menzinho

Terry Hawkridge is the first player that comes to my mind, I remember him because he was part of Lincoln's FA Cup run team.

All very quiet so far, I think I would rather it be that way. The big potential issue for us was Jatta and I'll be honest I thought he was on his way out a few days ago. It's looking good right now and if he stays, it's really great for us. We've already turned down a lot of money for him, I think it'll need to be a monumental fee now and no-one is seemingly willing/able to do it!

I think in an ideal world a keeper coming out and catching the ball in a very crowded box is what you want, but I’ve no issue if the keeper punches the ball away effectively. It’s when keepers flap at the ball because they aren’t really committed to coming for crosses, like they are caught in two minds whether to try and catch it or punch it and end up doing neither. Roos does have a tendency to stay on his line too I think sometimes he needs to be a tad braver with his starting position, even if it's just 2 or 3 steps further forward. I did feel surprised that the high claims/dealing with crosses stat wasn’t something we prioritised when we replaced Bass. He was the best in the league, by a data perspective, far for coming and claiming crosses. It’s still very early and who knows maybe 3 months down the line having worked with Steve Collis he could well look a lot more solid and commanding but on early showing for me he’s not as good as Bass.

Some good names in there, I think if these were like prizes on offer for Notts I'd go for Ollie Pearce. I'd back him to continue scoring like Macca did when he stepped up from the National League. I think getting a proven goal scorer in would be tricky though, we've arguably got 2 right now in Dennis and Jatta they can score 20 goals each. I wonder if potential strikers would be put off knowing they would be 3rd/4th choice as right now we can't guarantee they'd go straight into the first 11. I'm still backing Traore to come good, when it comes to signing centre forwards our recruitment in this area has been really impressive overall. Could Luker or Jarvis be another option upfront? I do think it's a shame we haven't got anyone in the B team that is around first team ready, that would be ideal for a fourth striker. Not a forward but Peterborough are open to offers for Chris Conn-Clarke, an attacking midfielder with an eye for goal who was superb at Altrincham in the National League. I think he’d be a really good number 10 for us, a kind of replacement for Didzy/Crowley but we have a lot of players already in this position.

I know the whole no shots thing first half wasn’t great but at the same time Tranmere really didn’t look a threat either and they only scored through our needless sloppy play. Our reaction was good though and I thought the second half performance was very impressive. I liked how we didn’t just sit back when defending the lead, we were definitely a lot more pro-active off the ball which I really did like. Even in the last minutes of the match when the Tranmere defence had the ball we had Dennis, Jatta and Grant all pressing hard and they were backed up by the wingbacks and midfield. I think we’ll create some good chances just from making opposition defenders/midfielders rush when on the ball. Set pieces still make me nervous, I think we got a tad lucky at times. Yes, some good blocks in there and you definitely need that but we still aren’t great when it comes to clearing the ball it all seems a bit panic stations to me. You can laugh now it’s over but Martin Paterson was getting really wound up at the end of the match about the ref not blowing for full-time. Stoppage time is and has been “a minimum of…” for as long as I can remember, so if the 4th official displays 5 minutes but 6 minutes are played that is completely within the rules. Anyway, I seem to be able to find more positives with each passing match now, my optimism levels are growing!

Matt Palmer for me. We know on the ball how tidy he is and he had that about him but what really stood out was how he got to the ball first more often than not, he was winning tackles and shrugging players off when on the ball. It was a really great performance from him.

I looked up the team sheet from that match: B Bialkowski, M Dumbuya, M Smith, G Liddle (c), E Stevens, J Campbell-Ryce, J Labadie, M Fotheringham, D Bell, C McGregor, Y Arquin Substitutes: F Speiss, G Tempest, C Thompson, A Boucaud, A Coombes, R Murray, R Nangle. David Bell started, now there’s a player who I am amazed passed his medical! I just looked it up, he had four operations in three and half seasons prior to joining us. So yes his time with us went exactly as you’d have expected. And Adam Coombes coming off the bench to score that equaliser, he's now an absolute stalwart of the National League South scene. Some good players in there too to be fair, I loved Bailkowski, Dumbuya, Liddle, McGregor and Campbell-Ryce all really good players for us in League 1. It was a great occasion, had the match happened today it would’ve gone straight to pens, maybe we’d have had a different outcome!

Be interesting to see how all this unfolds, York finished 19th and 20th before Adam Hinshelwood came in and finished 2nd that is a dramatic improvement. Will Stuart be able to keep them in the promotion places or will they drift back down the table? Whilst I am pleased for Stuart and Joao, I really can’t understand the timing of this. 4 matches into a new season, they haven’t lost so what is the problem? They’ve just spent all pre-season recruiting and training with him. It's got be a non-results based decision because otherwise it would be totally bonkers to have sacked him.

Blackburn Rovers 2-1 Norwich City Watford 0-1 Southampton Barnsley 0-1 Huddersfield Town Wigan Athletic 1-2 Stockport County Barnet 1-2 Colchester United Bromley 1-0 Harrogate Town 🃏 Hartlepool United 1-0 Boreham Wood Morecambe 3-1 Woking

Sound the alarm, Jatta was involved and running in the training session video from today! And yes I have already searched “can you sprint with a back spasm?” for those wondering, no not if it’s serious and in the video he looked more than fine to me.

There was an interview with him that said he wanted to move to keep his chances of getting in the Northern Ireland team and potentially getting to play in the World Cup. I think he'd be looking a touch higher than League 2 if that was the case. Also I can't see us spending £1 million to sign him, in League 2 that kind of transfer fee is madness.

I agree @Robbie we are in a really tough situation with Jatta. The funny thing is given the start he's had Matt Dennis could well be our 20+ goal centre forward this season, even so if Jatta does go we'd still need a striker in to replace him.

I do think this has potentially already affected us in the transfer window because we've received large sums for Langstaff, Crowley and Bass clubs will know this and almost add a "we know you've got money" tax. And that just completely clashes with the Brothers style of not ever wanting to overpay for a player. A bit like Newcastle in the Premiership now, they've had similar issues because everyone knows they are ridiculously wealthy.

It does seem to be quite a conflicting statement when you realise that we currently have 25 outfield players at the club (and that's excluding our youngsters). We've got to get players out as well not only for registration purposes but to avoid players becoming totally disheartened and potentially disruptive because they've got 0 chance of getting into the side. It's interesting that the two players the club spent money on recently in Jarvis and Traore are nowhere to be seen so far this season. And these are attacking players too, I do wonder if that is causing a bit of friction behind the scenes. I agree with the points about Traore he came in halfway through the season having never played or lived in England before, some players just need a bit of time to settle and I think we'd be mad to right him off so quickly. Let's not forget he's previously spent his last few seasons in the top division in Norway and at good clubs too. His last club Fredikstad lost 1-0 to Crystal Palace recently in the Europa League Qualifier, they'd beat us comfortably. I had Jarvis down as one of my players I thought would be key for us this season. At the back end of last season (outside of McGoldrick) I thought he was a real bright spark for us going forward.

Some potential fuel to the fire courtesy of the Guardian (from yesterday); "In League Two, the race for Alassana Jatta is hotting up and the striker is eager to leave Notts County. After Plymouth’s £900,000 bid was knocked back, others are waiting in the wings. Huddersfield and Bolton have shown an interest, while QPR have previously made an offer. They could face competition from Swansea or even Kayserispor."

I predict Dennis will win this one, and it’ll be well deserved. Palmer had his best display of the season too, battled well in midfield was always available for a pass and put some decent dead balls in.

I agree with @theAnticlough I don’t think we should get hung up on physicality. We only play Colchester, Bromley and Gillingham who I would argue fall into the category of being sides that basically focus entirely on being psychical. That’s 6 matches from a 46-match season. I certainly wouldn’t say we got bullied by Bromley either though, their goals had a touch of luck but the issue was in the second half we invited the pressure by playing way too deep. I listened to the post-match interview and I totally get Martin’s point about not having another forward and not being able to make the changes he wanted too. Part of this is just bad luck as assuming AJ really is injured he would’ve been back today. But why are we saying we’ve only got 2 ‘number 9s’ in the building? Does Traore not exist anymore? And when we signed Jarvis the club said he was capable of playing in a number of forward roles. But if he really thought 2 up top, so we could run the channels, was the answer could Bennetts or Kouhyar not have filled in for 30/40 minutes? Ok not genuine centre-forwards but both are capable runners who could've given the Bromley defence something more to worry about.

I'll be pleased if we manage to complete this match without conceding a goal from a set-piece. I expect Bromley will play to frustrate us, it's far from exciting but it's what they do. Fingers crossed we can race into a 2-0 lead like we did last time out, COYP!

Norwich City 1-3 Middlesbrough Sheffield United 0-1 Millwall Bolton Wanderers 2-2 Lincoln City Mansfield Town 1-2 Leyton Orient Fleetwood Town 1-0 Oldham Athletic Gillingham 1-1 Crewe Alexandra Halifax Town 0-2 Forest Green Rovers 🃏 Sutton United 1-2 Scunthorpe United

I’m hoping we’ve played an absolute blinder, he’ll be on the bench come Saturday and this is all just a ruse to keep Bromley in the dark. 🙏📿 I agree with @Chris you’d have thought he’d be desperate to play. If that was me I’d be necking paracetamol, rubbing deep heat in, drinking green tea, just doing all I can to be available. The timing, considering he hasn’t played but been fit all pre-season, to suddenly get a vague injury like a back-spasm 10 days before the window closes is going to make us fans think the worst.

Tsaroulla was sharp, tidy on the ball and looked dangerous going forward. Norburn looked a lot better too, I was a tad worried after his early yellow but he hassled and harried well without picking up a second booking. McDonald was solid at the back, didn’t really put a foot wrong for me. Iorpenda just didn’t stop running, I think he’s better touch deeper when he can make runs but I really him. And nor did Dennis to be fair and he reacted quick to get his goal.

Beautiful chaos I think is how I would describe the match, it wasn’t the complete performance by any means but I thought there were a lot more positives than negatives. From off we were pro-active and I liked that Norburn was pushed ahead of Palmer so we didn’t have them tripping over each other like they did against Salford. We were a little over the place at times, Jodi was desperate to play wide, he did everything to avoid playing as the number 10 by always drifting to the flank. And I still think we ask a lot of the wingbacks as it’s easy for them to get overrun especially when teams play a wide player and a full-back. The front 4 out of possession when Shrewsbury had the ball deep was better, Dennis and Jones almost operating as a front-pair being backed up by Norburn and Iorpenda, it did force them to go wide but when we timed the press wrong it did leave us exposed in the middle. Again some of the passing wasn’t great, some of it was just the obvious poor passing but more often it was down to the wrong choice or players not quite on each other’s wave-lengths but this is one of the things that should improve with time. The early goal second half settled us down, especially as Shrewsbury were looking brighter in the last period of the first half. Great move and finish though, both second half goals were crackers. I liked that we were able to make subs and we didn’t get weaker but also it allowed us to keep pressing. That is going to be key for us this season. It’s a minor and sometimes overlooked thing but just the effort and ability to outwork the opposition, we had that and if we do that most matches more often than not we'll come away with three points.

There’s definitely something still not quite right about us, I can’t put my finger on it, I think we’ve been so used to having a lot of control of the ball (but doing sod-all with it) that it’s a tad odd to see us relinquish this control and chase the opposition around a bit more. I think it’s coming from us trying to press a lot more, we seemed to have quite a different formation when we didn’t have the ball. It’s one thing doing it in training but opposition teams will be a lot more unpredictable so it’ll take a bit of time to work (or not work as might be the case). There were times when I thought the wingbacks didn’t know if they should be marking the space or charging out to close the defender down, sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t but generally off the ball they were quite deep. And I still think Jodi looked a bit lost playing as a No.10, we used to have so much control in this area with Didzy and Crowley but that is gone now so we will have to do something different.

Jason Whittingham and everyone else who was part of the Bond Group should be black-listed from owning a football club now. Really pleased for them but it should never have got to this point. I wonder if Morecambe have any players contracted? Not really had a pre-season either so it's going to be a real challenge to avoid back to back relegations.

Can't be any worse than the last time Shrewsbury came to Meadow Lane... 😰😱 We need something to give us some encouragement, I'd even take a goal in the first half at Meadow Lane - we've not had one of them since February! I really do think we need to be more positive and more on the font-foot from the off. No more 5 at the back, push the wingback's high from the start and try to pin Shrewsbury in. We've gone behind in every match so far this season, that really doesn't help, scoring first will lift the crowd and the players too.