Quote Originally Posted by Notts_Popular_Front View Post
If significant improvements aren't made in defence and attack, you can forget about 1st place - or even seriously challenging for it. We will reach the playoffs - just as the last two seasons - and anything can happen there.

Still early days, and six unbeaten and 12 points is good - averaging two points a game will very likely win the division. But, as is often said, the season is a marathon not a sprint - and we won't continue to get away playing as we are over nine months.

You can't really fluke a 5-0 win, a decent enough draw at Wrexham, considering all the circumstances - although I daresay they will prove to be more hype than substance, two disappointing draws and two possibly somewhat undeserved wins.

If you have to score three goals a time to beat teams that won't be troubling the end of the table -or even the top half of the table- in May, it will be a tough season.

I wouldn't ever expect 1st place in any English division whoever your team is, but you would expect a club the size of Notts to seriously challenge for top spot two in every three seasons, certainly one in three - and by that I mean several months of at least moving up and down between 1st, 2nd and 3rd and not being more than a win behind 1st for any significant length of time and speculating about games in hand.

Two seasons into our non-league sentence, we still haven't done that. Fans have and continue to turn up in numbers, so you can't blame a lack of support (as you could in the past, much higher up). Questions will need to be asked if we end up in a similar position to last season, or fail in the play offs in the manner we did under Arsley.

As things stand, there's good reason to be hopeful but there are also valid concerns.

Next month will tell us a lot more than this one.