Quote Originally Posted by slack_pie View Post
Totally agree with this. It's tempting to go back decades, but our current disaster really only needs to be traced back to Jan last year - a disastrous transfer window that totally took the wind out of our sales. If we'd kept Yates and strengthened the team, we'd have gone up in automatic.

Then followed an even more disastrous summer, where we threw the baby out with the bath water and tried to rebuild a team that just needed tweaking. I've said it many times, but we just needed to retain Collin, O'Connor, and even Forte (squad player), replace Shola with a decent target man (Akinde), find a midfield general to do the Yates role, and a quality centre back. Really you're looking at 3 major signings, plus a squad players or loans to fill the ranks. Instead we took a scattergun approach and signed anyone who played well against us, with zero thought behind how they'd work together. It was like someone playing Championship Manager 20 years ago.

Then, of course, there was Nolan and his apparent decline outside of work. Typical of Notts to finally find a decent young manager and then for him to lose his head. Such a shame. We had so much going for us under him - until it all went wrong, of course.
/\ /\ This.

If ever there was a time for quality over quantity then it should have been last Summer.

Michael O Connor has played 37 matches for Lincoln this season so in hindsight his injury has not haunted or hampered him. Likewise Adam Collin has played 40 matches for Carlisle who are 9th. Letting these solid League Two players go were major mistakes because they did not need replacing, but were not adequately replaced.

I’d also add into this the 8-1 defeat by Swansea in the FA Cup. That was a national humiliation in front of the TV cameras in early February 2018. I think that caused damage.

Also we lost big dressing room characters last summer such as Mike Edwards and Alan Smith along with Shola Ameobi.

I don’t think we can apportion blame on the referee in the playoff game as the cause of all our ills because we should have been better than the officials and should not have finished in the playoffs in the first place having led the pack and been in the automatic promotion zone for five months of the season.