Quote Originally Posted by nw6pie View Post
Given that the Football Radar model is all about recruitment, they're going to need a phenomenal close season to make us championship-winning material. They didn't manage it last summer - none of Vincent, Taylor, Mitchell, Francis or Nemane have become regulars, which is damning - and are presumably going to have to bring even more players in to replace the likes of Wootton and potentially Sam, Roberts and Ruben.

Roberts has symbolised this season for me - IB has struggled to find a role for him that strengthened rather than weakened the team (right wing back!), plus there were the various off-field problems and injuries. Basically, the great potential we saw in 2020 has never been realised. Very frustrating.

The other symbol of the season is the two home games against Grimsby, where we managed to lose twice from winning positions after 75 minutes. Worse, we conceded goals in the final minute THREE times, which to me says an awful lot about desire and will to win. A non-Notts fan just texted me "That was ****ed up. To concede twice in the last 30 seconds - that’s mental," and all I could tell him was that it was the most on-brand Notts County thing - especially with our two local rivals well placed to get promotion.

Every year we seem to say the same thing - the team needs more pace, more muscle, more winners - but we keep signing lightweight, pretty footballers. Time for the owners to wise up and ask themselves some serious questions about how successful teams get out of this league - or we're going to be stuck down here for a long, long time.
There are going to be a few factors that come into play here. As I've mentioned on another thread the best thing that can happen for us for next season is for Wrexham to get the second automatic promotion place, otherwise it will be play-offs again for us next season at best. They will hardly have to make any changes and no doubt if they do miss out on promotion they will spend their way out.

We need to be careful that we don't go the way of Torquay this season. They were play-off finalists and lost a number of key players (e.g. Cameron) and have struggled to make any meaningful impact this season and that's under the experienced Gary Johnson. For them it's been a bit of a "taking stock" season and re-grouping and a transition, but they did come good after Christmas.

Last night we needed Wootton, Roberts and Rodrigues to be on fire. I said this in a previous thread sometime ago if we were to do anything in the play-offs. Unfortunately we lost Roberts to injury, Rodrigues scored the penalty but distribution was a bit off and Wootton didn't get much to feed off. A side without those three you instantly lose 40+ goals.

It's all speculation but we really do need Roberts and Rodrigues to stay or if they leave they need replacing with like for like, but a 20 goal a season striker in Wootton alone does not come cheap that's without trying to find replacements for R&R if they were to go. Where do you get a 20 goal midfielder from?

It would be typical Notts that with the league being weaker (without Wrexham and Stockport) that we would be weaker next season as well. Let's hope not.