StarkMallard

Colchester are where they are for a reason, but they've fought to avoid the drop and have won their last two. Earlier in the season they beat us 5-4 in one of those ridiculous games where we seemed completely in command yet kept gifting them a goal. Danny Cowley is their manager now, so expect aggressive pressing and long ball tactics. For the sake of the other teams at the bottom, we need to put in a professional display, play for pride and keep the hope of a place in the top half alive. If any of the players give it less than 100%, we could be in for an unpleasant afternoon.

Well I've pinned my hopes on an East Midlands rumpus in League One the season after next, so they'll have to stay put! I think they'll nail it though. If they get four points against almost-safe Cambridge and Carlisle, it won't matter what Posh or Bolton do. Three points would probably do it too. Say hello to our nearest and dearest next season!

We were on a bit of a hiding to nothing with Stockport needing a win to secure the title and us losing two of our best recent performers just before kick-off. But it's annoying all the same. To play the devil's advocate @menzinho, I think SM has realised that playing four at the back doesn't give this team any more stability defensively, but when we've played that way it has stunted us as an attacking threat. With Chicksen and Abebayo seemingly unavailable and Robertson probably not yet fully fit, the team pretty much picked itself. Which doesn't excuse some of the defending on display, of course. Langstaff should have put us in the lead, and until Baldwin's ridiculous slip it looked like we were going to give them a game. We looked shaken by the first goal and, like all good teams, Stockport were there to take advantage. Lady Luck deserted us for a bit with the penalty and the deflection, but at that stage the visitors were getting in so many attempts that more goals were inevitable. As they say in Germany, wipe your mouth and carry on.

Congratulations to them and to our resident Stag @Dan. It was very clear they had what it takes when they gave us the runaround at the Lane earlier in the season, and they were probably due a shot at League One after all the time they've been away. Nigel Clough has been there a while now, and not every season under him has been glorious. Owners who are wiling to invest in the team tend to demand instant success, but Mansfield's seem to be different. Good for them. Now I'm pinning my hopes on a promotion campaign next season so we can have us, the Stags, Florist and Derby in the same division!

The time is coming ... get your predictions in by 3pm on Saturday and see how far up that table you can get. Oh, and remember your ! In an outrageous turn of events, I'm away on Saturday, but I will get your scores to you in plenty of time (even if they look more like a mobile screenshot than usual). Good luck! Stoke City v Plymouth Argyle Sunderland v Millwall Blackpool v Barnsley Charlton Athletic v Shrewsbury Town Cheltenham Town v Lincoln City Doncaster Rovers v Barrow Grimsby Town v Swindon Town Sutton United v Crawley Town

The results: Preston North End 0-1 Norwich City Sheffield Wednesday 1-1 Stoke City Bolton Wanderers 1-1 Portsmouth Oxford United 5-0 Peterborough United Harrogate Town 2-2 Sutton United Newport County 1-2 Tranmere Rovers Bromley 3-0 Solihull Moors York City 2-0 Woking --- This week's winner is... drum roll... @nottsnutter! @nottsnutter - 11 @DangerousSausage - 10 @4everapie, @super_ram - 8 @Dan, @william1984 - 7 @cheeky~k8, @Fan of Big Tone, @Robbie - 5 @ARLukomski, @Megan_Elizax - 4 @gtownjohnno, @Harry Buckley - 3 @magpiejue - 2 --- With two rounds to go, @gtownjohnno and @william1984 need something big to overtake @ARLukomski. And I've done my play-off hopes no harm at all ARLukomski - 210 gtownjohnno - 203 william1984 - 198 super_ram - 191 cheeky~k8 - 186 Fan of Big Tone - 186 4everapie - 185 DangerousSausage - 184 magpiejue - 179 Dan - 176 Megan_Elizax - 161 nottsnutter - 144 DonnyNotts - 136 liampie - 133 Chris - 123 Joshua - 90 upthepies - 90 Robbie - 83 allardyces tash - 70 TheSkipper - 67 Harry Buckley - 66 KingWilliams - 66 CliftonMagpie - 55 thommo - 49 OoooooTommy - 45 NottsCountyKev - 41 JIMBO - 40 jimbob - 38 Nocturnal-Magpie - 38 AmericanPie - 36 KB1862 - 22 George L - 6 Canadian - 4 --- The next round is on Saturday, so fixtures will be posted on Wednesday. In the meantime, make sure your crystal balls are well polished and take care!

Delighted for the team, the fans and Mr Maynard. It's important for us as a club to have a positive end to the season and instill the belief that we can be looking upwards next season. And so what if it was a bit jammy? Luck tends to even itself out.

Preston North End 1-2 Norwich City Sheffield Wednesday 1-1 Stoke City Bolton Wanderers 0-2 Portsmouth Oxford United 2-1 Peterborough United (joker) Harrogate Town 2-1 Sutton United Newport County 0-0 Tranmere Rovers Bromley 1-0 Solihull Moors York City 2-0 Woking

You've hopefully worked out what to do by now - predict the following fixtures by 3pm on Saturday, and remember your joker. Good luck! Preston North End v Norwich City Sheffield Wednesday v Stoke City Bolton Wanderers v Portsmouth Oxford United v Peterborough United Harrogate Town v Sutton United Newport County v Tranmere Rovers Bromley v Solihull Moors York City v Woking

The Gulp would have been fun, but it sounds like one of those dingy little pubs with sticky carpets. Not sure that's the image the club is going for? Personally I think we should have gone for Bajner's Bar, with a 20-foot statue of our favourite twig-like Hungarian ex-Ipswich striker at the entrance. I do like The Nest though, it's understated but still magpie-themed. On a side note, The Nest was also the name of Norwich's old ground up to the mid-1930s. I'm fascinated by it. It was a proper dump.

A great result and deserved too. With the penalty and Harogate's period of pressure at the start of the second half, the game could easily have slipped away from us again, so it was great for us to get that second goal and decide it in our favour. I only saw some of the game on video (I heard the rest on the radio), but I thought Crowley made a decent fist of the Palmer-esque tidying-up role a little deeper in midfield. Let's have more days like this please!

Yes and no @Robbie. The licensing system is designed to stop clubs going bust mid-season and threatening the integrity of the competition. Yet in recent years we've still had a couple of clubs go into administration (which means automatic relegation) despite all the safeguards. In the lower divisions, clubs are just as unsustainable as they are in England. Very few clubs can break even on gate receipts and TV money of €800k in the third division, so they're dependent on a benefactor or a major sponsor to write off the losses. One example among many is Saarbrücken's main sponsor, the locally based Victor's hotel chain, which pumps more than €2 million into the club every season. In theory, club members have a controlling interest and could kick them out if they wanted. In practice, they know that would be the end of professional football in Saarbrücken if they did. On top of that, the German FA imposes silly and expensive ground requirements on third division clubs such as under-soil heating. Clubs are answerable to their members and hold annual general meetings and the like, so there is more transparency and fans' voices can be heard. But ultimately, he who pays the piper calls the tune. I think a licensing system was being considered in England, and the more club owners are held to account the better. But in both countries, if you want to compete at a professional level, you'd better have someone in the background who's paying for it.

All the teams you mention are still around @Robbie Dynamo Dresden never made much of an impact at the very top level, in the last few years they've been jumping between the second and third divisions and have just slipped out of the promotion places in the third division. They're a big club, averaging north of 25,000 at their matches, and take big followings away too. Think Sheffield Wednesday. Dresden is a big city that could easily support a top-flight club if they get their house in order. Dynamo Berlin (known here as BFC Dynamo) are also still around, but never had much in the way of support as they were the Stasi's favoured club in East Germany. This brought them league titles and European Cup runs back in the day, but now they're stuck in the regional fourth division and play to paltry crowds. Hertha are a different club based in the former West Germany; they played in the Champions League in the recent past but got relegated last season and aren't pulling up any trees this time. They play at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin - they rarely fill it, but are still the capital's best-supported club. I've been to Cologne's ground before, brilliant experience. Lukas Podolski played for them. They're in the Bundesliga but are struggling right now. This season they sacked their "animated" manager Steffen Baumgart, who then joined Hamburg, a former Bundesliga stalwart that got relegated a few seasons back and keep finding new and amusing ways to not get promoted. Here he is when forced to watch them at home when he was in quarantine. The finances of football are a bit different due to the rule that club members must have a majority of voting rights in their clubs (with a couple of exceptions), so instead of owners you've got investors and very big sponsors. In the lower leagues, clubs need to apply to the German FA for a licence every season - the FA look at the projected crowds and sponsorship income as well as the planned budget, and can accept it or demand improvements. If no licence is granted, the club is ejected from the league. In the third division, this has led to a situation where none of the teams that finished in the relegation zone were actually relegated - they all got a reprieve as other clubs were expelled instead!

Shall we have a look at what's going on elsewhere? There's been a lot of coverage of the Bundesliga title race, but most of it has focussed on Harry Kane. Kane's transfer to Bayern has actually been a success, with him scoring over 30 goals in his debut season there. Unfortunately for him and Bayern, they're faced with a seemingly unstoppable title rival in the form of a Bayer Leverkusen side that is still unbeaten and, with seven games to go, already has more points than Bayern won in the whole of last season. Where Bayern often rely on the individual talent of the likes of Kane and Musiala, Xavi Alonso has turned Leverkusen into a well-drilled unit that is now just three wins from their first title. Elsewhere, Stuttgart have had a fantastic season under Sebastian Hoeness and may run Bayern close for second. One curiosity about this season is that Bundesliga 2 has recorded higher average gates than the Bundesliga on several weekends. This is due to the fact that the Bundesliga has several clubs that rarely fill their grounds (Wolfsburg, Hoffenheim, RB Leipzig) and others with a ground capacity of under 20,000 (Darmstadt, Heidenheim), while the second tier hosts a number of fallen giants that draw crowds of around 50,000 (Hertha, Schalke, Hamburg). With Kiel pushing for promotion and Cologne flirting with the drop, this trend may continue into next season. There's been plenty of anger and shouting off the pitch as well - the plans of the DFL (German Football League), the body that runs the Bundesliga, to get an investor on board to sell the league's international TV rights in return for a cut of the income sparked widespread protests, with matches being stopped due to tennis balls or remote-controlled cars on the pitch. And most recently there was a bout of confected outrage over the national team's kit, with angry insecure men all over the internet feeling threatened by the colour pink. At least things are looking up for the national team - thanks in part to Julian Nagelsmann's revolutionary tactic of picking players who are in form for their clubs, Germany have scored a couple of impressive wins against France and the Netherlands and are suddenly looking in promising shape.

Nice surprise to see a good performance, and when viewed in isolation a point against a team that's flying and well in the running for automatic promotion is a more than decent result. Now I'm going to wade into the above discussion. Luke Williams was not solely to blame for our poor defensive record - our summer recruitment erred too much on the side of giving our promotion winners a chance in L2. By the time the January transfer window opened, it was very obvious that this had been a mistake, but LW had already left by then. Despite that obvious issue, the vast majority of the points we've picked up this season were under LW (42 in 26 games), and those points are the reason why we aren't in for a very uncomfortable April. As things stand, I don't see how we can justify the huge risk of keeping SM on for next season. Points-wise we have been the worst team in L2 since he was appointed, and it's not all down to bad luck. In particular his "strategy" of dropping back when we take the lead has cost us lots of points recently. All that said, I still want us to win and punch the air when we score. I'd like nothing more than for Stuart Maynard to prove his doubters wrong and I'll never understand the mentality of people who want to see us struggle.

Just a suggestion for @PON_News, we shouldn't be calling this outfit the Dons. Stolen identities shouldn't be acknowledged. Will we play three or four at the back? Which goalkeeper will win the toss this week? Even when we win a game, the pack is reshuffled for the next one. If you can't tell, I'm feeling a bit sick of it now. Football has a funny habit of surprising you when the in-form team meets the side that's bottom of the form table. We can only hope that Notts will pull off a surprise on Monday.

We owe Swindon one (or maybe several). We beat them earlier in the season when they were still unbeaten. I thought they looked a decent side, but they've fallen to pieces since and so have we. Prediction: abandoned after the Notts team coach gets lost on the magic roundabout; after a search party is sent out, a bewildered and starved Notts team is discovered a week later in Cornwall.

With football it's often easy to lose your sense of perspective. Our former DoF Sven-Göran Eriksson only has months left to live because of cancer, and at the weekend he got to realise a lifetime's ambition by leading out Liverpool at Anfield - a wonderful and touching gesture from all concerned. And how nice it is to see him smiling like that too. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2024/mar/23/sven-goran-eriksson-savours-huge-memory-in-life-at-liverpool

When I'm watching on iFollow, there tends to be a goal when I leave the room. So around the 85th minute, and with us still looking the likelier team to score, I went for a toilet break. Soon after I hear Dave Bracegirdle raise his voice - it's a goal! I do a little fist pump, finish up, wash my hands and go back to my computer. Oh. Sorry about costing us the point, but I doubt it'll count for much now anyway. I don't think we were as good as SM described (if we were playing so well, why change the formation at half time?), but nor were we terrible. We looked very purposeful at the start of the second half, but missed a few chances to take the lead and instead let ourselves down thanks to a moment of utter naivety at the end (coupled with the mystical powers of my toilet breaks). I'm not going to mention the defence because I'm just bored of it now. Going forwards, Jones has been excellent but we've become over-reliant on him now, which makes us predictable. And once again we get a changed selection and a different formation even coming off the back of a win, with Jatta and Langstaff evidently confused about who should be standing where. How can our players play as a fluid unit when they don't know what they're supposed to be doing? There's no wonder we can't build any momentum. Five home defeats on the bounce is the worst since the implosion of John Sheridan's tenure (have we ever lost six?). I'm finding it increasingly difficult to envisage Maynard leading us into next season. We badly need some leadership and organisation at the back next season if we're to avoid getting dragged into the mire and potentially doing a Hartlepool next season.

What a relief that was! You can see how much that meant from the celebrations at the end of the match. I feel chuffed for Stuart Maynard in particular. But now a lot will depend on the manner in which we follow it up - whether we grow in confidence or fall back into the same pattern as before. Saturday could go a long way to telling us where the journey will take us. I'm not getting carried away about the play-offs though. I'd be happy with a top ten position and something to build on for next season.

If we take the game to them like we did in the first half of the home fixture, we'll win. If we let them come at us like we did in the second half that day, we'll lose. Right now we're a bag of nerves and the manager still hasn't found his best team, but I've got my optimistic hat on so I'll go for a narrow 7-5 win, the goals coming from Randall (3), Slocombe, Palmer, Bajner and Stallard.

We had these well beaten in September but a lot has happened since then. Robertson has made himself indispensable and will be difficult to replace, we can only hope that Bostock will be available. Since he wasn't even in the squad on Tuesday, I'm not optimistic. Can only hope for a battling performance and some point at last. This is sacrilege. The wheelbarrow shall remain broken

As the others said, those substitutions robbed us of our outlet and put us under more pressure. We did need to make a change after losing a defensive midfielder, and it's normal to sacrifice an attacking player, but losing Langstaff, Crowley and Jones was too much. And I still don't understand what the point of Jatta is. I thought we generally played well and it was a close game, but we had already started to ride our luck when the sending off occurred. Slocombe had a great game, but had far too much to do.

I missed yesterday's game so I can't go into specifics too much. However, I suspect it was much the same game that I've seen several times already this season. I think many people are doubting whether we've appointed the right man. I think in many ways Stuard Maynard has been an unlucky general. We've always been competitive, we haven't been humiliated and we may well have picked up more points if it weren't for individual mistakes (which he can't do anything about). In addition, he's correctly identified our weaknesses and has been more proactive in addressing them than LW was. I've never had the feeling he's watched a different game to me. However, at some point results don't lie. As the losses stack up the owners need to ask themselves whether SM can lift the team we've got and make the right calls during games to get results. I think we're all having doubts. I just want to see us win again.

What a complete farce that was, I feel sorry for everyone who had a wasted trip. Some decided to see Bradford Park Avenue instead. Pretty telling that their pitch was OK yet City's wasn't. The moment I saw the Valley Parade pitch I knew it wasn't playable, and it probably hadn't been for quite some time. So what were the officials doing? I'm not sure I'd blame the ground staff though. A few weeks ago a German cup tie at Saarbrücken was postponed at the last minute (with the teams in the tunnel and all the stands full!) and their pitch looked identical to Bradford's. Saarbrücken recently had their ground rebuilt, and because the costs had spiralled, the council decided to save money on drainage. Maybe Bradford have drainage issues too. If the water's standing on the pitch every time there's a bit of rainfall, there's only so much the ground staff can do... But whatever the reasons, that doesn't change the fact that postponing a game so late is an absolute outrage.