"Let the young lambs bound As to the tabor’s sound!"
Wordsworth
(Notts County were known as The Lambs before the kit change prompted The Magpies)
We’ve got the F A Cup safely out of our system and can now concentrate on the League (where have I heard that before?). County are sitting comfortably in the play-off zone, only 3 points behind us, so this game has the flavour of a 6-pointer - good preparation for the encounter with Port Fail …
They may not be great goalscorers (23 in their 17 games) but they’re also parsimonious in the goals conceded column (only 15 shipped compared to our 17). Their recent League 2 form:-
October 19th AFC Wimbledon (H) Won 1-0
October 22nd Barrow (A) Drew 1-1
October 26th Harrogate (H) Won 1-0
November 9th Doncaster Rovers (A) Drew 1-1
November 16th Crewe Alexandra (A) Lost 2-0
November 23rd Newport County (H) Drew 0-0
In the F A Cup 2nd round played at the weekend, County followed our example of conceding 4 goals, going down 4-3 at Peterborough United - so we do know their defences can be breached!
Mat Sadler will have a selection dilemma for this game - it’s pretty certain that he won’t be able to call on Jamie Jellis, who sustained a calf injury against Charlton. Other problems seem to relate to the tactical side of the team … would it be wise to rest some of the tired legs seen on Saturday? Should he persist with Uncle Albert up front? It would surely be beneficial to devote some time between now and Tuesday to practising the standard backpass by ensuring that marauding opposition forwards weren’t gifted a scoring opportunity!
I’m not holding out any great hopes for this encounter - we do seem to have gone slightly off the boil in recent games, and I’d be happy with a point from this one - say a 1-1 result. And if we can snatch a point at Fail as well then so much the better.
Home win easy their forms on a par/slightly worse than ours.
Edit:
Expect it’ll be Jamma and Lowe back upfront from the off for this. Who knows for the midfield, Laikin, Stirk and A N Other?
Any update on Jellis? Sadler seemed unsure of the extent in his post match comments so don’t know if it’s as bad as a muscle tear (weeks) or just a pecautionary because of muscle tightness (a day or so).
Assuming he is out, I think this might suit Hall more than Tuesday or yesterday - County try to play football rather than clog but are only on a level with us so he might get more joy. I expect it to be the safe choice of Earing paired with Lakin though.
At the back, happy to stay with Harry and Oss (although would be a bit harsh on Dave), but does Allen need a rest? Not been up to his usual level for the last 2 games. Weir would be the obvious replacement as a natural LCB, but with DD back, and because he’s played there quite a bit previously, I think that swap might be a possibility.
Another option might be to move McEntee into midfield again, especially given his MotM performance there against them at their place last season - allows Dave back in, and he does actually make a fist of it there (despite some views to the contrary). His physical presence down that right hand side might allow Barrett more space to to shine too.
Up front it will likely be back to normal with Lowe and Jamma. Even with Comley and Jellis out I doubt there will be a space on the bench for Cleary so Albert and DJ (in that order) will be the sub options again.
Think we’re gonna have a positive response here
One thing this team always does is try and k think sadler will get them working as a team for this one
Hard fought 2-1 win
A week ago I woke up having a very vivid dream about this game. We were 5-1 up until the 86th minute. The Pies bring on McGoldrick and he scores in the 87th and 89th minute. We fall apart. 6 minutes of added on time goes up in the board and they are battering us with waves of attacks. Jatta scores in the 94th and we just manage to hang on to a 5-4 win!.
We have two really tough games coming up, Tuesday night and away to Vale. If we can secure 4 points (or more) from those 2 games, I will start to believe our club is going for automatic promotion.
To do that we going to have to recapture our form from a few weeks ago.
We’ve been off a little of late and haven’t played to the best of our ability and it’s time to step it up.
UTS
From what I’ve heard about Notts, they play a very different style to our recent opponents. So will be interesting to see how it pans out.
It feels like one of those games where a loss would make recent results suddenly look like the beginning of a poor run, but win and everything’s still rosy!
some good analysis there.
