theAnticlough

It was a good night for York last night - they took the box street as Rochdale drew a tough one after leading 0-2 up to 87mins (we know what it's like to lose by late goals at Halifax!) They also lost TAR after 41mins and I'd imagine he's been immense for them this season at RWB. I'm cheering on Dale as I like going to the ground and want to see TAR get back in The EFL, but York look unstoppable I have to say.

Yeah, we still haven't solved those positions - but with only 13 (or maybe 16 games left), maybe it will never be solved this season and we'll just muddle through with all options in play, which I agree could still include JJ....and a lot of others!

Me too. He was a fish out of water playing on his wrong foot at RCB last season and certainly didn't shine. But he really showed what he's all about this year with that superb, masterful dozen game spell. I feel sorry for him that he can't get back in. it's only in the last few games that Platt has justified being ahead of him... I wonder if the coaches would consider this the next time we're struggling against a low block and the CB has the ball all the time. Platt off and a back 3 of Ness/Macari Bedeau McDonald with Bedeau in the middle, ready to charge through at pace to shake things up and commit the opposing players.

I agree with every word of that. Yeah, he was even better last season (but still well behind Didzy IMO) and has had indifferent spells this season - but I still find myself putting him ahead in the POTS race! He's one of only two league ever-presents. He hasn't done so much attacking (but still a fair amount), but we have the 3rd best defence of the 24 teams and how many goals have come from his side? How many players have gotten the better of him one-on-one? I think one hand would be far too much to count them on. How have we done since he took the captaincy? What was our league position before and after? It's players as good as him that allow us to play a genuine back 3, and to be able to afford having a player like JJ ahead of him.

Praying that you can get better and find relief from this, Chris. You're a hero for anything you do on the site. Hope each day is better one. Keep up the fight.

Wise words Michael D I'll add to that how intertwined our lives can be.... Yes, nobody was seriously hurt although some young children almost lost their lives as they were trapped in a room...However, the behaviour of the adults suggests they were at fault. Fifty plus people spent the full night outside and are probably still impacted in different ways. The building administration have to face all the tasks of restoring that property. Others seem to have smoke damage. The poor cleaners today looked exhausted at dealing with the aftermath and so on

Good luck with that Big tone and enjoy the ale My week started with a fire in the ground floor of the building I live in. Evacuated in the middle of the night, we spent hours outside while chaos ensued. To cut a long story short, nobody was seriously hurt it seems. From my side, I'll only say how tightly calibrated our lives can be - one setback like this, losing a night's sleep right before a working week, can throw you completely and the knock-on effects are very evident. I hope things can get back to normal soon. Exciting to think about Notts though. A 5-0 win with another home game to come. I'm wishing the week away to get there!

Good luck to Barry at the Candystripes

Agree @McPie that Norburn was having an excellent game as you said in other posts. His improvement over the season was impressive and he's been a key contributor to our 22pts out of 27pt run. If he misses time I hope he's available again for our trip to Walsall in two weeks time, along with Palmer - all midfield options available. For next week v Grimsby though I'm excited to see Robbo + Iorpenda again in CM. I don't think we'd have got 5 with our first half line up. We still get all the great stuff from Tom when he plays deeper. I'd say we get even more, without him being pressured to score and assist. SR and TI both on form makes for a super-dynamic CM which most L2 teams can't hope to match.

I want to mention the game-in, game-out right-side combo of Macari and Tsaroulla - such good players who have developed a real understanding between them. It might be his youthful persona, but Notts fans might be underestimating Macari and taking him a bit for granted. I think his play will have L1 and Championship clubs watching. Another player who has to be mentioned is Iorpenda - fantastic. But I think he was even more fantastic after Norburn went off and he had to cover deep. We still get all the good stuff from him. (Would we have won 5-0 if Norburn had stayed on?) But today belongs to Lee Ndlovu - he ragged dolled them, and his work for the 1st and 4th goals was even more impressive than his brace.

And the Bromley draw. We're level with them on games won now. They're drawing too many now and have won only 2 in 6. 0-0 at Harrogate is a bad result. If they fell off significantly, you'd really have to fancy us against Swindon, Cambridge and MK....

We really took them to the cleaners in the second half - I hope that level of ruthlessness and killer instinct sticks. Some great individual performances as well as overall team performance. I was so wrong about Lee Ndlovu starting today and delighted with that - it's so good to see someone other than Dennis and Jatta to be able to find the net. He's not the most polished, but he really gave them hell and they couldn't handle a player like him. His 2 goals were on the easy side, so I'd say the most impressive part of his game today was the set up work for the 1st and 4th. Fantastic.

Weird game. They're so much worse than what we're used to facing. Our players are up for it, but we don't have what it takes to convert it into goals. We really need a 2nd goal, or it's got sucker punch written all over it.

Pato's 'freshen it up" line in the pre-match sounded like he meant it. It's going to be very interesting what that amounts to in terms of selection and formation. Midfield is the obvious area, that's definitely going to change. Will he do something with the WBs? JJ going from best to nearly the worst performer was all about the trap Shrewsbury set. Having their best players waiting to snuff out wingers on a narrow pitch which was only just within the rules of the game. I think that was on the coaching team to see that coming and be proactive to counter it. As just one fan's personal preference, I don't want the freshen up to include a start for Ndlovu. He should earn his spot with good play from the bench. He was so bad on Tuesday. I do want to see Tangan get a 3 match run starting at No.10, especially as the first two are home games. He can always come off mid-second half he if runs out of steam while he's building up his match fitness. It's Montague's Jan window solution to a real problem. We have to at least see/try it IMO.

Norwich 1-1 Birmingham City Wrexham 1-2 Ipswich Town Northampton Town 1-1 Leyton Orient Joker Peterborough 2-0 Exeter City Colchester United 1-1 Barnet Gillingham 2-0 Oldham Boreham Wood 2-0 FGR Solihull Moors 2-0 Hartlepool

I don't know why we've seen final third players Hall and Tangan appear deep in CM recently. Playing Iorpenda in an advanced position seems to have become a fixation. It might already be an opportunity lost to build up his game and confidence playing CM. I wish they'd look at the games when Robertson and Iorpenda paired up in CM. It looked great to me - mobile, physical, dynamic. This would mean having Norburn on the bench. We may have become too wedded to playing Norburn. He's got better and better this season (apart from the last 2), but is he really undroppable now? We should be fine against Tranmere, if the players picked perform. Hoping for a resounding win to shut me up banging on about this! COYP

Another reason to bring Tom Iorpenda back - that kind of player is kryptonite for him, he can be dispossessed and we can launch attacks from there.

Good question, To answer quickly, from gut feeling, yes we'll do better than the last two 14-game endings. But I don't have a lot of faith that we'll do all that much better. The club had a problem to solve at the window, with this season's fortunes at stake - we couldn't support the strikers with goals and assists from the other main attacking positions. Pato said "Tom will score goals'' and he keeps on picking him there (maybe stubbornness has kicked in). Its 2 from 32 (Grant has the same in slightly fewer games) and at the moment it looks like that's the hill this season will die on. Grant has built his Notts career on 'a few nice touches' but the only currency that matters is goals and assists. I like these players and think they have a role to play. But their job as No.10s in games like Shrewsbury is to dribble, create, take risks, rain down shots on goal, generally make the defence's live hell (and hopefully assist and score enough over the full season). I don't know if we have the answers in the squad, but MP has to try to find a formula/pairing that works. This, and injuries, is the main reason why I suspect we're heading for something like W5 D4 L4, 77ish pts and 5th place.

@Robbie well put. Agree that we have that capability....goals like the Bristol Rovers winner and the penalty at Bromley prove it. There'll be plenty of other examples too. Despite the low level, the last 7 seasons have been one of the best periods from the 54 years I've been a fan. Why? The bros came in declaring positive, attacking and entertaining football and for once an owner/manager has been true to their word! Note, they never said possession-based, although that kind of comes with the territory up to a point, and IB and SM back-tracked in negative ways which LW certainly didn't. MP is trying, and succeeding, to be true to that mission too. I think this means we always try to be a front-foot team, not a back-foot one. Sometimes, i.e. when losing your entire first choice midfield unit (which keep on happening) and lacking that quality in other areas, things can look really bad, like last night. I'd hate us to stop being a front-foot positive team and would like the club to work on fixing any shortfalls while keeping that approach. Anyway, I get the point you're making now and it's a fair one.

You're absolutely right @Fan of Big Tone must put it in the correct perspective. It was a frustrating and disappointing loss though, made worse by seeing we were heading for a defeat like that from the middle of the first half, when we just couldn't make an impression. Many of our losses have looked the same way. There's a tactical side, but bottom line it's a quality thing. Platt was great, but he can't really use the acres of space some teams give him. Norburn is our 3rd choice CM and wants to play the simple pass. He can't unlock a defense. Grant and Iorpenda...we know about that. As you say though, they're not robots. It happens, we move on. I see Ruben came on and got a very late assist for Bolton to level at Reading. I'm sure we had a go at bringing him back, but players who provide goals and assists are in high demand. Tangen was the club's answer in the window and at some stage this season, he has to be given a 3 game run at No.10 so at least we can say we gave it a shot. Good luck replacing the washing machine. We were in the same situation less than a year ago. Unless it's under warranty, it's usually better to replace. As for that parking ticket though grrrrrrrrrrrrr.....those companies need sorting out

Why not force teams like Shrewsbury to make the pace & hit them on the break? Well they were certainly making the pace in the period before and up til they scored. I'm glad they didn't make more of the pace @Robbie you seem to want a fundamental change of approach, one we've never seen in the 7 seasons since the Bros arrived. What would forcing teams to make the pace look like? We are a better team than Shrewsbury with better players. The idea should be to show that by dominating as much of the game as we can? Would not playing our game work out for us? Genuine questions I thought MP was clear on where we fell short in his post-match - bravery to get on the ball and make something happen.

There's no way you could describe tonight's performance as pretty football - there was nothing pretty about it. We fell short for quality And bravery - hardly anyone was willing to try something that might unlock them. Another thing that caught up with us was missing our 3 best players this season (IMO, by level of performance) - Jatta, Palmer and Robertson (throw in McDonald too, but Platt was good anyway). They were well-organised and feisty (Kabia was great and probably MoM) but were there for the beating by our best side or this side playing better.

Another pretty easy one for me - Matty Platt. Loads of defending and loads of the ball. He even had 2 of our better attempts on goal. Credit to Belshaw as well for a couple of good saves. I don't think any of the other 14 players to feature had a better than average game. JJ would've gone from best to worst in 3 days if it wasn't for Ndlovu.

I don't think you can begrudge a home team one goal. We lost because we couldn't create anything. I think Stall's analysis mid-way through the 2nd half is spot on....'there isn't enough goals in the team' We're 33 games in - our defenders have chipped in zero. Our 2 most picked no.10s have a combined 4 goals in 60 games. We can be toothless

Can't argue with that. But I wanted to see Iorpenda's energy deep and see how clever and creative Tangen could be further forward. I think we would have had much better balance that way. Is the Technical Board still sitting these days?