Originally Posted by
slack_pie
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.