⚽ Match Thread vs. Mansfield Town FC 14.10.23 [EFL L2]

[countygump]

Bringing in Slocombe today was the first big clanger Williams has made. Stone’s long kicking isn’t great, but Slocombe’s today was awful.

Well, he had a good game against Derby and his kicking was pretty good in that game as well. Lukey wasn't to know he'd have a stinker today? IMHAHO, neither keeper is good enough for this level.

[countygump]

No Notts side since 1964 has ended a league campaign averaging more than 1.84 goals against per game.
Currently 1.92.

It's mid-October and we're only 6 goals short of conceding as many as we did in the entire 2009/10 Munto season.

It's patently obvious where our problems lie? Don't change the system that's served us well, get better defenders.

[jackal2]

Agreed, but Slocombe's kicking on Tuesday night was much better than I've seen from Stone, so I can see why he got the nod.

It's rare for the Radar not to be 'on point', but Slocombe was in today because summer recruit Aidan Stone doesn't look convincing as a goalkeeper and seems to have lost confidence in his distribution. At present it looks like we've got two back-up keepers, but not the dominant presence between the sticks we would need to go to the next level. That said, it wasn't so long ago that the recruitment folks brought us the fairly brilliant Anthony Patterson on loan from Sunderland, so we should keep faith.

[spacemunky]

I'm not quite ready for the positivity thread just yet.

Today's match was always coming and our shortcomings, that everyone here knew about, were our downfall.

Can't blame the officials, the injuries, we just got beaten, badly, at home, by Mansfield.

[upthemaggies]

Gillingham 3-1 down, so I'd imagine there's a good chance now they will have a new manager in place in time for next Saturday.

[Carlton_Pie]

It's patently obvious where our problems lie? Don't change the system that's served us well, get better defenders.

We strengthened the attacking side pre season and I'd envisage we'd strengthen the defence in the next window. We also need some midfield cover for Palmer and Bostock

[countygump]

[BigFatPie]

Agreed, but Slocombe's kicking on Tuesday night was much better than I've seen from Stone, so I can see why he got the nod.

I sort of ignore that trophy so can only go on the league and Stone didn’t deserve dropping after last Saturday when he was good.

[i961pie]

Mansfield were by far the better side. Over the past 2-3 years they've been building a team to win promotion from this division and do well in the next, which has included dealing with setbacks, and on today's evidence they're near to completion. We're effectively five or so months into the same journey and today you could see the difference in development. Both teams were trying to play good football, but Mansfield were physically far bigger, taller, faster and more battle-hardened and they simply imposed themselves on us. The phrase 'men against boys' is such a cliche, but a fair description of today's game.

I thought the only players to come out of the game with any credit today (for us) were Dan Crowley and Connell Rawlinson. Anything good creatively seems to go through Crowley, while Rawlinson was a minor revelation (relative to my expectations) in the 'Cameron' role. It seems strange to praise a defender when you've lost 1-4, but Connell's defensive instincts are generally better than Cameron's, and his willingness and ability to carry the ball forward at some pace and pick out a good pass was a pleasant surprise. I haven't seen that degree of quality from him before. Unfortunately and crucially we were missing Jodi Jones, but it would be interesting to see how the two combine.

At the opposite end of the scale I thought Richard Brindley was abysmal, not just when defending under pressure, but for his total unwillingness to play a positive pass or attack wide open space throughout the game. Time and time again he took a step forward, checked back and played the safe backward pass, refusing to take any responsibility at all. Aden Baldwin too was poor. There was one remarkable moment in the second half where Baldwin collected the ball in front of the penalty area and was so busy moaning and gesticulating at all those around him that he almost forgot he had the ball at his feet!

Bostock I thought did okay until he got injured, and Langstaff toiled away up front as best he could in very difficult circumstances, but nobody else could claim to have made a net positive contribution. We looked physically weak and painfully small throughout the game and could not win enough of the ball to get a foothold.

Something that was evident in the second half against Swindon, but throughout most of the 90 minutes today was the lack of personnel to play a Plan B if Plan A doesn't work. A mixture of Mansfield's press and our own diminishing confidence in possession forced the goalkeeper to kick long on multiple occasions, but we have nobody big and robust enough in a midfield or forward position to challenge for the ball. McGoldrick has made a decent fist of doing so in some games, but he certainly isn't an orthodox centre-forward, which we desperately needed today to hold the ball up front in order to begin playing in their half. If you can't build from the back and are forced to go a bit more direct, you've got to have enough physical presence to compete.

One (or two) bad results doesn't change everthing. Notts County are a good team in this league - we didn't get to the top of the division after 10 games by accident, but today Mansfield ruthlessly exposed what we're missing and what we'll need, recruitment-wise over the next year or so, to become as strong (in every sense) as the clearly are. You win or you learn, and today we hopefully learned what improvements we need in the next phase of our development. I said last week that I thought Luke Williams was beginning to reach decisions on which players can improve sufficiently to make the next part of "the journey" with us, and which ones have probably "maxed out" on their potential. I suspect today will have helped him make a few more decisions in that regard.

Rawlo and Crowley had a very good first half but Crowley especially disappeared after the break.
I said to my mate at 1-1 I would gladly take a point, this match really highlighted our lack of decent cover in a few positions.
So many on here
have pointed out this season our defence is not good enough for this league.

[DuckPie]

Hopefully those that slate Cameron will realise what a miss he was today.

Not even on the pitch today, and still getting stick🤷*♀️
totally missed Cameron & jones today