StarkMallard

It isn't a Notts thing, it's a modern football thing. There are replica away shirts to be sold. And on top of that, away shirts often carry a different sponsor, and it'll probably be part of the agreement that the away sponsor is worn a certain number of times. If we only wear a change strip twice, the deal with the University of Nottingham would be worth less. I'd also like to see us wear our traditional colours more (or at least when the home strip isn't an ugly mess).

It's always a tough place to go and we don't tend to do well there, but having missed the start I never really doubted that we'd find our way back into the game and take at least a point. Really impressed by the character they showed today - not everything came off, but when we lost the ball we'd be snapping at their heels straight away and often won it back quickly. Hard work pays off, but the assistance from Rick O'Shay was also appreciated Chuffed for Stuart Maynard and the travelling fans. We are top of the league!

Accrington looked very Conferencey to mee and we know how that ends. However, you can only beat what's in front of you and we lost against some very poor sides last season. Winning is a habit, long may it continue! Regarding Scott, it's a bit unfair to judge him based on a cameo. However, many of his appearances have been cameos, and often out of position too. His spell with us has been stop-start in general, and while that isn't anyone's fault, I think the next few months will be important for him. I hope his injury isn't anything major.

As far as I know he still is @Blake. At that level, managers typically have a day job, and training will be a couple of evenings after work. He played yesterday, so he hasn't quite finished playing altogether. They lost 7-1 though.

Brilliant. Promotion contenders find a way to win even when things don't quite go to plan. Last season we didn't win many of those "smash and grab" points because we were just too easy to score against. I only saw the end of the game but a win is a win!

Now manager of Clifton All-Whites in the UCL (who are disappointingly playing in blue today). He appears to have hung up his boots.

Great performance yesterday. Crowley and Jones were outstanding (and must be kept!), but in general we were a class better than Grimsby. They get stick sometimes, but credit must go to the recruitment team who have a knack of bringing in proper footballers who no one else seems to have in their sights. We saw the result of that on the pitch last night. There were some borderline calls and lady luck did help us out at times. I'm not convinced that Crowley handled the ball for his first and Jatta was about level for his goal, but if we had VAR neither goal would have stood. I also think Grimsby would have had a penalty as Hinchey was nowhere near the ball. But we were much the better side and would have won regardless. Finally, 10,000 on a Thursday night is amazing. I remember being glad to get more than 4,000 for midweek games.

I'd have played Bass to help him settle in, but apart from that it looks like a strong team and a strong bench. Three players make their first start for us, I'm particularly interested in what Edwards has to offer.

Unfortunately the iFollow replacement was absolutely dreadful and I gave up on it in the second half. However, I thought the new defensive signings looked solid. Bass had little to do but looked competent. As I wrote above, the game was a bit tepid with neither side looking to take risks, but a point on the road is a steady result.

It's been a really tepid game. We look well organised but pose little threat so far.

I can't see us playing Grant, I don't think he's even had a training session with us. If Robertson is fit he'll start, alongside either Edwards, Hinchy or even Crowley. It'll be interesting to see whether we'll persist with three at the back with wing backs this season. SM switched to four at the back at times last season. @NottsCountyKev, if it's a miserable day for the mood hoovers, I think most of us could settle for that!

You can't have 24 senior players @Wheelbarrow repair man, 22 is the maximum. We'll no doubt leave a couple of slots empty so we can bring in targeted reinforcements in winter, as many other teams do as well. It should also be plenty enough providing we don't have a long injury list. Time will tell on that one.

There's no need to worry about the results of friendlies, I've seen us go through pre-season unbeaten only to get relegated the following season. There was some very casual defending for the goals, which you wouldn't expect once things get started in earnest. It's about building fitness and giving the new players an understanding of playing together, so I'm concerned that we don't seem to have a settled midfield yet. It's looking increasingly likely that Palmer won't be in the starting 11 when the season starts, which is also a bit disappointing. Against Peterborough I'd like him to feature and Scott to score a goal. How did Edwards play yesterday?

Baldwin was a bit of a strange one, at times he looked outstanding, but as Stallard said he always had a mistake in him, and often an infuriating one too. And he definitely needed new boots! I'm glad he's staying in League Two, but maybe he can gift us a goal or two for old time's sake

I think we need a new forum to accommodate all the "Ricardo Moniz has got a new job" posts. He's the football equivalent of a supply teacher Good luck to the bloke though!

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.

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.

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.

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.