NCS Shorts | #10: HOSPITALITY

Shorts.

I'm joined once again by the Dan Crowley to my back post cross. It is Tom Williams. Tom, how are you doing, mate?

Yeah, I'm great. Thank you. How are you?

I'm not too bad, mate, not too bad. Like I say, a little bit of the man flu, to be honest. But I think that's post excitement from not Swindon, which we'll get onto in a minute, but before we do, take us through Colchester. Have you recovered from Colchester? Most importantly, yeah.

Honestly, it was a ridiculous game and it was hell of a journey. But to be honest with you, I came away from it less disappointed than I was from Forest Green. That sounds mental, considering the result, but in terms of performance, I couldn't really fault it from an attacking perspective and from an effort perspective, they scored two worldies, which at the time, when I watched the free kick in the stadium, I thought, oh, God, stone should have done better with that. But actually watching it back, it's right in the top corner. He's strike from Rangers in the top corner. That Reed had a brilliant game. Yeah, I mean, it was a great atmosphere. We never stopped singing in the away stand. The only point I wanted to raise Colchester's been done and dusty. The only point I wanted to raise was the two players that really impressed me, kyle Cameron and McCauley Langstaff, because they both have an understanding of the away support and when to get the support going, especially the skipper. It's an underrated skill, I think, but he knows exactly when to get that crowd going. He knows even goes back to Wembley when he pointed the long point, got us all going. I think he really understands how important the fans are. And I do believe the fact we were attacking behind the goal, we were all stood the second half, we almost sucked the ball into the net for the fifth goal. So a shame we didn't get anything from it. But performance was actually all right, I thought.

Yeah, like I say, my experience with the Colchester game was slightly more remote than obviously the Swindon game, which we're going to talk about at the moment. But I think, once again, without wanting to go over old ground, I think it was very interesting to see the varied reactions to that result. And even still at the back of looking back on that game after a very good performance against Swindon, which we're going to go on to, I think it's interesting looking back, isn't it? A performance as you talked about. It just there about maybe frustrations that fans felt in the moment as the game sort of seesawed, then sort of softens and becomes a little bit more realistic and a little bit more evaluative as you move away from that game. And then actually, you can look at the results from post Swindon, looking back at Colchester and realize, actually, it doesn't really matter at all. And I think that's the beauty of football isn't know. I think it's important to capture all of those moments, though, isn't it? To be honest, I mean, one of the things that I talked about previously is whenever fans give a reaction to any performance, very often there's elements of right in both cases. So going from the Colchester game where the result ultimately didn't favor Know, and there were some, I wouldn't say alarming, of course it's not alarming, particularly not after the Swindon game, which again, we're going to get onto, it's not alarming at all. But there were some moments where you think, yeah, we need to do a bit better there and we need to improve that, or we need to avoid that again. But at the same time, and I think this is where the debates rage online as well, is that actually despite the result, despite the OD error here and there, which is going to happen, there was still a lot of positivity, I think, from my point of view, watching that sort of roll in and seeing that kind of debate happen again, but feeling I didn't necessarily want to participate in it, but I certainly wanted to just say, look, there's an awful lot of similarity in what we're saying. It is okay to say we're top of the league still and we're doing incredibly well, but also it's okay to say, yeah, but if we want to maintain it, we just need to watch this and we watch that and we watch the other. But moving forward then, because know, one of the reasons why we can look back with a little bit of roast tinted spectacles on Colchester was Swindon, wasn't it? I mean, how good was that Swindon game?

Oh, it was absolutely unbelievable. And like you say, it's crazy to know with three points clear at the top. Now imagine if we'd won that Colchester game, which on another day in Martin would be six points at the top. So it's just crazy to think that this league is so tight and one result can change everything. I know after the Colchester game, we looked at our own games and it was like, we've got to play 3rd, 4th, fifth and 7th, or something like that. And now it's changed to fifth, 7th, 10th and the rest of it. So he's completely dependent on one result. But in terms of the actual Swindon game, what a first half? I can't think of many better first halfs we've had under Luke Williams. That was just unbelievable. I think Swindon were poor, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. Their defending was just I didn't understand it. They just gave us so much space. And it wasn't like one off, like Crowley's goal. It wasn't the first chance he got. He missed one not long before. He was just getting so much space. Macca would clean through like three or four times, I think at times we actually didn't know what to do with it ourselves because we were so shocked that we had so much time. It was a bit like, oh, we actually can play that pass. Oh, OK. We will. And look, all three of the front three have scored again. So, yeah, absolutely brilliant. Don't know what you thought about it. I know you had a bit of a different experience than normal at Swindon.

Yeah, I mean, the game was different for a number of reasons. So I was in hospitality and before everybody accuses me of being part of the Prawn Sandwich Brigade, which I think was a Roy Keane quote, wasn't it, from Man United, from years ago? No, I was delighted to be a guest because again, I think I put on Twitter how proud I am of my wife who won an award with the Notts FA for being a new volunteer going into football. Someone who, when I first met her, hated football, wanted absolutely nothing to do it. In fact, I dragged her to Medal Lane for my birthday and it happened to be the game against Wimbledon that lasted about 15 minutes on a torrential downpour. And she said, well, that's it, I've been but fast forward to having two boys. She's had very little choice in terms of getting involved and does all those kind of less than glamorous tasks of doing the football admin. She's done some ref in, she raises money for families who may find financially taking part in football a bit of a struggle. But also I was pleased to also meet some of the other really well deserving winners that day as well. So I was able to kind of get a taste of hospitality. So we had style. Gave a great, know, great interview at the start and Macari came out as well. And it was the first time that I've had that kind of experience, really. And so anybody who's interested in going to hospitality at Notts, I can thoroughly recommend it. Food's fantastic. You know, it's a great occasion, but a very different way of seeing the game, you know what I mean? A very different atmosphere. Particularly sat around these people who really deserving winners of these awards because of their work within football, but not necessarily every single one of them are not fan, even though every single one of them was incredibly complementary, know, the performance that were able to see. I have to admit, because I'm in a bit of a dilemma, this was probably the only occasion where I wasn't able to high five Jimmy and Jack because my whole routine was just completely thrown out the window. So I didn't walk to the ground in the same way, didn't go past the statue. And there was a wave of anxiety that came over me as I sat in what isn't my usual seat, thinking, this could go really badly wrong and it's all my fault. But no, so I'm delighted that Notts were able to reassure my anxieties with a fantastic performance. But I think one of the things that stood out for me and one of the things that I think is becoming more and more prevalent with this side is we know how good these players are and we know what their standout performances are and we know what their standout abilities are. But as we move further and further through performance and performance and result and result, we're seeing extra dimensions of players and their performances. So I've spoken about it previously where we all know Johnny Bostock's performance, his ability on the ball, his passing is fantastic. We saw that last season, we've praised his defensive know and how significant he's becoming in providing that protection for the you know, I could go through the whole team talking about this. We talked about Macaulay Langstaff and about his know, how it's unfair to see him as simply a poacher, even though obviously goals after goals, and it was delighted to see his goal again against Wyndham. But I think do you know what? There was another element as well that I don't think I'd probably seen as much of. But I thought it was really obvious against Swindon was there was that absolute nastiness and determination that whenever a player lost the ball and there were some heavy handed tactics from Swindon within the laws of the game, but there were some difficult things that were happening off the ball. There was a bit of pushing, there was a bit of kind of gamesmanship the players really wanted to give it know. Dan Crowley, for example, shoulder charging lad, twice his size, probably about three or four times as well, because he'd got, in our eyes, obviously, with our Notts bias, unfairly pushed off the ball. The ref didn't give it and so he gave it back. And I absolutely loved it. I thrived off all of those moments. And even though the ref antagonized the crowd by giving Swindon the free kick, the fact that he's got that in his locker and the fact that he wants to give that back, jodie Jones as well, had some rough treatment in the first half, particularly gave it back, wasn't willing to do it. John Bostock picked up a yellow card again because he received some quite heavy tackling in the midfield retaliated in the sense of just drawing that line, that parameter going, do you know what, you're not going to do that to me. I'm not going to be intimidated, I'm not going to be bossed. Matty Palmer, same sort of thing. So we're well aware of these players and their kind of standout qualities from last year or from what they've been able to demonstrate so far. But it's those kind of deeper things that I think are even more exciting because we're unearthing levels and levels and layers and layers of these players performances. So that was definitely something that I'm excited to see and I think gives us further confidence going into these quite crucial games, as you just said, against some big sides, that we can rely on those standout skill sets, but also those deeper layers as well that will cause other teams problems. And we're going to need to dig in and find that second or third skill set for them to be able to help us be successful. Is there anything you want to add on to Swindon before we move our attentions to Barrow?

Yeah, just echo what you said there about Dan Crowley. I was going to raise that. I thought his pressing was the intensity is there now and the aggression is there. I still think there's room for him to be slightly more intelligent with it, but he's learning and he's improving all the time and I've got no doubt that within three or four games, he'll be one of our best pressers because he's shown that aggression. I also want to highlight the back three. Obviously, they switched Baldwin and Brinley round, Baldwin in the middle and I thought Richard Brinley, like Luke Williamson, his post, know he's gone on another level this season. I mean, I've got a soft spot for Richard Brinley just because I think he's a wonderful footballer. I think footballers that are like that, athletes as well, he's just a wonderful athlete and everything about him, I think he's a great role model for people and I think as a footballer, he's just improved so much this year and he didn't look any out of place on the right of the free. And I thought his recovery pace was excellent. And in terms of recovery pace, kyle Cameron looked actually really good. And we know he's not necessarily got the pace that Bowen and Brinley have got. But what he did was he timed his runs. The line of his runs were spot on every single time. He dealt with a quick front pair in from Swindon and he put in a crucial block as well to keep us sort of in a comfortable position. And obviously, finally, just to touch on McCauley Langstaff, because 50th goal for the club, I heard that it was 25 goals at home, 25 goals away, and I think that just sort of sums up Macca perfect in front of goal. And it just was very fitting that his 50th was a penalty because obviously the previous 49 have been open play. Yeah, couldn't agree more.

Couldn't agree more. And like I say, passing on. Congratulations to McCauley Langstaff. And I absolutely agree. The willingness for the players to put their bodies on the line, their face in the line for the line of duty, blocking things even. And again, we could wax lyrical about every single player, but even Aidan Stone. The frustration for me was the linesman's late flagging and players coming through on goal, them striking and making sure that he was there to block it and save it. Just doing those extra sort of things and really making sure those standards are high and are consistently high, I think it's infectious, isn't it? And it spreads through the side. So I completely echo the things you were saying. So on to Barrow, then, and one of those sides that are doing quite well. 10th in the league and one player particularly, that I'm interested in seeing, but really hoping that we don't see him and have to praise him too highly the next time we talk is Emil Aqua, someone who we became. Incredibly familiar with working the National League. Someone who, privately, we became very interested in and someone who we felt had that potential to step into the league. So it's been interesting to see him not only move to Barrow, but also get amongst the know. He's got four goals already. He's been suspiciously quiet, I think, in sort of late September and early October compared to his early season form. So that worries me a little bit that maybe there's going to be a resurgence there. But what are you looking forward to in the game against Barrow? Tom?

Yeah, he's a man that I'm not looking forward to seeing either. Emil Acqua I mean, I've bumped into him before, I've said before on sort of things, the end of my road at Uni. I've got a barbers and he came out of the barbers and I bumped into him, which was bizarre because obviously it's not long before that. Scored two against Notts. And let me tell you, even when you walk past him in the street, he's a big lad and he's all wrong for us. He's the type of striker, I just think he's all wrong. He's a very similar striker to the two that Colchester had up front and they cause us a number of issues. He runs the channels, but he runs them really fast and hard as well. He's like such a good athlete and he does worry me up top for Barrow. And also the game itself is a difficult one. It's a long way to go to know it's a difficult place to go and that's a cliche that gets thrown around, but it really is. Pete Wild has got them even tougher to beat than they were before, than when we've configured them before. And, yeah, I couldn't speak highly enough of Pete Wild and what he's done there. He's built his side on defensive foundations, but I think that's what gives me a little bit of hope if we get a goal or two against them. They don't score many. I know they won three, two the other week, but they don't score many goals, really. And I think if we attack at our best, I think we'll be fine. I think it's a tough game, but if we put on the sort of attacking clinic that we can it's a little bit like Gillingham. I'm quite confident when we're going to come against them just because they don't score many. They don't concede many, but they don't score many either. And I think that we can blow those sort of teams away.

Yeah, I agree. I mean, first of all, it's been a very long time since I've met a footballer and a barbers, for obvious reasons. But one of the things that I think is going to be interesting to see with Barrow is how they set up against Notts, and particularly Notts, knowing that Notts are going to have the ball, knowing that Notts have possession. Although, interestingly, there's a few little stats, wasn't there, about the lack of possession that not seem to have. And I use that in the most tongue in cheek way when you consider how we played against Swindon. But we assume that Notts, I think everyone assumes that Notts are going to have the lion's share of possession. And I think teams have taken two approaches. I've said on previous pods that I think Notts have struggled slightly more with the sides that have tried to compete for possession and it's been interesting to try and find those ways round and obviously the pressing, the counter pressing and those sort of things, whereas I felt we've done a little bit easier for those teams. I'm thinking Akrington, but there's been other sides as well who step off, who try and cover the half spaces, who concede possession and space, try and keeping it quite tight and stuff. I think that's been something that plays in our favor. So it'd be very interesting to see how Barrow approach that, because I think when you look across their side, I think they can do both. I think it's very simple. It'd be too reductive to see, you know, they're going to slip into this defensive thing, particularly at home with not being the away side. I think it's too simplistic to say that they're going to step off, let us have the ball and go defensive. I think they have got that ability to compete for and use possession intelligently. So I think it's going to be interesting to see how they set themselves up against Notts and equally, how well Notts adapt to the choices that Barrow take. But I do echo what you're saying, aqua as a striker, his skill set, his ability to not just be powerful in the air, but he's very good on the floor, he's mobile for a big lad as well. He's going to be very interesting and how Notts cope with that is going to be fascinating still. But I want to kind of link back to what we were saying about the performance of someone like Brinley, whose mobility, as well as his kind of physical sort of toughness and stuff, might be one of the solutions to some of those problems that we're going to be facing. So is there anything else that we are looking forward to on Barrow before we move on to predictions?

No, just that we can't underestimate them. They're a know, like you said, they can mix up, they can do the defensive stuff, but they have got they are a team packed full of quality. Dom Telford who was top goalscorer, I think season before last in league two. He hit double figures as well last season. So he signed for Barrier this summer and is a quality, a quality player. Good goalscorer. Kean Spence. Another name from the National League days. Be familiar, very good young midfielder. He sort of had a good start there. Elliot newby as well, another player, just really good quality and they've also got what Pete Wild is good at doing and I think actually Luke Williams has been doing it as well is getting his substitutions right. Pete Wild is very good at making the right sub at the right time and I think that's something that Luke Village has really improved this season is making the right subs at the right times and I think that might be crucial at the weekend. They play a free five two, sort of little bit similar ish shape. A lot of teams play a free but similar but different to Shape, if that makes sense. They've got the flat back free but it's bit more of a flat five rather than sort of staggered team. But yeah, I think it'll be a close game as my little prelude to my prediction. Yeah.

And I thought it was significant the way Williams used his subs against know some of those significant players making sure that they've got rest, making sure that they're using the data that they've got available to them in terms of fatigue and making sure players are recovered really well. David McGoldrick at the end in hospitality, making jokes about his old legs, struggling to get the through ball from Jody Jones as he dinked it. You know, maybe a tactical saw. But I wish, like I said, my legs were anywhere near as old in inverted commas as McGoldrick's were, because, I mean, you know, the running that man does and the combative nature that he's got in winning the ball is just something to be seen. And I think that's probably something we're going to need going forward. So onto the predictions then, tom let you go first for me.

Yeah, well, just to echo what you said about McGoldrick, I mean, I think I'm at least well over a decade younger than him and he can probably run for about 90 more minutes than I can. So I think I wouldn't mind being that old at this age. He'll be another key player for us. I think he'll be a key man. Actually talking to McGoldrick, we've sort of underestimate his ability when we go direct and I think we might have to do that against Barrow a little bit. I actually predicted this. It wasn't obviously we didn't cover Swinning game on the pod because of the double game week, but I actually went for a three two swing and win, so it's the first time I predict us to lose this season and it's probably our best performance, so maybe I should continue that trend. But Barrow is a tough place to go. They're a good team at home. I just think we fancy is not to get beat. That sounds a bit mad, but I'm going to go for a one all. I think we'll continue our trend of being a little bit more solid, but I think they'll restrict us. I don't think they'll give us as much space as Swindon did. For know, I think Pete Wild would have watched that back and seen Dan Crowley get the space. And that's something I would actually be really interested to see, is when teams start to pick up on Dan Crowley. The Goldrich and Langstaff are the obvious threats, but Crowley's on five goals, I think already. So I'm going to go one all, but hopefully my pessimism is rewarded again.

I hope so too, certainly, because like I say, I'm throwing myself a little bit out of routine in terms of the things that I have to do to control my not support with not high fiving Jimmy and Jack. I might have to end up just catching a bus or a tram down there before the game just to undo that. Otherwise I might struggle before the match. No. So I agree with you. I think the closeness of the game is based within my prediction. I am obviously hoping that we're able to kind of move this progression forward. So I've gone for two one. I do think we've already talked about him. I do think Aqua could be a bit of a threat for us and I could see him getting back on the score sheet after a little bit of a lean spell that I think he's had most recently after starting really strongly at the start of the season. But I also hope that, like I say, we're going to be able to find those extra gears. So I wouldn't be surprised for us to go one nil then get pulled back to one one and then finally finding that extra gear that we seem to always have. And I think it goes back to one of the things that we said at the start about those Notts players demonstrating that kind of third skill set or that fourth skill set that kind of rugged determination to really get stuck in and to really kind of make sure that they find that extra level that's going to get them over the line. Because I do think there's a growing determination within this squad to really make this season a success. So, two one for me. Final word on you, Tom, just before I end our goodbyes, and obviously I just want to point out that unfortunately Rich couldn't be with us. He continues his Alan Partridge tour of scottish hotels, so I hope that he's listening and I hope he's having a great time. I'm sure he's probably predicted a draw as well just to continue that pattern going forward, but we'll hopefully be able to rejoin each other next week. So tom, anything else before we leave?

No, just hopefully be more of the same. I mean, if we perform like we did against Swindon, we'll be good. And obviously we've got the EFL trophy just a few days after that against derby, but to be honest with you, I think it'd be all hands on deck for the big massive game after that. So big few weeks start of a very difficult October. We've started it well, so let's hope we continue it. I accu that.

Good luck, everyone. Hopefully we'll be talking after another three points.