DangerousSausage

Not our strongest lineup, I was hoping to see it treated as a dress rehearsal given the standard of the opposition but it's too early for that. Hopefully some of them can impress us. Here's Stuttgart's team for anyone who's interested. Looks like they're putting out a strong team. Dumrath - Borac Danquah Petrovic Blank - Zaiser Kiefer Lockl - Udogu Fass Berisha The stream is up and running, but no sound yet. American football markings on the pitch.

I've just spent my lunch break lurking on the Kickers forum, interesting reading. It's a club that's aiming upwards, but there seems to be little optimism among fans (with a couple even worried about a relegation battle due to their poor form in the friendlies). Others caution that it's only pre-season and you can't read too much into it. So far, so familiar. There are also complaints about a general lack of tempo in their team. Frustrated forum users should be taken with a pinch of salt, but it'll be interesting to see how things unfold. I hope a few of our players who have seen little of the ball so far get their time to shine. I'd like to see us try a 4231 formation as it could suit our squad as it stands. Just go to the payment screen as usual and it'll calculate it for you. Some sites let you pay in EUR or in GBP, in the latter case your card provider converts the currency for you. Just click whichever you feel like, the difference between the two will be pennies.

@TheSkipper, up to the formation of the Bundesliga in the 1960s German football was regionalised right up to the top level, with the champions of each regional league playing off to determine who would be German champions in a knockout tournament. Even today, German football is highly regionalised - the nationwide second division (Bundesliga 2) was only created in the 1970s, and the national third division as recently as 2008. 54 clubs (plus two B teams) play in these three divisions. Below the third division, there are five regional fourth divisions. The one Stuttgarter Kickers play in is probably the strongest. It's an odd league though - you've got fully professional clubs like Kickers Offenbach averaging crowds of over 5000 on the one hand, and on the other there are village teams with money, small town clubs with crowds in the hundreds and B teams of Bundesliga clubs that barely draw three-figure crowds at home and take nobody at all away. Attractive games are few and far between and with one promotion spot it's a difficult league to get out of. But the teams that do make it out tend to do well - Ulm and Elversberg both won consecutive promotions to Bundesliga 2 in the last few years, the latter almost making it to the a Bundesliga. As tomorrow's opponents are one of a few teams looking to go up, I think we can look forward to a close, competitive game tomorrow.

All the club can do is stand by him, give him the support he needs and hope for the best. Hopefully this will be a relatively minor infringement resulting in a slap on the wrist and a three-match ban. In the worst case we won't see him in a Notts shirt again. I've heard similar gossip about a couple of other players, hopefully none of it is true. As @piedestrian says, the relationship between football and betting companies is far too cosy and it's high time something was done. Something for the football regulator to look at.

I noticed our DoF was in Kaiserslautern, so he'll presumably still be with the team. But we did sign Aljofee during the German trip, so maybe something else is in the pipeline. There could even be transfer business to take care of in Germany, stranger things have happened! I think and hope there will be a flurry of activity once they're back. None of the trialists have stood out for me, but the teams we've played have been above our level so that's not really a fair reflection. @Chris , a bit off topic but the next match will be streamed for about a fiver.

Stuttgarter Kickers have been up and down the leagues since their brief foray in the Bundesliga in the late 80s and early 90s, but after a five-year stay in the fifth-level Oberliga Baden-Württemberg they returned to the fourth-level Regionalliga Südwest in 2023. They very nearly sealed a second straight promotion to the third division, but blew it on the final day and VfB Stuttgart's B team went up in their place. Now they'll be hoping to win promotion at the third attempt after finishing fifth last season. As a Waldhof follower I've seen far more Regionalliga Südwest football than is good for me. The larger teams are fully professional and could hold their own in League Two - MSV Duisburg, who won the Regionalliga West least season, beat us 4-1 a year ago. However, the standard is highly variable and differs from one region to the next. Technically, the standard in the Regionalliga SW is relatively high, but many of the teams (especially the part-timers) can't maintain a press for 90 minutes - the league lacks the intensity and athleticism you see in the higher divisions in Germany or the Football League in England. As one of the strongest teams in probably the best of the five Regionalliga divisions, I'm expecting Stuttgarter Kickers to pose a tough test. I'm also familiar with a couple of their players as they used to play for Waldhof. Midfielder Per Lockl, who joined Kickers last year, previously played for SV Waldhof in the third division and Borussia Mönchengladbach II in the Regionalliga West. He played for Germany's youth teams and is a skilful player with lots of potential. He struggled to cope with the physicality of the third division at times, but he's a great player for that level and has his best years ahead of him. Another familiar name from further back is Lukas Kiefer, a bustling defensive midfielder and occasional right back I remember from Waldhof's days in the Regionalliga SW. Another interesting name is their new signing from Würzburg Maximilian Zaiser, a product of Bayern's youth system who played around 30 games for their B team in the third division. Kickers played a pre-season tournament today (Sunday), losing 2-0 to FC Villingen (relegated from the Regionalliga SW last season) and beating SSC Tübingen 11-0. As they're much closer to our level than Darmstadt or Kaiserslautern, I'm hoping we'll see much more of the ball and start to get an idea how Martin Paterson wants us to play. It'll be good to see Jones and a bit more of Aljofee too. If you're going, @BlackPudding has posted a few tips if you're planning on having the odd refreshment before the game (although those sausages don't convince me, sorry!).

I'd go back to the 70s and lock Brian Clough and Peter Taylor in a cupboard until the red lot appointed someone else as manager. We were level pegging with Florist on and off the pitch until that time, but with their success under Clough they pulled far ahead of us and the fans followed them over the bridge. When we finally did reach the top flight, we got smaller crowds than we had been getting in the third division pre-Clough. He transformed the fortunes of both clubs to the extent that they don't even see us as rivals any more. Just imagine being able to change all that through just a bit of kidnapping (and time travel). Promotion into the top flight might even have taken us a division above them, and the bigger crowds we'd have got might have kept us there, possibly into the Premier League era.

Wow, thanks for the tips @BlackPudding! I haven't been to Stuttgart for a long time, so this is a great addition. Are you a Kickers fan?

Agree with the above, the captain should be vocal and always talking to and encouraging his teammates. He should be the manager's voice on the pitch. Perhaps Platt, Bedeau or Norwood would be more suitable. In recent years it's become almost a ceremonial role, so that naming a new captain is effectively a demotion for the previous one. I don't think that's what it should be. It should be an extra task for a senior player, not some kind of gong.

Trying to smack Cotter in the face more like! That's the fastest I've seen him run yet!

I agree with @McPie. I was expecting us to spend most of these two games chasing shadows and the scorelines don't surprise me. However, I had been hoping to see some indication of what the new coach wants to do and some reasons to look forward to the new season. Nothing so far. If we'd played Middlesbrough and Coventry, I'd have wanted to see us have some good moments too instead of being totally reactive. Maybe it's so too soon though. MP wants to give all the players minutes and see what they can and can't do, so it's logical that we look disjointed. Perhaps the Stuttgart game will give us an inkling of what's in store. As for being gracious hosts, I'm looking forward to hearing from those who went. But I noticed that Lautern went out of their way to separate the fans, giving Notts fans a separate entrance and car park and even adding separation between the home and away fans for this match (although according to what I've read this was removed during the game). That's in contrast to Darmstadt, who actively encouraged everyone to mix and put us in what's normally a home block. I got the impression they'd have preferred it to have been behind closed doors. Fun fact: the Kaiserslautern manager Torsten Lieberknecht has managed all of the three German clubs we've played so far. The Lautern website has published an interview with him, but he doesn't really talk at length about Notts apart from us being a typical physical English team and having fast wide men.

After Darmstadt, another tough watch. Kaiserslautern's tempo, intensity and pressing had us flummoxed early on and it took us a while to deal with it. We looked more stable defensively in the second half. I'm still unhappy with Cotter being sent off as this denied one of our players the chance to play. Red cards make no sense in non-competitive games. There's a lot of work to do, but hopefully this will have been illuminating for the management team. I think the game in Stuttgart will be a lot more even.

I think the point of it is that they'll expose our weaknesses so we can work on them @NiftyNick. Agree that it's a tough watch though. Darmstadt wasn't very different. I didn't make it to Kaiserslautern today - I worked a lot of overtime this week (apart from Wednesday for the match - wasn't going to miss that one!). I feel absolutely fried now. I'm visiting the UK soon so it'll be time to buy chocolate for my army of nieces and nephews, possibly except the one who has just turned 18!

It was a completely absurd decision. Cotter was late and caught his heel, it was definitely a yellow at least. But the Lautern player's completely over the top reaction convinced the ref to show red. As an aside, Jatta got a six-match ban for threatening behaviour in the playoffs. Redondo's antics were worse. Having us see this game out with ten men makes no sense for either side. Do they want a competitive match or not?

Our next hosts have posted some information for fans (only in German, but you can Google Translate it). Separating home and away fans (to the extent of giving Notts fans a different car park) is rather OTT for a training ground friendly. But the good news is that the game will be streamed live on their official YouTube channel!

This one contains an interview with Florian Kohfeldt, Darmstadt's manager. He said it was the first proper match they'd had in terms of intensity and tackling, which is a good thing (except Hinchey's tackle early on, which he felt was OTT). And he said Notts are about the level of a third division team in Germany, so a good test.

Maybe they could all play @piedestrian, if we've got more options at the back that opens up the possibility of playing a back four with Bedeau at left back. With Iorpenda, Ness and McDonald, that's seven players competing for three or four places, so we're more than covered.

It's not really fair to judge the forwards based on that as they saw so little of the ball, I don't think we had a shoton oroff target in the first half. He did have a very heavy touch a couple of times early on and generally struggled to hold up the ball, but he wasn't the only one.

We were incredibly fortunate to only let in two goals in the first half, we got an absolute hiding. Five would have been a more accurate reflection. We were leaving gaps all over the place which they were running into, they had the freedom of the flanks and we couldn't handle their forwards. We were in a blind panic for the first half an hour or so. That's not meant as a criticism, it's just how it was. We had an experimental lineup in the first half while they played most of their first team, so it was always going to be a struggle. And let's not forget that several of their players were playing Bayern and co in the Bundesliga a little more than a year ago, so there was a gulf in class too. We stabilised a bit in the second half (especially after Platt, Bedeau and the rest came on), we closed the gaps and made them work harder for their chances so there's that.

He's a good interviewee, that's for sure! The start of the game was feisty after what looked to me like a high, two-footed challenge from Hinchy that he got booked for. The home team's manager was absolutely jumping up and down with rage, it was quite comical. A few moments later there was a melee after another challenge (which I didn't see very clearly) and a Darmstadt player got booked. It calmed down a bit after that though. That's how it looked to me, but it all happened right in front of MP. I'm not sure that the potato farmers (Kaiserslautern) will be tougher, they've had a lot of comings and goings and may not be the cohesive unit Darmstadt were in the first half. We've also got another game under our belts. It'll definitely be a tough game though. And it's true that the new coaches are working the team really hard. After the final whistle, the Darmstadt players shook hands with ours and headed down the tunnel. Meanwhile, the Notts players applauded the fans and then proceeded to have a full-blown training session on the pitch. Players were sprinting the width of the pitch and being timed individually, all sorts of stuff, it definitely wasn't your usual warm-down. I hope we reap the rewards!

And a view from the Notts block...

I'm glad he didn't join the franchise, and him going to L1 softens the blow somewhat. Sometimes you can improve the team as a unit even when you lose a quality player, and that's what we've got to do.

Great turnout from Notts! Very surreal but cool to see so much black and white in my adopted home. Make no mistake, Darmstadt absolutely murdered us to death in the first half. They just played through us. They looked like a proper team who were ready for the season, we looked like a pub team. They looked like scoring every time they came forward, which was often, and we couldn't handle Hornby at all. But then of course the team we fielded in the first half was essentially a second eleven with some trialists thrown in, plus we're earlier in our pre-season preparations than Darmstadt so they'll naturally look sharper. We were a lot more competitive in the second half, limited the home side to a couple of chances and had one or two ourselves. Reynolds had some good moments. @True Magpie, I think Matt Hall was the goalkeeper in the first half. I don't think either goalkeeper embarrassed himself, but we need an experienced man between the sticks. Overall, a great evening out and a useful workout for the team, but there's clearly some way still to go before we're really ready. By the way, Darmstadt have one of Germany's most cheesy stadium hymns...

This is going to fuel rumours isn't it? Especially the mardy statement by his agent blaming the club. I wouldn't be too quick to blame the club here, the authorities that deal with foreigners here are hopelessly understaffed and it's very conceivable that they wouldn't have got a tourist visa through in a month. But it's still incredibly frustrating for Jatta and the team. We're playing three games in Germany, so he'll miss a significant part of our pre-season preparations. MP won't get to work with him either.

I think I'll wait for the home kit. Surely we're due a good one.