theAnticlough

Only a few had respectable games, the rest ranging from sub-par to atrocious.

I went for McDonald, generally solid and alright with the ball. JJ had his best game inside so far, but that's not saying much. Some really good moments mixed in with some poor ones. An upward curve and maybe worthy of another go or two there, but I hope he's not selected for MoM. He's not there yet IMO

9 minutes ago, Fan of Big Tone said:

I thought the cross was from Tsaroulla maybe I heard it wrong from the radio?

Yes, it was.

Pity the same player was the last man there with a chance to stop their winner

We haven't been the same since LW walked out.

The decision-making at the club all-round hasn't been great from that time (apart from Jatta, Platt, Bedeau, Bass coming in under Montague, who's gone)

Who's to blame? That'll need a 'blame pie' and cutting slices. The fans won't be part of that, because they've given the club great backing.

There's no magic fix to this poor start. Just the normal tools - 1) swap the players around searching for the best possible blend and some fight 2) one or two final desperate signings 3) assess the Head Coach like all clubs do, by results, and act accordingly.

Fortunately for Gagliardi, he's safe. Directors always get a longer period to be assessed.

What to do about Aljofree? That's the danger of recruiting from Man Utd, you get Man Utd level performances.

Seriously though, that was way below the level required - the way he was beaten for the first and his poor distribution throughout. MP will hesitate when picking him again. Is Ness ready? Could Cotter play there?

He's only young, so we'll give him more chances. But he can't have games like that.

We look and act like a team that will struggle to collect points

It's on Recruitment, and the players, but we are now at the stage where MP will have to be accountable too.

In modern football, in all leagues, what happens to managers of teams that are stuck at the bottom even at the start of the season? That's the position MP is in now, so he/they better do something about it.

So bad.

Iorpenda and especially Aljofree have been absolute liabilities, and nothing from Gordon as per usual.

Hall for Gordon please, JJ wide, what have we got to lose. As it is, we just don't look like scoring at all.

On 14/08/2025 at 08:34, Piethagoram said:

You have a nice house Piethagoram, and love that you've done it up in black and white, but you've got to keep on top of that big lawn of yours

7 hours ago, Chris said:

and that leads me to just hope that we do play with more intent on goal and less carelessness in passing the ball. I would like us to try to attack through the middle; yes, we have good wide players, but it shouldn't rule out just how much space can open up in this area.

We need to see better play from the inside forwards than we've had in the first two games. At some point I'd like to see Hall and Luker playing behind Dennis with JJ wide. There might be something there

@Fan of Big Tone, always hated dreams! I've been happy that I remember very few...and those rare ones that I do, I give little attention to, just dismiss and forget.

I think we can solve all our problems with the conscious mind. I don't need to see a random acquaintance from 40 years ago come back and scare the living **** out of me!

What I learned recently @Fan of Big Tone is that when a tooth can't be extracted in the usual way it has to be extracted 'surgically'. So when a tooth is split, cracked or whatever you can't grip it as a whole tooth with the forceps. The gums have to be cut open so the dentist (or 'Oral Surgeon') can get at it piece by piece. And then you're stitched up afterwards. So it felt like about 3 separate extractions and there all the parts were on the table afterwards. I'm not sure if the terrible pain I had after was worse because of the surgical part of it. All I know is that it's 500% better today :)

20 minutes ago, Fan of Big Tone said:

Anyway today I have a doctors appointment about my blocked ears so hopefully I’ll get some respite from that soon.

Hope it goes well Big Tone

I know it's only the 3rd game but we really need a win. To me it feels like the recruitment and the players owe MP a better performance and a victory.

Some thoughts on the team...

Iorpenda complements Palmer well and should start there instead of further forward - we kind of miss out on his running and athleticism when he has duties to stay higher

Sooner or later, we will face the question of RWB. Are we a struggling team that really needs an extra defender there? Or can we play someone with more goals and assists in them? Cotter's done well, but if the game is looking like the last 2 we'll be drifting to 1 or 0 pts unless we shake it up and move Jones wide, at HT or 55mins at the latest.

Surgical molar extraction yesterday, anyone had one of those?

It was heavy going for a while immediately after but pills allowed me to sleep and it's bearable today. I don't know what I can eat though. Hopefully, Notts can cheer me and everyone else up tomorrow.

Preston North End 1-1 Leicester City

Swansea City 0-1 Sheff United

Leyton Orient 1-1 Stockport County

Reading 1-0 AFC Wimbledon

Barnet 1-2 Walsall Joker

Tranmere Rovers 2-1 Gillingham

Aldershot 2-1 Boston United

Hartlepool United 1-1 Braintree

@Piethagoram,@Wheelbarrow repair man, agree that the Jodi situation is an important one to keep an eye on.

Stall is on a roll so far this season, and voiced on the podcast what I felt but hesitated to write on here - it's unlikely to work out for him at No.10. Although he's probably going to get a couple more matches though to prove us wrong, I suspect he's going to be moving back to the wing.

That's going to pose MP with a set of choices. He seems as wedded to 3 across the back as IB,LW and SM were, so the only wide position is 'wing-back' (unless you really go for it like LW, although even the likes of Nemane were expected to defend). Then he'd have to decide left or right? And choose between really different options, for example Cotter or Jones? Will he be willing trade defense for more attacking threat?

So not only does MP have to find a winning formula and work out a best XI, he'll have to deal with some big structural questions related to the team as well. He's really going to earn his corn. Good luck to him.

Stronger team than we've seen for the League Cup in recent years. That's what MP said he'd do and he's been true to his word.

A priority will be giving key players a chance to get sharper and find form.

Yeah now the 'technical board's been set up formally, it has to be allowed to do it's job.

I laughed watching Magpie Circle when Mace read out a comment 'sack the technical board'. My view on that is the complete opposite. It should be untouchable! It's only a more official way of describing what goes on at all clubs to some degree - collaboration.

And Paterson is part of this technical team, not outside it. So sacking the board includes sacking him - hardly fair that, is it?

We need a Head Coach willing to collaborate with the other professionals employed at the club. MP has said repeatedly that he's happy to do this. If ever we had a manager that doesn't want to get the benefit of the analysis, and doesn't want to be accountable, that manager should go as the club/board would deserve better. Ditto for the head of recruitment, who has as much to be accountable for as the coach.

I'll say one thing though - the players have to be protected. Having your performance scrutinised too much might take the joy out of the profession for them, like teachers or the police drowning in admin. The club needs to find ways to make NCFC an enjoyable place to be. We don't want MP, Edwards and Slocs coming out of meetings weighed down by a long to do list, as this misery could be passed on to the players. Joy can't be measured unfortunately, but we need to play with as much of that as possible. LW pulled that off, so it can be done.

Definitely @Robbie, I really like MP. Let's hope there's a winning formula somewhere in the squad for him to find.

Those adaptations though....

You could say 'a subtle change in the programming for their football radar analysis system'

or

the start of a kind of flip-flopping Trew did with his manager appointments, swinging from one side of the options to the other. We're supposed to have an attacking, ball-playing, possession-based approach. But let in a few goals - go more defensive. Get beat a few times by some bruisers - get tougher, recruit more physical players.

How the season plays out will provide the answers. Have the club been really smart in recalibrating their data model? Or have they just confused themselves? Hoping and praying for the former, obviously.

Great topic.

My answer is no, it hasn't been abandoned. But it's certainly been adulterated over time since the high-water mark of Luke Williams' ultra possession based approach.

I think it's been slipping away in many different ways. To take one example, the recruitment of centre midfielders. Palmer and Bostock were signed because they fitted the approach. They were the engine room of our promotion and quick sprint to the top of L2. After their injuries, it's never been the same again since. And then comes the ideas of introducing grit, not being so nice and being more difficult to play against.. It looks like Norburn was signed fitting this mould rather than the criteria used when we signed Bostock and Palmer.

I'm still shocked by how Norburn played against Salford. Palmer was doing all those things to make space to receive the ball - second nature for a midfielder who knows exactly how we have to play. In contrast, Norburn passively let himself be marked out of the game in the press. But was he ever in a possession-based team at Shrewsbury or Blackpool? I don't know. Maybe not. Many lower league footballers expect the Goalies and defenders to go long rather than look for their holding midfielders. And we all know what happened on the one main occasion we tried to pass to him. Overall, he didn't play anything like a No. 6 in a possession-based team playing at home.

The last CM a bit similar to that, someone who didn't always show for the ball, was Michael Doyle. He was a Hardy/Ardley signing before the Bros and Montague arrived. And I don't think he was playing a pure possession-based approach all those years at Sheff Utd & Coventry. We only really got going in the NL when the likes of MP were given control of the engine room.

The point I'm trying to make is that our identity can be eroded in many different ways. One of those would be recruiting different types of midfielders, or for any key position. We swapped Baldwin and Cameron for sturdier defenders, but are they better ball players? No. I'm not saying one approach is right or wrong. But we have been drifting into an identity crisis IMO.....by keeping the original philosophy / footballing principles as a kind of mission statement, while moving away from it bit by bit with every compromise and adaptation to the league were in.

40 minutes ago, Garry Lee said:

Palmer and Norburn, It’s like Gerrard and Lampard. To be brutal I think we’ve been sold a complete dud in Norburn.

Gulp, anyone would be forgiven for thinking that on the evidence of yesterday.

He's only coming up to 33 next, so let's pray he's not the latest David Vaughan, Harry Arter, Dan Gosling. At the post-match meeting, it's Gagliardi who will have to squirm in his seat, not MP.

When older players drop off from the level they were playing at, often through injury or age, the temptation is a think the drop is a level or two down. This can be a fatal error. The professional leagues in the English pyramid are pretty tightly bunched in terms of level and the depth of quality stretches down into the NLs. So when a player like Gosling for example drops off from Watford's required level - the combination of age and injury impact sends him plummeting all the way down to Westfield.

Let's hope Norburn is not one of these cases, or you'll be right, we bought a dud and we lost the receipt :)

One things for sure though, we should hesitate to play them together. Each need youth, legs, running and athleticism next to them

Have we abandoned our footballing philosophy?

No, but we sure have lost the knack to put it into practice.

Bennetts, and I didn't have to think too hard.

He created promising situations with his speed and skill and also did useful defensive work.

Palmer can hold his head high again and well done Jayden Luker for providing some attacking threat. The anti-MoM would be Norburn by a mile. That takes some doing with Roos there too. I also thought key players we rely on were quite poor today - Platt & Jones

Yeah, the referee.

I was listening to Stall today. He mentions so many rules-related issues in the modern game which are spot on, you just can't argue against them.

Taken together though the game at L2 level is a real mess and we'll eventually reach a breaking point.

But you can't have any faith in the authorities to even understand the issues. They're the same people who have brought in the ridiculous 8 seconds or a corner rule, which as Stall says won't be implemented anyway.

8 f****g seconds is 8 seconds of our match fee going down the drain...If the two goalkeepers take it to the limit 10 times each then I want that part of my ticket refunded :) How about they play the ball immediately 'without delay', like in the NBA. The fact that the rules-making don't think like this at all, makes me think we'll be suffering for some time yet with all the playacting, time-wasting and dark arts in general.

7 minutes ago, Robbie said:

On this evidence there is still a lot work to do for Martin Paterson. I think we will see slightly different line ups, till Martin can be comfortable with the starting team line up.

I think we may have to wait up to ten games to see what could be the finished article when it comes to the matchday squad.

This is for sure.

The shocker today was Norburn - the kind of performance that will stay with some fans, Harry Arteresque.

Looking for positives, I thought Palmer followed up last week with another game looking like his old self. Well done, Jayden Luker for the goal and some other good moments of play. Bennetts was our best player IMO

Where to start? That's a bottom half team there if ever I've seen one.

Starting randomly with Cotter, that's the 2nd game running he's had a good first 30mins, then faded dramatically. He's been far from our worst player but it looks like we have that old problem of a full-back playing as a 'wing-back'. MP will have to decide if that's what he wants to carry the attack down one whole side of the pitch. Playing him with Aljofree behind is what a releagtion threatened team might do. So keep that in your bag MP, but if we really have any ambition..?

Second best and especially in midfield.

Palmer's been alright, but I've never seen a player allow himself to be marked out of the game so passively as Norburn today. It's reduced us to 10 ten effectively. I woudn't be surprised if he came off at HT, with Iorpenda back and Tyrese Hall on

I feel sorry for Bennetts and Cotter.

Individually, they've done OK as wing-backs. Without any semblance of team play though, it's very difficult for them to have an impact.