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Graham

NewPie
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Everything posted by Graham

  1. @piedestrian, I can't argue with this analysis but I am still clinging onto the (perhaps desperate) hope that the high quality, high tempo and exciting football football we have been given very brief glimpses of (e.g. Newport first half) will translate into a proper 90 minute performance at some point soon. I do have some worries though. Here is my top 4: 1. The players are currently too tentative and look like they don't fully understand what is being asked of them tactically. 2. There is a lack of movement when we have possessionand there are too many examples of miscommunication between players (understandable at the start of the season but won't be after 15 matches). 3. Jodi hasn't smiled all season and hasn't yet really got going in his new role. (How many players are enjoying life under the new regime? 4. Dennis in his most recent interview appeared to be dwelling on the challenges of adapting to a new environment more than the excitement of being at a new club and starting well. It is hard not to imagine that Paterson is currently passing on slightly more of the stress he feels under than is good for the players. That said, we have to remember that Paterson has started a lot better than Maynard who, if my memory serves me correctly, won one and lost six of his first eight league games as Notts boss.
  2. I think you've hit the nail on the head @Sheffield Pie. There does appear to be a lack of obvious identity at the moment. Initially with the brothers, it was made fairly clear that the playing style was set by them and that all appointments of coaches and players were carefully chosen for how well they fit with this style. The brothers have either lost confidence in the style and are deliberately experimenting with a different type of coach who has brought with him a different playing philosophy, or they are now realising that the appointment of Paterson was an error. Whatever happens, it wil be interesting to see how this particular story ends ....
  3. Hello all, many thanks for the warm welcome - very much appreciated, and many thanks to anyone who has taken the time to read my article and leave a comment. To the fan of Big Tone, I would have bought you a pint but you're too late. I've already spent the winnings! 😉
  4. The recent wins against Shrewsbury, Tranmere and Fleetwood have given us all a lift, so it might seem a strange time to be focusing on the discontent of fans, but that’s what I intend to do in this short opinion piece. We don’t always see eye to eye with our fellow supporters but I believe most Notts fans would agree on two things. Firstly, that for the players and new coaching team it has been an uncertain start to the season, and secondly that the mood of the fans is noticeably different this season. It seems to me that, despite the wins, we are generally less confident of success, and more impatient to see improvements than we have been at any time since the end of the Alan Hardy era. Also, there appears to be a hardening of the attitudes of many supporters towards our owners Christoffer and Alexander Reedtz. For the first time since they bought the club in 2019, they are becoming targets. There is nothing new about football club owners being targets for fans. Very often it is not difficult to see the reasons why. Owners attract criticism for being too mean, too broke, too loyal towards unsuccessful managers or too distant and aloof from the fans. I would argue that, despite some recent disappointing (for fans) decisions in the transfer market, and uncharacteristically muddled communication, none of these really apply at Notts. Our owners have a coherent and sensible plan which they are not afraid to review and revise. They have deep enough pockets to cover losses. They are investing in infrastructure and, although most supporters would like to see more of them, they are not afraid to meet with fans and field questions. Reflecting on the above made me question whether there might be something else going on which might explain the change that I have noticed. The change in question is not so much the mere fact of criticism, which of course is entirely healthy and normal, but the nature and strength of feeling which appears to be driving it. If I am right and there is something else significant going on, I wonder if the answer lies in the nature of the world of business which our owners come from. More specifically I wonder if there is a fundamental mindset difference between our current owners and ourselves which is magnifying the potential for ill-feeling. All businessmen are gamblers. Our owners, because of their close links to the betting industry through their company Football Radar, are gambling experts. They have made an understanding of the science and mechanics of football gambling their life’s work and they sell their expertise to the betting industry. They work in an industry in which large numbers of small investors (i.e. the betting public) lose money to bookmakers. This happens because bookmakers make sure that their assessments of probability and risk are better than the collective assessments of probability and risk of their customers. Football Radar’s expertise lies in the collection and analysis of vast quantities of data. It is a business built entirely on dispassionate observation and measurement and analysis and deals with rationality, logic, mathematics, very large data samples, and long time frames. In terms of mindset and psychology, we fans are the complete opposites of our owners. Supporting a football club is not a rational and objective pastime; our emotional involvement with our club makes us very subjective; and our time frames are generally short. Supporting a football club has been said to sometimes resemble an addiction, sometimes a religion, and sometimes both. It is akin to a religion in its requirement for enduring faith in the face of suffering, and in the god-like status to which we accord our heroes. It is like an addiction because we invest an enormous amount of emotional energy in a hobby which we know is bad for us, and we know is far more likely to frustrate and disappoint than to reward us with joy. Also, it is the intermittent emotional reward of the battling win on the road or the last-minute winner which gives us the dopamine rush which we then crave until the next big hit. So, here’s the crux of the problem. In our club, when our management team fail to successfully negotiate a contract with our star player and then sell our highly rated goalkeeper, our focus turns towards our owners, and we see immediately that they are not one of us. We are emotionally invested. They are dispassionate risk assessors making long-term calculations. We need heroes and dopamine hits. They need a long-term return on an investment and, within their model, what that means is better metrics, or more time for the laws of probability to play out. We need them to show how much they care. They need us to be patient. Although I don’t know them, there is a lot I really like and admire about the Reedtz brothers. I like their thoughtfulness. I like their measured approach to things. I like their attitude of continuous learning and continuous improvement. There is something very endearing about their deference, their lack of flamboyance and their quiet introversion. Also, I believe there is something about the soul of our club which suits their style and their values. I have no way of knowing what the brothers make of us, but I sometimes wonder if they find us as hard to understand as we find them. I sometimes fear that one day they will get tired of the criticism and move on. What I want is for them to stick around and achieve the goals for our club that they set out in 2019. Perhaps when we as fans, and they as owners, learn to better recognise, respect and understand our differences, these goals will become easier to achieve. Robbie has shared an important update from Notts County regarding LifeLine and the funds it continues to raise for the club; read what the fans have to say on this. Read Notts County defender Jacob Bedeau's thoughts on the magpies' first clean sheet of the 2025-26 League Two season, and what Martin Paterson said at half-time.

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