Makes you wonder why anyone would want to own a football club.

According to the Bromley website it says “Bromley Football Club can confirm Andy Woodman is to depart his role as manager with immediate effect following the mutual termination of his contract.” Doesn’t quite sound like the sack, but a mutual agreement. Maybe their style of playing was suited to the NL and league 2, but doesn’t work in league 1.

I think that is psuedo speak for 'why don't you resign before we sack you? It would look better on your CV'.

(Also costs less in compensation!)

Or maybe I'm just being cynical again 🤔

Yes, “mutual termination of contract” sounds better than “sacked” but it amounts to the same thing. “Look Andy we aren’t happy with how things are going we think you should consider your position, if we say your contract is mutually terminated it sounds better for you”

Some really good individual performances in this match. Grants best game in a Notts shirt for me, Robertson was really good and Kanu did well and is improving with each game. My vote though goes to Finneran, he is full of natural talent, quality on the ball turns and drifts past players as though they are not there. He is surely going to be playing in the premier league before too long. We are extremely fortunate to have him on loan.

We always play better when Grant is on the pitch! Said it many times before.

Huge talent, subtlety, awareness and creativity in abundance.

The poll ha now closed. Thanks to all who voted. I'm pleased to announce that Rory Finneran has been voted the Pride of Nottingham's Man of the Match v Sheffield Wednesday.

I remember the name, but not much else. I love that Neil Warnock is living his life how he wants, and shows little signs of not retiring properly. The thought of managing overseas is amusing to me. Good on him for not allowing his age to prevent him from living.

3 seasons at Meadow Lane @Fan of Big Tone and you don't remember him???

Just in case you missed him, he made zero appearances as a keeper🤣

Yes, he came from Scarborough with Warnock

Yes! That was so much better in every single way. More of this please and less of the other thing.

Downside of last is, for all the chances created we still didn't look like scoring, and relied on a penalty

Wow, totally unexpected, I’m not sure how we managed to get such a turnaround in performance so quickly from the weekend but we did!

It's eased the thoughts that we were possibly sliding into Martin Paterson's Burton side, because last night’s performance was the opposite.

It felt like the plan was more in-kin with what MP had hoped would work from the Oxford match. Except this time, we tweaked it so we weren’t so overrun in the middle of the pitch. The press was a lot more coherent and aggressive. It relied on us winning those duels especially as the back 3 followed the Sheffield Wed attackers when they dropped deep and ended up as high as the halfway line. And we seemed to commit more to passing out from the back, at Wycombe when Belshaw had the ball it went long pretty much every time.

Best performance of the season by a mile, we knew this season was going to be tough but results like that make it totally worth it!

Cal Roberts played for Scunthorpe as an attacker on many occasions.. if our present strike force can't get the goals needed why not try Cal upfront with an extra midfielder supporting him?

I think this is now the beginning of the pressure for ol' Patto. He's getting jumpy in terms of becoming more defensive, less press orientated and trying different players.

We need to stick to a team because without it, players become uncommon with player relationships, bad players relationships lead to errors and errors lead to defeats.

I wonder if League 1 is a bit of a sensitive scar for Patto?

Although I can't see it, we need something out of these next three games or there will be a calling for Martin's head - especially when someone so revered and known for their attacking, creative style at Notts, waits in the wings and unattached.

Having left it a couple of days to mull over I have definitely come to the conclusion that it would be a mistake to let MP go, I do think once (if it ever happens) he has more fit players back that he can turn this around. I think modern football we get into the cycle of hire and fire managers but if you just look at the successful clubs they have patience with their managers and even if we do go down this season I still wouldn't let him go because he could well bring us back up.

We have to remember we haven't been at this level in a long time (11 years is a long time in football). We also came up through the playoffs not by running away with League Two and quite a few of our key players were on loan so have gone then we let go of our two main strikers.

I agree with everyone that this is concerning and MP needs to make changes, I'm not sure what those changes would be other than getting players fit but I'm not a football manager. Please don't misunderstand this as me saying the fan base wants him sacked etc because that isn't the case. This is merely what I'm thinking about the whole situation at the moment.

Agree @theAnticlough I thought the substitutions made a big difference. Maybe those five substitutions should have been in the starting 11. Not sure why Ness was substituted.

We didn't create anything worthwhile till those four players came on. It was a toss up between Ness, Grant & Palmer, but I thought Palmer just shaded it

Really can’t comment, fire stick for some reason wasn’t showing any live 3pm games 🤬

Just 6 hours left to get your vote in for this Man of the Match award. We may have lost but there is a player that performed above the rest. Let's give the team some support and get your vote in.

Well that was literally men against boys but take nothing away from Notts it was a very good performance and we could have scored 8 or 9 given the number of chances they missed.

Hopefully that will instill a bit of confidence for our league encounters.

A cup run would be most welcome. I'm happy...

We needed that! Martin was right in his post-match comments when he said it was a bit of a lose-lose scenario because had we scraped a 1-0 win it wouldn't have alleviated any of the concerns.

We needed to look a cut above, and particularly in that second half it you could see the confidence in the players with the one/two touch incisive attacking play. The Cal Roberts through ball for the 4^th goal where he put Lupsiuc in was sublime. And just on Darius, I'd like to see him as RWB I think he'd be more comfortable there. When we play with the inverted wingbacks we do lose the ability to put in good first time crosses like that.

The fact "94% of clubs in the top five English leagues made losses in 2025-26" is really bleak, and then you have additional thing like "17 clubs across the EFL and National League would be loss-making even if their players played for free", how can that be allowed to happen?

It's not good at all that clubs are totally reliant on owners. At some point, these owners will have enough of just losing money, then you are left in a situation where you are looking for someone richer to keep covering the losses or it'll be a case of the club being wound up.

It might be boring to some but the brothers and Joe Palmer constantly talking about Notts being sustainable and wanting us to be at at a break-even level is only going to make us stronger in the future. Surely at some point the rules have to change so football clubs aren't just reliant on a couple of people basically being the reason for a football clubs existence.

Sorry, I was expecting this to be news about him signing for a new club. 🤣

4 hours ago, menzinho said:

I think I kind of got what we were trying to do first half, we almost had like a front 4 of Cooper, Roberts, Grant and Kanu all pressing hard (well at least supposed to be) with the intent of winning the ball high up. But more often than not we were off the pace by a second or two and it meant that press wasn’t effective and it was quickly bypassed to leave poor Palmer out numbered in the middle. I do wonder if we'd played a back 4, to allow for another midfielder (at the expense of a CB) so a 4-2-4 formation would that have left us less exposed than what at times looked like a 5-1-4?

Yes, I think Pato owes Palmer one. By that I mean to apologise to him for setting up with only 1 CM and getting overrun there. You're right it did look like a 5-1-4I think his performance will cost him a starting place, but Pato should promise him another shot later on after inadvertently setting him up to fail.

The back 4 question...I suspect Pato is more in favour of it than others. He basically set up that way at home to Chesterfield last season with Platt there and it was horrible. We've probably played about 3 or 4 games with a back four in the past 5 seasons since it changed under Ardley (away at Bromley, arguably away at B Rovers when we went down to 10) so it would be a radical move. You can't just casually switch and interchange formations, which is why we haven't. I don't see how Tsaroulla fits into any formation with a back 4 and he's one of our best players. Apart from that we do have the squad for a decent 4-2-3-1 but I can only see it happening if we really get planted in the bottom 4 this month and are on something like P12 Pts 10. Personally, i don't think it would save us.

I agree with you @theAnticlough that the back 3 is likely still our best way forward, we looked better when we switched back to the two CMs in Sanders and Finneran, with Roberts and Grant ahead. That is our tried and tested formation, that over the last couple of years has served us really well.

I just meant more in terms of specific tactics for the Oxford match, if the plan was to be super aggressive and press with 4 players, it's surely asking for trouble leaving just 1 CM to get totally out-numbered and exposed!

The defeat was on MP totally. The first half was a painful watch.

2H performance, thought we should have deserved a point. Credit to Oxford, their team was set up well, defensively strong and could play on the break with purpose.

Wow! By that yardstick Man City could be relegated to the National League North. 😮

Always recall Matt Hancock saying once on They think its all over....and Manchester's 2nd team....Stockport County when Man City were in the third tier

It shows the level of determination by the French league to penalise Bordeaux to a standard some leagues are afraid of. I highly doubt Manchester City will face such sanctions or punishment; they will most likely be docked points and given a transfer ban. All the excuses that they have generated money for the country, etc. They need to be treated more severely than the French have in this case.

I admit to being a full blown 100% grinch, Halloween has been imported from America and in my opinion it should have stayed there, I’d rather youngsters celebrate Guy Fawkes Night on 5th November, a true home grown tradition.

When I was young Halloween was very low key, I remember hollowing out turnips and putting a candle in them, there were no pumpkins then. That was it for Halloween we didn’t dress up or do trick or treat.

In past years we used to get sweets in if kids knocked but we rarely got any coming so don’t bother now.

Bonfire night was a big celebration the local kids spent weeks gathering stuff for a communal bonfire on waste ground, it used to end up enormous and sometimes the fire brigade would come and take some stuff off if it was too big. On the night of the 5th the bonfire was lit and families would come with fireworks and potatoes to bake in the embers, there was always a homemade Guy on the top of the bonfire.

1 hour ago, Fan of Big Tone said:

I admit to being a full blown 100% grinch, Halloween has been imported from America and in my opinion it should have stayed there, I’d rather youngsters celebrate Guy Fawkes Night on 5th November, a true home grown tradition.

When I was young Halloween was very low key, I remember hollowing out turnips and putting a candle in them, there were no pumpkins then. That was it for Halloween we didn’t dress up or do trick or treat.

In past years we used to get sweets in if kids knocked but we rarely got any coming so don’t bother now.

Bonfire night was a big celebration the local kids spent weeks gathering stuff for a communal bonfire on waste ground, it used to end up enormous and sometimes the fire brigade would come and take some stuff off if it was too big. On the night of the 5th the bonfire was lit and families would come with fireworks and potatoes to bake in the embers, there was always a homemade Guy on the top of the bonfire.

Days building a guy, then nights outside local pub asking “Penny for the guy” used to make quite a bit of money

1 hour ago, nottsnutter said:

Days building a guy, then nights outside local pub asking “Penny for the guy” used to make quite a bit of money

Living on Meadow Lane I’d stand outside the ground with my Guy in a pram, if Notts won the fans came out happy and I’d make loads and spend it on penny bangers and bonfire toffee.

Gibbons is amongst those who are more than comfortable at this level. Tough, robust, agile and an eye for a pass. He is as good as any right sided defender we’ve played against.

As for Grant, he moves the ball quickly and in tight situations his touch and awareness are absolute quality.

I wouldn’t worry about those 2 tbh.

As for S-S he had no idea where Missanga was in the first half. He managed a few decent touches and a cross in the early stages of the 2nd half - watch the dvd again! He was simply not up to it for 70 odd of the 90 mins!

Bedeau made 1 shocking pass, as did McD, but for most of the game, like Ness, they did ok. We conceded a gift goal and from a breakaway, not too much wrong with the back 3 tbh.

Ishe was an odd for me, I thought he started off badly but got better as the match went on. He’s clearly very quick and athletic in the first half at times he’d pick the ball up skip past a player but then do some odd stabby pass that made him look like it was his first time kicking a ball. That was his first start he’s very young but played plenty of times for the England Youth sides, so there’s talent there, it might just take a bit of time for him to adjust to men’s football.

Anyway I was kind of torn between Roberts and Ness. Roberts was the brightest spark in our attack and looked most likely to create something for us. I went for Ness because I don’t think he’s best suited to RCB and was up against a tricky winger in Dembele which can be his undoing. He did hack him down once, which I'll overlook because he kept him very quiet.

This week we have a tie for the Pride of Nottingham's Man of the match award between Lucas Ness and Rory Finneran. Congratulations to both.

The BlueSky link doesn't work for me, but I searched him and found that he's gone out on loan. He's a promising player, who with the right experience could become a good player.

https://www.facebook.com/20531316728/posts/10154009990506729/

@Chris

https://www.facebook.com/redditchunitedfc/posts/our-matchday-sponsor-central-it-solutions-voted-harrison-hazard-as-todays-man-of/1100418472844066/

Thanks, @Piethagoram. I'm keeping tabs on him; he's a promising talent who has looked good for us when given chance.