Game 43 - The Bees (A)

Team: Barnet FC

Date: 19/04/16

Where: The Hive

What line-up should Mark Cooper 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.

On the community index page, within the sidebar - PON has a 'Popular Contributors' block.

Now, this isn't something I take personally seriously for myself, much like why I don't run for the Member of the Month but I do enjoy seeing who does climb into the top five list of popular contributors.

Have you seem it, and do you ever have a glance at who is listed?

Murray, Carroll, Edwards, Audel, Thompson, Hollis, Banton, Noble, Valencic, Sarpong (Apparently), Hayhurst, Adams, Atkinson, Bishop, Pilkington and Smith

Who would you keep?

Source: http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/league-two/endendevertraege/wettbewerb/GB4

Click on this link, he's going to do well to come back from this.

If you look at the first picture it took you can see that his leg has clearly snapped both bones and is facing completely the wrong way.

I hope it's not the end of his career but fear it might be.

Time to stop blaming the manager, the players are totally to blame for this debacle which sums up our season, don't like to say it but the majority are showing no pride in wearing the famous shirt and need shipping out of the club, massive job for Mark Cooper but we have got to be ruthless if we are going to move forward, fair play to Mansfield  they have taken the piss out of us this season.

Evenly balanced at lunch on Day 2. Slightly worrying for England are the bowling figures of Broad and Anderson. Jimmy took 0 for 40 off 16 overs in Notts innings and Broady currently stands on 11-5-22-0 (economic at least, even if the overall Lancashire progress makes Chris Tavare look like a T20 specialist)

Game 42 - The Stags (A)

Team: Mansfield Town

Date: 16/04/16

Where: Field Mill

What line-up should Mark Cooper 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.

Welcome to the Pride of Nottingham @Rowan_NCFC,

Please do tell us a little bit about yourself, such as how long you have supported Notts. I hope you enjoy visiting and being apart of our NCFC community. You Pies!

Saturday's Fixtures:
Rotherham United v Nottingham Forest
Sheffield Wednesday v Ipswich Town
Burton Albion v Barnsley
Fleetwood Town v Oldham Athletic
Leyton Orient v Dagenham & Redbridge
Portsmouth v Plymouth Argyle

http://www.theleaguepaper.com/features/4747/where-are-they-now-notts-countys-second-division-promotion-winners-198081/

a good article. Could do with Rash the Smash teaching our current team how to smash the ball goalwards

http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2016-02-26/huddersfield-slash-season-ticket-prices-in-bid-to-bring-in-fans/

Maybe with new owners, something needs to be done to expand our supporter base. Even adding say 70 pounds to cover programme costs, a la The Bench, would be interesting to discuss. Given Yeovil's announcement of a loss of nearly 700k, running a football business is not easy.

Notts's current and latest predicament leads me to reflect that we should perhaps have stuck with Derry.

I said at the time that his tenure could finally ignite some positivity around a club that has been mired in gloom for years.

I was a short-lived season ticket-holder but I got tired of the abuse and general misery issued forth by those sat around me (and I changed seats once) - it was almost as though people went there to vent negativity. At the ref, at the players, at the opposition. (Perhaps this is modern football in general and I'm naiive.)

Derry, whatever his managerial naivity and rookie status in that regard, really got the place united. Who was the last Notts manager who had their name sung from the stands? Even when we were getting roundly wallopped by such footballing giants as Walsall, the song rung out.

But no, the magerial merrygoround went on, and that rarely ends well, as has proved. Derry might have taken us down that season when he got fired, and I'm no chief executive so I don't know if the financial implications of that were too hard to countenance; but I would sooner have kept Derry and continued to build a vibe, a brand, a unity, and gone down, than jump ship to someone who was parachuted in and had no rapport with fans (Moniz) or, now, Fullerton, whose appointment was somewhat staggering.

Good vibes and positivity count for a lot. Yes, we might have gone down (probably would have). Yes, he had a stupidly large squad that needed settling down and trimming. Yes, he slipped into an unfortunate habbit of sounding embattled and defiant in his post-match interviews. But give Derry a few seasons and I reckon we could have had a happy little era at Meadow Lane. It's an opportunity missed, and now look how he's doing at Cambridge.

So, am I alone in this view? #flameme

Loach 6.5 - Solid, pulled off saves when it mattered
Hewitt 5 - Strong going forwards but with some serious defensive lapses, hence the rating.
Hollis 6 - Solid, good blocking but distribution woeful at times. No confidence with the ball at feet, especially when manager moved to a back 3 in part of the game
Edwards 6.5- Steady Eddy. Rock solid
Audel 7 - Excellent again... Where are all the Adams supporters now?
Aborah 6.5 - Took a booking for the team for Atkinsons mistake early on. Should be allocated Noble's dead ball duties like corners, if not in sight of goal
Noble 5.5- Average, but great ball to Hewitt in build up to goal
Valencic 6.5 - Excellent in possession, needs to get more involved
Atkinson 6 - Better than Curtis when moving forward. Was dead on his feet after 80 minutes
Stead 5.5 - well taken goal, but lapses in retaining possession. Worried if his legs will go next season, a la Jason Lee
McLeod 5 - Offside king. 150k could have been better spent. No partnership nor understanding with Stead

Team 7 the sum greater than its individual parts
 

Who do you think will win the Champion League and why?

Game 33 - The Pools (H)

Team: Hartlepool United

Date: 12/04/16

Where: Meadow Lane

What line-up should Mark Cooper 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.

Popped down this afternoon for a couple of hours. Notts in a good position after Day 2. Full bonus points and the poo-coloured caps following on. Liked the look of Jackson Bird, found a good deal of life in the pitch, even with the old ball.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The kick off for our away game against the Stags on 16th April has been brought forward to 1pm on police advice.  

The game will be all-ticket.

We have been allocated 1,762 tickets for the game, see official site for priority purchase details:

www.nottscountyfc.co.uk/news/article/ticket-news-mansfield-town-a-3006450.aspx

I read Ray Trew's Twitter exchange the other day, and was very concerned to hear that a hedge fund is in to buy us. This worries me. He's the definition of a hedge fund from Investopedia:

Hedge funds are alternative investments using pooled funds that may use a number of different strategies in order to earn active return, or alpha, for their investors. Hedge funds may be aggressively managed or make use of derivatives and leverage in both domestic and international markets with the goal of generating high returns

This begs the question: what does a hedge fund want with NCFC? In what way is our club a worthwhile investment? Sure, the club could be run at a profit (while the team withers on the vine) but only a very modest one. It would take many years to recoup the money needed to buy the club, and if the team struggles, crowds will dwindle too. The alternative is that they want to pump loads of money in in order to get us to the land of TV revenue, but with two promotions needed and a very limited number of promotion spots available, it's a highly risky investment. It just doesn't make sense for me.

We do have one case study for a hedge fund in football - SISU, the owners of Coventry City, who have cut costs from day one. However, they seemed to be most interested in the ground, which was owned by ACL, a trust made up of a charity and the city council. The whole dispute around the Ricoh Arena and the disgraceful move to Northampton (complete with fantastical plans to build a new stadium) looked to me like an attempt to bankrupt ACL and take ownership of the Arena for a knockdown price. A strategy that backfired when ACL sold the stadium to Wasps.

Agenst fees in the Bundesliga in 2015. I've highlighted in red those clubs who I think have been badly managed on this criterion and in green those who have been well-managed.

Does anyone know how these compare to other countries?

Who do you think will win the Europa League 2016?

Welcome to the Pride of Nottingham @The Mascot.

Would you care to tell us a little bit about yourself, such as how long you've been a fan? Hope you enjoy being apart of the community, it would be nice to see your input as and when time permits. If you have any questions or concerns, please do message me or one of the team members - we'll gladly assist in any way that we can.

You Pies!

@Blackville and I have tickets for this game, but we can't get there now due to the change of kick-off time - thanks Sky! It's now at 1330 on Sunday

They are an adult and child ticket for the family stand so must be used by an adult and child. If anyone wants them at face value (I refuse to sell on the internet sites even though you need to pay several hundred to get in) let me know asap.

I see @notts-joe has posted this topic in Facebook, so I'll get the ball rolling here again. I'm probably in a minority but I really have a bee in my bonnet about this one, so hear me out.

It's the tag "the oldest Football League club in the world". It's not quite right. Why?

The Football League is an English competition only, so the "in the world" bit makes no sense. It's like being the biggest English city in the world. Yes, we're the oldest of the 72 Football League clubs, but is that really so impressive? And if we got relegated we'd have to remove the line from the stands and all the club's literature.

In England and Scotland we traditionally differentiate between league and non-league clubs (with non-league being traditionally semi-pro or amateur, but that view is also out of date). In other countries, however, no such differentiation exists. Where would non-league start in Germany, division three or the regionalised fourth division? When we talk about a league club in an international context, what we really mean is a professional football club. And we are the oldest.

So what's more impressive? Being the oldest of the 72 Football League clubs? Or being the oldest of over a hundred professional clubs in England and thousands all over the world?

It might seem like pedantry, but if we want the slogan to be seen by people from outside the UK it should be right, after all it is our major selling point (now that Bajner has left anyway). Visitors would see the line and assume it means that we are simply the world's oldest football club, which we are not. So let's call ourselves what we are - the oldest professional football club in the world.

Thoughts?