer window. The two transfer window periods only favour the teams paying the biggest wages - they can attract the better players at the start of the season, leaving very little, low-lying fruit for the smaller clubs. This system is best suited to the Premier League and like many other things should be left there but that's a rant for another ramble. Under the old system the smaller clubs could pick up a better player during October and November than would be allowed at the start of the season due to players falling out of favour as the season wears on and wanting to play - this is another facet to this system, the player power this has inadvertently granted them (anyway back to where I was before this ends up at Donald Trump...). Now clubs have to wait and the void just gets bigger - look at Mansfield and Newport, between them they have brought in nearly a whole new team. Then you have Notts County, who, because of this transfer embargo, are having to stick with what we have and are relying on good old man management to stir the players into giving a toss, something that happened against Mansfield thankfully. I wait with baited breath to see if it can happen again and again and again like we need it to. If that fails, given the emergency loan window has been scrapped (thanks FIFA, sticking up for the little clubs once again I see), we have to rely on our own youth players who we can bring through without the hassle of having to worry about embargoes. One of which has come through in Sam Osborne, he should be starting every game now, his energy and directness causes defences problems. Another youth team player I would like to see is Montel Gibson, give him a chance to start a game and he will score. If you are planning on going to watch our youth team at any point, if he is playing watch his movement and the positions he takes up, we are desperately missing a player of his abilities up top, it is of no chance of luck that he finds himself in the right place at he right time. If our future is in the youth, let them play. Share your thoughts about this feature on Pride of Nottingham by signing up to the website, visiting the forum and joining the conversation.