DangerousSausage

I couldn't watch our annual League Cup run yesterday, so thanks everyone for commenting! During pre-season I had the impression that MP had opened a big jigsaw puzzle, the pieces had fallen all over the floor and he was trying to find the best way to fit them together. The jigsaw puzzle won't be finished for quite a few weeks yet. When Ian Burchnall switched to using wing backs, it was because we didn't really have enough wide players who were up to scratch. Now we have too many for the system we're playing, and the risk there is that members of the squad will end up too far away from the first 11 and will end up unhappy. Even if the Jones no. 10 experiment fails, if Jones is fit he should be playing. That leaves one other slot, and Bennetts also plays in his position. Would Bennetts really be happy with the supersub role he had at his previous clubs?

All good things come in three, so here's our third round (there are 43 rounds after this though, which spoils things a bit). Kick-off is 3pm and don't forget your joker! Preston North End v Leicester City Swansea City v Sheffield United Leyton Orient v Stockport County Reading v AFC Wimbledon Barnet v Walsall Tranmere Rovers v Gillingham Aldershot v Boston United Hartlepool United v Braintree Town

As we're underway in Germany too (apart from the Bundesliga) it's time for a little update! I'll start with the teams we played in pre-season. Darmstadt have enjoyed a good start to the season, winning both their opening games and scoring five goals in the process. Kaiserslautern lost their opening game but won their televised clash against Schalke thanks to a debatable penalty. I wasn't very impressed by them but it's early days. In the fourth-level Regionalliga Südwest, Stuttgarter Kickers have also won two out of two, including an impressive win against promotion favourites SV Sandhausen. So a positive start, but that league is a bit of a shark tank and only one team goes up. So all in the garden is rosy? Not quite. SV Waldhof Mannheim, i my view Germany's coolest club by far, have supplied plenty of drama and the parallels to Notts are unnerving sometimes. The club appointed a young coach six games before the end of last season and just about squeaked to third division safety. However, this coach (let's call him Dominik) was already under contract at another club as a youth coach from July onwards. Hence, Waldhof spent most of the summer in negotiations to release Dominik from his contract there (during which time barely a handful of players arrived) and ended up paying a transfer fee for him. A six-figure sum was rumoured; not bad for an under-19s coach. Two league games and one point later, Dominik had managed to fall out with the DoF, the club's best striker and the long-serving club captain (who departed) and was sacked. He was replaced by the head coach of the Luxembourg national team the following day. On the plus side, the solid goalkeeper they let go has been replaced by a tall Dutch bloke, so what could possibly go wrong?

Interesting stuff. Bringing it back to football somewhat, in the 19th century it was common to hand out "mourning cards" at people's funerals, commemorating the person who had died. As football was growing in popularity at that time, the inevitable happened and mourning cards were produced for football clubs after defeats for the purposes of Hilarious BanterTM.

This is good news, it's been sad to watch such a talented and entertaining player rotting on the bench. Now he finally has the chance to prove Pep wrong and show everyone what he can do. Maybe he could even use it as a stepping stone for a move back to Notts 😉 Everton move into their new stadium this year, they have a competent manager and are not short of a bob or two. This season will mark a fresh start for them, and Grealish is an exciting signing.

It's too early to tell. I think Saturday was more a case of us failing to implement it. From about the 70th minute onwards we did revert to something that looked like Maynardball. The fact that that was a vast improvement tells you all you need to know. I think it's legitimate to tweak and adapt our approach to the division we're in. We saw that last season with the return of the occasional long ball and direct corners. What we shouldn't do is completely turn everything upside down as we really weren't far off last season.

The results: Oxford United 0-1 Portsmouth Stoke City 3-1 Derby County Exeter City 4-1 Blackpool Mansfield Town 1-2 Doncaster Rovers Gillingham 1-0 Walsall Oldham Athletic 1-1 Colchester United Tamworth 1-2 Scunthorpe United Wealdstone 2-0 Truro City Here are this round's scores - congrats to @JustLikeJuve and @Robbie for winning this round with 13 points each, with @super_ram just behind on 12 - no mean feat after wasting his joker on Derby! Overall, @JustLikeJuve leapfrogs @magpiejue to go top, while defending champion @super_ram joints the top three. The blue numbers are last week's positions. The prediction league doesn't cover these new-fangled cup competitions, so the next round will be this coming Saturday. So expect to see the fixtures in the usual place on Wednesday. Thanks for playing!

What can you say about that? First thoughts: that was like watching the very worst of what we served up under Steve Thompson. What a huge step back from the last few seasons. Ok, it's early days, we've got a lot of new players and they need to settle in and develop an understanding. It won't happen overnight, but we also can't afford to let a quarter of the season pass us by before it magically clicks (if it ever does). We completely failed to deal with their high pressing because our passing was neither fast nor precise. How can it be when the players don't know where each other are and there are massive gaps between them? On a few occasions when we had the ball, our player had no choice but to run into a blind alley because no one else was showing for the ball. That's really worrying. We only really pepped up a bit in the last 20 minutes, when Salford started sitting a bit deeper. I think Grant helped us hold up the ball a bit more and sustain a bit of pressure, but even so we rarely looked like scoring. On the plus side, Bennetts looked a good player and never gave up even when we were struggling to get a foothold in the game. He could be an important signing. I agree with @Chris that Jones' tantrum after not getting a penalty (which would have been extremely harsh) was ridiculous, it makes him look like a toddler and he needs to cut it out. Unnecessary yellow cards like that lead to suspensions. I don't think Roos was to blame for the first goal. He stayed glued to his line for just about all crosses, he really made me nervous, but the corner would have been too far out. That's on the defence for losing their man. The second goal was a complete joke of course. I'm very nervous about this signing after having seen that. My feeling after seeing that is that we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater and gone backwards. I hope I'm wrong.

This is absolutely dire. We look like a team of strangers, nobody seems to know what they're supposed to be doing or where their team mates are.

@Michael D Pie. I'll have to check the rule book to make sure wizardry is allowed. Crystal balls should be fine though. Oxford United 1-2 Portsmouth Stoke City 1-1 Derby County Exeter City 1-0 Blackpool Mansfield Town 2-1 Doncaster Rovers Gillingham 0-1 Walsall Oldham Athletic 2-2 Colchester United Tamworth 0-2 Scunthorpe United Wealdstone 2-0 Truro City (joker)

Not at all. And any rumours that I choose Derby to exploit certain posters' regrettable lack of impartiality are, of course, completely untrue.

Time for our second round, and now the Championship and the Vauxhall Conference have joined the fray. Kick-off is 3pm on Saturday, and remember your joker! Oxford United v Portsmouth Stoke City v Derby County Exeter City v Blackpool Mansfield Town v Doncaster Rovers Gillingham v Walsall Oldham Athletic v Colchester United Tamworth v Scunthorpe United Wealdstone v Truro City

Firstly, I hope the person who was taken ill pulls through. Football is just trivial when all's said and done, but how privileged we are to be able to enjoy the trivial things in life. I hope they can join us again in the future. To the game: I thought I was going to miss this one, but I unexpectedly got to see the second half due to coming home early and of course the delay. Having missed the first half, I probably have a much more negative feeling about that game than the rest of you. The second half was like one of the worst days under Maynard - loads of possession but precious little of it in their third of the pitch and no ideas or goal threat whatsoever - if anything, Newport looked likelier to score. Roos did not cover himself in glory with their goal and Jones looked like a fish out of water at number 10, although it's early days yet. What perplexed me was playing Edwards as a makeshift wing back despite us having 57 wing backs in our squad (although he did well to be fair), and then taking off our only striker and replacing him with a winger (who barely got a touch). It all looked far too experimental for my liking and we will face much sterner tests than Newport this season. In fairness though, I didn't see our best moments and we played a lot of new signings who haven't properly gelled yet. Hoping for something better against Salford.

The results: Bradford City 2-1 Wycombe Wanderers Doncaster Rovers 1-0 Exeter City Lincoln City 2-0 Reading Plymouth Argyle 1-3 Barnsley Barnet 0-2 Fleetwood Town Cambridge United 1-0 Cheltenham Town Grimsby Town 3-0 Crawley Town Walsall 2-1 Swindon Town The results for the first round, and hence our first table, look like this. Congrats to @magpiejue for getting off to a storming start and leading our first table, closely followed by @allardyces tash and @Chris, and well done too to @KingofCounty and @Ash for hitting double figures on their prediction league debuts! Some of the rest of us have work to do, but it's a marathon, not a sprint! Thank you all for taking part in possibly our biggest ever round! The next round will be on Saturday, so the fixtures will be posted in the same place on Wednesday. Feel free to add you congratulations, commiserations and hilarious banter below 😉

I've just stumbled across a new interview with Neil Warnock. He's always entertaining to listen to - this time he waxes lyrical about data analysts in football (he's not a fan) and throws in a mention of Notts for good measure. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/aug/01/neil-warnock-interview-manager-pep-guardiola-alex-ferguson-virgil-van-dijk