NCS Shorts | #16: FAITH

Shorts.

I'm Colin and I'm joined, as always, by Tom. Tom, how you doing?

Yeah, I'm absolutely great, mate. How are you?

Not too bad, not too bad. We are fresh from listening to the Fans Forum, courtesy of Notts, which I thought was a fantastic occasion. Tom, the burning question opinion about toilets.

Yeah, I've not been in the ladies toilets. Bit like bit like the panel.

Yeah, I realized there's one burning question and it creates quite an uncomfortable bit of imagery there as well. But no, I mean, look, I'm being a little bit sarcastic and probably a little bit unfair, and I'm sure it is one of those issues that sort of needs to be raised. But I think it was an interesting combination of questions, wasn't it, right? From quite complex discussions around short corners and the tactical sort of things. And without wanting to toot our own trumpets, it's something that we've talked about on this podcast before and about the effectiveness of it and the decision making behind that. There was also some incredibly ambitious ideas talking about kind of training grounds, talking about the complexities of trying to establish that the impact that the Academy had. Something that I wrote about previously about the impact that the Academy will have suffered from, and did suffer from as it came out in the fans forum, being out of e to some slightly more mundane matters around ticketing and toileting and those sort of things and flags and the whole sort of dichotomy, I think, of what it is to be a Notts fan. And I think we can be a little bit sarcastic about it and we can be a little bit critical about it. But I think ultimately the club need to be praised for offering this opportunity to have a voice. Because when we consider I'm not going to name the club. But when we consider some of our other clubs in Lead two and some of the issues that have come out there with statesmen at the club who've been let go and those sort of things and a bit of unrest beneath the surface. I think the club deserves an awful lot of praise for the openness and the quality of communication that we saw last night. I want to go on to Football Matters and talk about Bradford. First of all, Tom, what was your take on the Bradford game?

Yeah, I think that I'll be honest about the Bradford game. I'm normally one of the ones that are critical, but it's actually one I've come away from a lot more positive than most people, I think. I'm always coming on here and all over my socials, I'm always a performance over results type person, because I think, well, when it comes to leagues, I think in knockout competitions, you can stick that where the sun doesn't shine, if you like. Like the playoffs didn't matter about performance, all matters result. But I think over a league season, your performance will level out 99% of the time. You should end up where your performances tell you, and that's what I'm an advocate for. But what I've also said on here is that we need to take our chances and be ruthless and actually bring it back to the Fans Forum. Luke Williams said about the crew game, the last minute penalty shouldn't have mattered because we should have been forNile up. And that's exactly what happened against Bradford. We were formed a lot and we can pitch late in the second half. We were awful, that's true, but we were formed a lot, so it didn't really matter. Some people will say, oh, against a better team, we'd have got drawn for all there debatable, whether we can see. I know we have conceded four goals on several occasions this season, but we took our chances in a spare of dominance and that's something we've not done before or not regularly enough this season anyway. There's been plenty of games where we've been well on top, banging on the door and not finding that opening. We didn't do that against Bradford. We absolutely tore them to shreds, picked them off and the game was out of sight at hard time. Obviously, second half wasn't good enough, but like Luke said at the Fans Forum, again, it's about adapting to the level and replicating those standards for 90 minutes. And it actually got me thinking about today, about the difference between the National League and league two. And I have been pondering that question myself because I would have thought when we came up, the difference wouldn't be too high. And I maintain I don't think it is, but I think it's the fitness levels. Not just the fitness levels, but the concentration levels for 90 minutes are higher. National League teams will have a lapse in concentration, league two teams won't, league two teams will get second wins like Bradford did. But a long winded way of me saying that I think it's a really good result and performance wise I'm actually happy because if it been the other way around and we'd have come away from that game losing four two, I think some people might have been happier because the second half would have been a good performance. And recency bias plays a massive role in perception in football. But let's be fair, after 45 minutes at halftime, there wouldn't have been a single Notts fan who would have said, that was probably our best performance of the season yet. So I think that overall I was really happy. What do you think, mate? How did you see the game?

Yeah, I echo a lot of what, you know, I think for me, it typified some of the things that we've talked about previously. And I want to make it clear that this isn't us self advertising, but I think Bradford took two distinct approaches to Notts. Probably having to having been booed off at halftime. And I have to say, even though football is one of those sports where you take pleasure in the opposition's suffering a little bit, there was moments where my heart went out to quite a substantial amount of away following having to witness what they were witnessing. Because as Notts fans, we've seen similar capitulations several seasons ago and we know how difficult that is to take. But Bradford seemed to step off and cover those spaces. Didn't necessarily press consistently, there were pockets in the areas of the pitch that they pressed, but they seemed to kind of set off the back line, letting us have that ball. And they were just picked off with ease, weren't they? I think it was an approach that they had deliberately taken that backfired spectacularly. And I think it needed half time for them to Alexander to get them back into the building as well as motivated to show the fans something else and not demonstrated that same thing again, that if you press us, we sometimes find it difficult to overcome that. And I'm not trying to diminish what was an absolutely destructive first half, remembering that we could have had more goals. There was a disallowed goal, there was an awful lot of other chances that were narrowly missed. It was fantastic as well to be in the family stand and witness all the goals going in. That was quite a nice experience for us. Some more than others, obviously, in terms of wanting the Notts goals and not wanting quite as many of the Bradford ones. It was a fantastic sort of entertainment. It was great to go into a half feeling so secure. But I did walk out of there as well with that kind of sense of, okay, we've been put under a little bit of pressure and like I say, Luke Williams alluded to know about the needing to concentrate of him not being particularly satisfied. And yeah, I don't think it's necessarily a problem that we've gone away from that. You know, it was a great first half of football, but because, again, it goes back to club culture, going back to the Fans Forum, talking about building that culture and making sure that there's the awareness all the way. Through the fan base, all the way through the players, all the way through the management and the ownership that we all are expecting of certain things. I think that creates a certain amount of harmony and community within that. And again we go again, don't we? And thinking about going again. What we've got is Wimbledon coming up. And an interesting one, I think, because one of the things that you talked about as well know that opportunity for not to be able to go out and to perform and also the idea of Bradford going away and trying to sort of reform themselves, reshape themselves to go again. And so I'm quite interested to see what happens with Notts coming off the back of a strong performance, certainly a strong 45, with a few other things to tweak and change going forward, whereas Wimbledon have that time off. And as a fan, sometimes you think, yeah, I want my players to rest, I want to get back these knocks and these injuries and recover. But actually, there's also something to be said for momentum, isn't there?

Yeah, 100%. They played Wickham but in an EFL Trophy game and it was heavily rotated. And I think two of the first team players that played are actually suspended for the game this weekend, so it'll probably be about 910 changes in their team from that game. So there's a lot to be said for it. It's like when we had the FA Cup week the other week, people were saying, let's rotate the team. But I think Luke Williams kind of showed that continuity is really important. And playing week in, week out, people that play football manager will know. Matt Sharpness. It sounds daft using a football manager analogy there, but it's true. Players, you know yourself when you're playing, even at any level, if you have a two week break, it's a hell of a lot. I know these players are training, but this is match intensity we're talking about. And if you have a two week break between games, it can be difficult to get up to that. So I think we'll have a fast start again, I really do. I think we'll put them under pressure again. They play a four, four two, so the same shape as Bradford had first half, so I think it could look very similar to how that game looked. So continuity is massively important and I think there's not many teams in this league that have more continuity than not in terms of picking a team. I know we've obviously had a little bit of rotation recently through necessity, but even now, will there be any changes on Saturday? I probably wouldn't suggest many. I think Bowwind suspended, so there'll be a change at the back. Macari will probably come back in, but that's probably about it. I can't see there being any unforced changes. Let's put it like that.

Yeah. And that brings me sort of back onto Bradford to move forward for Wimbledon. Obviously, we saw a couple of players get minutes that some Notts fans haven't been able to see for a while. Obviously, Randall being one of the names that we saw on the team sheet, and he's fantastic, to being able to see him on the medaling grass again and being able to get vital know and obviously goslin as know. What were some of your takeaways from the Bradford game and do you think that they're likely to gather that momentum and gain more minutes going forward in the Wimbledon game?

Yeah, that's one I probably should have mentioned was Jodie Jones would probably be back in for Will Randall as well. It's interesting that Will Randall sort of has leapfrogged Toby in the rankings. I think that Toby will be a player that fans will probably resonate more with in terms of probably his outgoing personality and also his eye catching moments because he has got that explosive turn of pace and he does get a lot of crosses into the box. But I think Will Randall will probably in the long term be a player that will prove to be I think that's why he's probably there ahead of Toby now. He's probably got a better understanding of the know that's not taking anything away from Toby. I just think that's the kind of level of the type of player Will Randall is. He's a real hard worker and I think the fact that he can play on either wing pretty comfortably kind of shows you he understands the nuances of footballing systems quite. Yeah, I was relatively impressed with him. Again, he didn't one of the eye catching players, obviously Dan Crowley was the man that everyone was coming away from talking about. But there will be chances and then we talked about continuity. I said there's a lot of continuity there, but there will be chances for players to get minutes. Like you mentioned, Dan Gosling came on and I think he's slowly but surely improving. He certainly looked better to me than he did against Crew. And I think that there'll be moments there. I mean, even Junior Morris got some minutes off the bench. So whether we'll rotate from the start, I'm unsure. But the bench is looking progressively stronger again and hopefully those players will get more minutes this weekend.

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Dan Crowley and I think a little mention, without wanting to go into too much detail about the post match that he gave and some of the frankly bizarre criticism that came from that about his own faith. And just to make things absolutely clear, I worship at the church of Dan Crowley. So now that is my religion. Because honestly, joking aside, what a player he's been, don't you think?

Yeah, absolutely ridiculous. I mean, little shout out to my friend Benedict at the start of the season. We had a debate, if you like, a friendly debate over whether he would get more open play goals than Ruben Rodriguez. He's only three away from equaling that now already, and he's only played 18 games. So Dan Crowley is unbelievable. It's not just the goals he's getting, though, because I feel like the goals are almost an afterthought of Dan Crowley's game. We forget he gets all these goals because he plays so many eye catching through balls and he keeps the ball better than any player I've seen here. Not sure I've not seen a player have the ball stick to it like Velcro, like it does to Dan Crowley. It is know he is press resistant to the nth degree.

Yeah, I'm absolutely convinced that there is somebody at the back of the Pavis with an Xbox controller, just controlling Dan Crowley, seemingly gliding like a FIFA player and playing those through balls almost at will. And I think that was the most standout thing for it, even though the goal was fantastic and obviously I was sat behind it and that kind of confidence and composure to pick your spot and pick your moment, but it was the through balls. The through balls as well, were absolutely phenomenal and sort of playing that at will. And he seems to be in that purple patch a bit like Macaulay Langstaff was last year, where he seemed to be able to score at will and was able to kind of find those moments. It was almost inevitable that McCauley Langstaff would score last season. Obviously, he's still in a rich vein of form now, dan Crowley. It's almost inevitable that he's going to find that ball through and long may that continue. Who do we need to watch out for, though, at Wimbledon? Who's going to be causing Notts? A little bit of a threat that we need to keep our eye out for.

Yeah, they've actually got quite a lot of threats, Wimbledon, and they're actually a pretty exciting team. I think we're quite fortunate that Omar Bugiel's got a suspension, I believe. I mean, he got sent off last time out, so I'd assume he's suspended. He's been a bit of a target man for them. He's kind of like a link up kind of player. But his strike partner, Ali al Hamadi, has been really good for him. But as he signed for them, he's only 21 years old and he's an Iraqi international and that's kind of been his downfall this season. He hasn't really been able to get going in terms of every time he gets a little bit of form, he then goes off on international duty, a little bit like Jody Jones, but he's got six goals and five assists in 15 games, which is a pretty sensational record. And last season he got ten goals, I think, in 15 league appearances. So the guy is a goal scorer, a chance provider. He's a brilliant, brilliant player. They've also got James Tilly on the wing, who, again, has slowed down a bit, but again, seven goals, four assists in 16 games been sensational for them. A right winger who cuts it onto his favorite left foot. So they play a four four two, but it kind of becomes a four three free because he plays as a wide forward almost. And if Jody Jones pushes up, could leave a lot of space for him. And lastly, I just wanted to highlight two players that we'll know quite a lot about, the Lemon Connor. Lemony Evans only had a brief stint of his last season, but I think in those games we saw glimpses and he's a very good player. We know from his time at Torquayo scored that hat trick and he's a very good attacker. And another player that's been with us before. Jake Reeves is in their midfield league two promotion winner last season and has played nearly every game for them this year. Obviously his issue for us was kind of that consistency because of injuries, but he seems to have a clean bit of health at the moment and there's no doubt in the quality that J Reese has in midfield. So quite a lot of threats for Wimbledon, to be fair. They're a side that I really like and they've got a lot of individual quality even in that four four two, which I think actually works quite well for them.

So how does that affect your predictions going forward, then? We obviously had a wide range of predictions going forward and I think yours was probably the most accurate, really, when we think about the end result against Bradford. So what are you predicting going forward for the Wimbledon result?

Yeah, it's a really tough one because when I was looking at this game and the run of games that we had, when I put out a tweet saying we've got our average position the next few games is this and how many points would you take from it? And this was kind of the game that I would have know, okay, we'll take a draw there. But looking at it, Wimbledon have only got nine points at home, which is the fourth worst home record in the league. So they're not the best at power lane, they get wrong. They don't concede a lot at home, but they don't score many at home either. So I think it'll be another tight one. I think it'd be another game a little bit like Crew, where we go, we're probably on top, we probably have a period of dominance, but also Wim wouldn't have the bigger moments. I'm going to go for a draw. I'm going to go one all. Pretty low scoring, very tight game, but I think if I did one side, I'd pick us. But I'm going to go for a draw.

Interesting stuff. Interesting stuff. So I'm going to go for a Notts win. I do think Wimbledon had a bit of a difficult spell. They conceded four, I think, twice, I think it was late October. And then they've quite clearly done something different to adjust and make things a little bit tighter. But I just wonder whether they're losing in the cup, for example, and whatever they've tried to do has started to kind of unwind a little bit and I wonder whether that's an opportunity for Notts to prod at that a little bit. I do think it's one of those where I think it's important to not score first. I feel like I see that say that almost every week. I think that's probably just my own nerves, really, but I think if not score first and set that tone, I think Wimbledon may struggle to unlock us from that point going forward. And obviously thinking about the game that we just come know that goal goes in early doors. Notts will immediately be thinking about the second or third. And I think also Wimbledon will be cautious about, know, seeing what happened at Notts and Bradford. So I think if you can get that early goal suddenly that line becomes a little bit deeper, a little bit more cautious. And they set that kind of psychological safety up, don't they, and try and shut up shop and therefore it might be a way of being able to see out the result. Obviously, we hope that Notts get the benefit of this performance against Wimbledon and Notts were able to continue up the lead. So join us for episode 17 to see how this resolves itself. You don't.