Fully deserved to be named in the League 2 team of the season, Macaulay & Jodi.

End of the Statement from the Board 

"We ask you to continue your brilliant support of Stuart and the team between now and the end of the campaign".

There's a lot to get through here. A lot to pick apart from a season that promised so much but has delivered very little. Our aim, in my opinion, should have been the play-offs, if we recruited well in the summer that is. However that didn't happen and our season has faded into a feeling of emptiness.

Let's start with contract decisions. In the summer we renewed the deals of Kyle Cameron, Connell Rawlinson, Sam Slocombe, Aaron Nemane and Jim O'Brien. As KC was club captain, I can understand his 2 year deal, same with Aaron. Jim was offered a 1 year deal which was the correct thing to do. However, more thought was needed when it came to Rawlinson and Slocombe. Whilst both were rewarded for their loyalty, their promotion success and their longevity with us, neither are getting any younger. Both should've been handled the same as O'Brien with 1 year deals. Even the decision in March to give Chicksen a deal till 2025 was made a bit too much with the heart. Last season was his only good season for us.

It won't be the first time I mention this, but Stockport were ruthless in the summer of 2022, after they got promoted. Liam Hogan left, Ash Palmer was gone after 2 months of the season. Jordan Keane left and a few months later Mark Kitching and Ryan Johnson left as well. They ended the 2022-23 season with a back 3 made up entirely of new signings: Chris Hussey, Fraser Horsfall and Akil Wright, with January signing Neill Byrne on the bench. This was a team that kept 23 clean sheets out of 44 in their title winning season and they still made changes. This season (especially January seeing as we gave some players the time to prove they were good enough for League 2) was about progression over loyalty and we chose the latter.

Now our biggest problem this season. Recruitment. Something that has been more positive than negative in the Reedtz Bros era. However, this is the most we've got it wrong since summer 2020 (bar Ruben). A neglection of the defence, loyalty to players who we needed to bring in upgrades for, not covering for the injuries of Bajrami and Scott and sat doing nothing for over a month. 

Now the players we signed. I'm going to go through every single one. Firstly, Jodi Jones. This one we got right. He had a good loan spell with us and his record assists this season have shown what a good acquisition he's been. Next up, Will Randall. Where is he? He said in his interview that this deal was done before the end of last season. However, he's barely been available and he's been in and out of the squad this season through injuries, lack of fitness and not being selected for a matchday squad. Next, Didzy. We were very excited by his return at the time and he has produced moments of magic this season, but he's not been the same player as he was at Derby in 2022-23. His signing has also meant we've lost part of our front press, which made us so effective last season. I'm hoping he can drag some of the players together in these last 2 months and show them what it means to play for Notts.

Fourth signing, Dan Crowley. He started brilliantly and his return has been really good with assists and goals. However, of recent, his standards have dropped and his problems from spells at previous clubs look like they are appearing again. Sutton at home when he cupped his ears, then giving away a penalty in the same game. Ruben had off days but he dragged us through games and his late runs into the box and his pressing mean he was far more effective. Our fifth signing was Aidan Stone. He didn't have a good start at Sutton and he made a few mistakes, but then he had his best game against Barrow (A) and then we dropped him. Why? Why did we drop him? Just because Slocombe played well against Derby. He made mistakes in various games after that and his confidence dropped. After Gillingham (H), he was dropped from the starting x1 and we haven't seem him in the squad since. Overall, not an upgrade on Slocombe. There is a keeper in there but it just hasn't worked.

Then, we sat on our backsides doing nothing for over a month. We signed Aidan Stone on June 23rd. Our next signing was Ollie Tipton who was signed on July 28th. We spent over a month doing nothing when key areas of the squad, like the defence and cover in midfield, needed strengthening. We started our opening day game with Rawlo, Cameron and Brindley. Baldwin came back unfit. It was so clear we needed reinforcements in defence and here we were doing the square root of jack. Tipton made less than 5 appearances in all competitions and barely ever saw the matchday squad. He may do well elsewhere, but we never saw it. Lewis Macari was signed on loan on deadline day and permanently in December. He's been one of the big positives of this season and he's been our best defender by a huge distance. Feel bad for him because one of the few players who look cut out for League football. 

Dan Gosling. Brilliant. He hadn't played since November 2022 and we gave him a 2 month deal and with that amount of time, he was never going to get fit. I understand the deal from a financial side, but it just seemed a waste of a signing. Makes you wonder why we didn't bring in a centre midfielder in the summer. When Bajrami got injured we should have acted instantly. Then Palmer got injured and it left us with Bostock and O'Brien. 

Then January. Scott Robertson (other than Crawley) has been a good addition. He always puts his bundle of energy into every game and does the ugly side of the game well. Him and Palmer could be really nice next season. There is a player in Jaden Warner and I don't think we've seen it yet. I can see him going on loan to another club and having a good loan spell. His height and athleticism is the type of thing our recruitment team should be looking at more. He hasn't a great loan spell so far though, bar a solid performance against Wrexham. Luca Ashby-Hammond was a questionable one. He didn't have the best game for Crawley when they played us at the Lane and he didn't feel like a big upgrade on Stone and Slocombe. He had a good first two games against Newport and Wrexham, but hasn't been the same after that.

Whoever conceived the idea of signing Charlie Colkett needs to own up immediately. Why did we think signing a player who's played 15 times for Crewe in a season and a half, was a good idea. The guy had injury setbacks during that time as well. At the time we only had Robertson, Bostock and O'Brien. With Palmer and Bajrami out injured, we needed a centre midfielder who could come in and make an instant impact. Colkett was unfit and had barley played and we were signing him on loan from a team in the same division as us. The guy still hasn't looked fit in his sub appearances. Finally, Alassana Jatta. Another player who couldn't make an instant impact due to issues out of his control. We haven't seen him enough to make judgement yet and I don't think we should be judging him on three substitute appearances. Whilst I've seen people complain about signing a striker and not improving the defence, we did need a striker. Yes, we definitely needed defnders, but we only had Langstaff, Didzy and Morias. With Didzy playing attacking midfield, that leaves us with Macca and Morias, who has had injury troubles and times when he's fallen out of favour or just not been match fit, like Will Randall.

We have gone away from our recruitment strategy a little. The type of player that made us successful was signing younger hungry players, with energy and pressing abilities and players who are good on the ball. We started going towards a model of signing players who hadn't made it at top level academies and have since fallen down the leagues or players who've had injury troubles and are wanting to rebuild their career. It's worked for Jodi, it worked for Bostock up until about December 2023. It worked for Crowley until Luke left and it just hasn't worked for Colkett because signing him was just a complete waste of time. So when you go through a tough run of form like we are now, will them players get in the trenches and fight and drag us through games and get us points from nothing? I'm not sure other than Jodi.

We also don't have the required height, physicality and athleticism required at this level. It's why so many teams, even with lesser quality on paper, have just beaten us up physically. This league, as shown by last seasons promoted teams, is built on a good defence. The proof is in the stats, we may have the 2nd best attack in the league but we also have the joint worst defence. Gillingham have scored the least amount of goals in the league, but up until last night, they were in the play-offs. They, do however have the 6th best defence and whilst I don't want to give up our attacking play, not by a long stretch, a huge focus is needed on the defence in the summer. Like I mentioned earlier, Stockport were ruthless. The defence that got them promoted are now not at Edgeley Park at all. The players that are still there from the promotion winning season are: Ben Hinchliffe, Macaulay Southam-Hales, Ryan Rydel, Myles Hippolyte, Antoni Sarcevic, Ryan Croasdale, Paddy Madden and Will Collar. Ethan Pye was there but wasn't a regular member of the matchday squad like he is now. 

The final thing is Stuart Maynard. Was he my first choice of head coach? No. Do I want him to succeed? Absolutely. Is it working? No. Whilst our recruitment is the number one driving factor behind our fall, SM has made questionable calls. The poor subs against Crawley, to tactical tweaks that end up putting Jodi and Nemane on the same wing and some of his pressers, pre and post match being a bit puzzling. He's correct in his judgement to drop Brindley and Stone and he's correct that we've had defensive issues all season and we don't have the personnel and height required to defend our penalty area well enough. He's also not helped by our poor squad depth, which has been an issue all season, impacting who he can drop and who he can bring into the side. However his record since he's come in has been terrible. One win, one draw and seven defeats. Whilst I get the focus has been trying to make us better defensively, it has meant taking the focus off the attack and we haven't been anywhere near as energetic or fluid going forward as we once were.

Our defensive performances haven't been sustainable all season, but our goal difference has gone from +8 to 0, with 10 goals scored and 18 conceded. We've been average at best and absolutely horrendously shockingly terribly inept, dire and woeful at our worst. We still haven't won at home and our away performances are still not wielding points. 

I am thankful for what Chris and Alex have done so far, but they need to dig deep into their pockets in the summer because the squad needs a change and as it stands, the person in the dugout will to. I am also not sure about Richard Montague as well. He leads recruitment and the signings made have not been good enough. 

Matchday.11am start, Day one.

Notts v Worcestershire 

Notts have won the toss and will bat first.

Team below.

Game 44 - The Saddlers (A)

Team: Walsall

Date: 13/04/2024

Where: Bescot Stadium

What line-up should Stuart Maynard opt for? What will be the key areas for the Magpies to get a victory? What do you think the final score will be?

Have your say below, join in with the Pride of Nottingham match discussion.

What a fantastic season it has been for our Notts County strike force. We can safely say that we have the best in the League.

We have seen goals from every angle, whether we pass through the middle, go down the flanks or go long, our strike force has been so deadly.

What can you say about Macaulay Langstaff. Record goal scorer last season and likely to be the league's top scorer this season.

Jodi Jones who seems to get better and better each match he plays, with a record assist total in the top 5 leagues, it has been a phenomenal season for him.

Dan Crowley where everything  good seems to come through his creativity in midfield .

David McGoldrick, who came back to his boyhood club, but hasn't disappointed, forming a great partnership with Macaulay.

Aaron Nemane who is dangerous on the right and has seemed to get even better under Stuart Maynard 

Alassana Jatta, who came to Notts  in January and is now a regular in the team, partnering Macaulay, and gives Notts a new dimension up front.

A whopping 70 goals & 47 assists have come from this strike force this season, a phenomenal achievement and Notts still have 3 matches to go.

And we have Cedwyn Scott just waiting in the wings to contribute to that strike force next season.

Let's hope that we can keep this strike force together for next season but even if we lose Macaulay and Jodi we will still have a very potent strike force next season.

https://www.saddlers.co.uk/news/2024/january/mo-faal-joins-the-saddlers-on-loan-from-west-bromwich-albion/

Took Walsall's goal well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donervon_Daniels

"EFL clubs have unanimously approved a record domestic rights deal with Sky Sports over a five-year period with over 1000 matches to be broadcast each season – a record number of games for any club football agreement.

Running from season 2024/25 to 2028/29, the arrangement will be made up of guaranteed payments of £895m and £40m in marketing benefits".

Week 29 of 46

Notts' v Stockport match has been postponed.

Only four games in league 2 have escaped the weather.

MK Dons v Morecambe

Newport v Wrexham

Gillingham v Forest Green

Barrow V Crewe

David Noble and his assistant Neil Banfield have been relieved of their duties at Wealdsone. David was only appointed on 26th January following Stuart Maynard going to Notts.

A poor set of results sees Wealdsone in danger of relegation.

I enjoy reading the points of view other Fans on PON. Sometimes  their remarks are Serious other times Funny and other times Thought Provoking. However it's come to my attention that other Authors on other Media platforms are stealing (for want of a better word) ideas comments and authors remarks from the Notts Fans who write on this sight. Case in point the other day I suggested that perhaps Luke Williams may speak to the Swansea board about signing Macca and low and behold a couple of Days later some Hack had taken my comment and had written an article around it. There have also been other segments of articles I've seen and as I read it I think I'm sure I've read this on PON. While I'm sure there isn't anything we Fans can do about this, should you be one of these people who take Notts Fans remarks stories or Topics from this site, then at Least Have the decency (which probably something New to you) to quote the Pride Of Nottingham as your source. Any other PON Members come across this?

I’ve stumbled across a table that might be similar to what was in the Reedtz Brothers recent statement. It ranks the teams on how well they create chances (Expected Goals - XG) and how easily the opposition create chances against you (Expected Goals Against - XGA). And then it calculates the points from that.

You can view the table here: https://footballxg.com/xg-league-tables/ You then need to click on the drop down menu on the right hand side which says "League" and change it to: England - league 2.

A little XG explanation for those who need it:  XG, it’s a is a metric designed to measure the probability of a shot resulting in a goal. So if one player has a chance from two yards out in front of an open goal, and another player has a shot from 40 yards out and near the touchline, clearly one has a far greater chance of scoring than the other. XG simply assigns a value to every shot. So if you are producing a high XG but not scoring many it likely means the players are simply not good at finishing (or you keep coming up against very good GK, unlikely though). Whilst at the same time if your XGA is very high but you’re not conceding many goals it probably means you’ve got a great keeper amongst a bit of luck (cos the chances of the opposition constantly missing chances would be slim).

This is my first time seeing this table too, I know a little bit about XG but I’m not claiming to be an expert. I certainly don’t think it’s the be all and end all of stats as I know there are many aspects of football that you can’t really measure and you can still have a dangerous attack that doesn’t end in a shot for whatever reason. But I get how it can be helpful when assessing a team’s performance in terms of how well they attack and defend.

It's helpful that they’ve used colour coding, green for good and red for bad (there are no surprises for the colours for our chances created and conceded here!) So in this table we are in 8th position and if the games were decided by XG we would've had 6 more points. We’re very good at creating chances, we’re also very good at giving the opposition good chances too. Interestingly we are overperforming our XG, but to be honest all good attacking teams will usually do this. Even though we've conceded the most goals, by our XGA stats we aren't the worst in the league - just the third worse! It is still high/bad though and giving away all those penalties won't have helped either. That said based on these stats it suggests we’ve conceded 8 goals more than we should've. That would most likely come down to a few long-range goals but also probably some shots our keepers should’ve saved…

You can change the "start date" by just typing in "20/01/2024" to see the table from SM's time (that was his first game). Whilst you can’t argue the fact we’re bottom of the form table (only by a point now though), we’re mid-table based on XG/XGA and this data has us with 9 more points in that time period too. I guess this is why the board are more hopeful than the majority of us fans!

League 2 Morecambe have been deducted 3 points by the EFL which will be effective immediately, and basically ends their bid to make the playoffs.

They drop to 14th place, 2 points ahead of Notts, having played one game more than Notts.

Further information in the link below.

This lad sits near me in the Pavis he’s definitely passionate.

Notts chief executive, Joe Palmer, provides an update on several exciting projects – including news that their plans to develop a state-of-the-art fanzone and events space have been approved

Swansea were well beaten at home by Southampton yesterday although watching the highlights they had some good chances, Williams said after the match it will take time to get their ideas across. I wonder how patient the Swansea fans are?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/68703922

Well it's that time of year when Notts have come to their last four games of a long season.

It has been a very entertaining season that began with so much promise, but as other teams found a successful way to play us, the season fizzled out somewhat because as many as we have scored we have almost conceded. And losing an exceptional Head Coach at the end of the year didn't help either.

But we can take some really good positives such as our attacking unit being the most potent strike force in League 2 by scoring an impressive 83 goals with four games to go 

My shortlist for player of the season will suprise no one, being chosen from our impressive attacking unit.

Macaulay Langstaff, who has followed up his record of most Notts County goals in a season, by scoring 25 this term in league 2 with 4 assists.

David McGoldrick, who came back to the club he started his career with and played a supporting role to Langstaff and has scored 12 goals and has 3 assists.

Dan Crowley: When Ruben Rodriguez left Notts, it was always going to be tough for Notts to replace him, however, Dan has gone a long way in proving people wrong in that regard, by being so influential from an attacking midfield perspective for Notts, scoring 14 goals with 9 assists.

Jodi Jones has been an absolute sensation for Notts this season. Much of the attacking threat has come through Jodi on the left side, so much so that he is had the most assists in the football pyramid with a phenomenal 22 and he's also scored 5 goals.

Aaron Nemane, has been another big attacking threat from the right side, with his pace, he's always going to be dangerous to our opponents. Aaron has scored 7 goals , with 3 assists.

I want to give a special mention to Alassana Jatta who joined us during the January transfer window has has made a big impression since he arrived scoring 5 goals from 9 appearances with 1 assist.

It's been hard to choose a winner because they have all contributed so well, however, my winner has to be Jodi Jones, because 22 assists is absolutely exceptional.

So my top three list is

1, Jodi Jones.

2, Macaulay Langstaff.

3 Dan Crowley.

I hope this doesn’t come across as insensitive but it seems like every match now there seems to be a round of applause start up on a particular minute of the match. On Saturday I didn’t even know what we were clapping for which seems a bit futile really. I get it if a former player or manager dies but it just seems like it’s every week.

Why we’re we clapping in the match against Harrogate does anyone know?