Reply With QuoteAfter a rocky start, Burchnall has been performing well. His brand of passing football is certainly more entertaining and exciting to watch than Neal Ardley's.
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Assuming there are no more postponements, as it stands I think the home game against Grimsby will be IB's 50th game in charge of playing affairs at Notts.
Would be nice to think there's a real possibility we could be top of the league by then as well. Record so far below . . .
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After a rocky start, Burchnall has been performing well. His brand of passing football is certainly more entertaining and exciting to watch than Neal Ardley's.
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Only Cotterill, Jimmy McMullan and Kevan in his brief Munto spell have a better PPG ratio. You can't argue with that. There will be very few managers out there who could have done a better job than with what Burch has had to work with, which is not to suggest we have a poor squad but other managers at this level have been better backed. What he lacked was experience but he's now close to a season's worth of experience at this level.
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Yes, he seems to have improved players through coaching, and judging by the way players perform after being brought into the starting 11 or compete for places he has created a good squad mentality. It was well worth going to watch the game yesterday even though it was the Trophy and several changes to the team - £12 was very good value for the level of football that IB has got Notts playing - and credit to Eastleigh for their performance. COYPOriginally Posted by jackal2
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After watching some of our 'reserve' players in action yesterday, it occurred to me this is the first time for a long time that we've had a Notts squad with no real 'dead wood' in it. In the past we've always been carrying a few players euphemistically referred to as 'ones for the future', serial sick notes and worn-out old stagers who managers wouldn't even dare call upon in an emergency.
Yes, some players in the current squad are selected more often than others, as is natural, but I wouldn't say we've got anybody who is unplayable. On the contrary, the game against Wrexham demonstrated that several of our second choice players could take on and beat the most expensively assembled squad/team in the league. That has to be credit to the owners' recruitment and Burchnall's preference for having a relatively small group of players all of whom he has the confidence to play at some point. And of course the manager's coaching ability to get the best out of each player.
Last edited by jackal2; 16-01-2022 at 01:53 PM.
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Barnet at home on Friday then Wealdstone and Bromley away before that game v Grimsby. Would like to think we could take 7 from 9 points from those next 3 games keeping our interest in top spot well and truly alive. A win against Grimsby after that would be the least IB and indeed the owners deserve.
As Jackal says its hard to find any real deadwood in the current squad, even the loan signings on the whole have been pretty good this season.
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Some good positive comments made on this short thread.
It certainly was a rocky start with some awful results thrown in but clearly under really tricky conditions with a very congested schedule of games for the new man at the helm.
1.95 PPG this term is no doubt impressive and if this can be upped to over the magical 2.00 PPG that would great and probably needed.
Even if still living in Notts I wouldn't have gone yesterday as I rarely if ever bothered with secondary competitions like this. However it's great to see a good crowd in watching such attractive passing football and comments about how £12 is a good value for money purely due to the football on offer in what is an underwhelming game and unattractive competition to the supporters.
Finally recruitment, interesting comments about not having any deadwood or a bloated squad which we have been so acustom to in the past. This is huge for me going forward and adds to the confidence I already have in the owners.
Maybe we can put to bed any argument as to whether the recruitment has got better since the radar was introduced.
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Yes we can. It's far better. Even the FR signings who haven't immediately set the world alight for various reasons (e.g. Ed Francis, Lewis Knight) still look to have a fair bit of ability and potential and are certainly not unplayable in the first team, even though others may be ahead of them in the pecking order at present.
Going back a few years through old programmes I'm reminded of us signing players like Elliott Hodge, Callum Saunders, Rhys Sharpe, Taylor McKenzie, Malcolm Melvin, Andy Haworth, George Nicholas, Matt Marshall, Michael Byron, Niall McNamara, Ryan Ford and a fair few others, most of whom arrived with the infamous 'one for the future' tag and got a first team squad number, but were not even trusted by their respective managers as a last resort. Granted, they were probably on low-ish wages, but if the manager would almost sooner name ten men than give them a game, what's the point? They all departed into obscurity without contributing anything, and it wasn't as if the squads they were part of were particularly competitive or successful ones.
And that's not to mention the relatively expensive draft busts like Tony Hackworth, Danny Haynes and Spencer Weir-Daley, who arrived as marquee signings and contributed less to the team than a plastic traffic cone.
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Four players in there that I'd completely forgotten about!
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So did the managers who signed them!
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