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Notts fan here.
That signing is crazy ! Keep him fit and he’s the best player outside of the EFL
He came to us from Blyth and ripped up the league, one of those players that everytime he got the ball you are on the edge of your seat – has twinkle toes as he can dance round players.
Then he got injured and it was one of those injuries where they couldn’t find the root cause – they even thought it was COVID related at one point.
By the time he came back we had a new manager who didn’t seem as keen on Cal and his confidence dropped and we played a system that didn’t suit him as well. He still looked great but had niggles and was in and out the team.
Last summer when Williams arrived he was looking back to his best and I think Williams would have got the best out of him but Cal was determined to move on and so signed for Aberdeen where he got injured and was pretty much out all season.
He did have some infractions at Notts. He and Rodrigues who were thick as thieves went to the boxing one night and turned up for training really hungover. Ruben apologied but Cal refused to and so was dropped for a while. It led to some stuff being said on twitter as well, but I think a lot of that was to do with his relationship with the then manager. cal is desperate to be loved, keep him fit and build the team round him and he will get you back to back promotions
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I tend to not agree when people say manager out of his depth etc because it generally isn’t true but as a Notts fan I think it’s fair to say he looked out of his depth
We didn’t suddenly play a new system that you guys wouldn’t have known about. We played the same way we do week after week, very high wingbacks – Nemane and Rodrigues linking up and lots of balls cut back from the byline.
I’m not even sure what your plan was. Was it to overload us in midfield with the extra player there ? Shields needs to look at someone like Rodrigues to see what you need to do without the ball.
I think the two goals left your players a bit shocked but your manager still didn’t change his system til half time.
As it said in the podcast teams have scored against us recently. The lower teams who do well tend to go man for man and be niggly, time waste and break up play a lot.
Hopefully for you it’s a one off and you do better tonight
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Notts fan here. First of all well done on the away fan attendance – amazing when in your position even if it was cheap and close-ish
Did your manager say what the plan was for the start of the game? Teams tend to come and either go high press and take it to us or they put 11 behind the ball, try at every chance to slow down the game, stop us getting into a rhytham.
You guys didn’t seem to do either. We played great today, Notts were in deluxe mode but you also let us play like that. Nemane / Rodrigues seemed to surprise you but that’s how we play every game.
I think once it went to 2-0 so quickly m not sure if you knew what to do, to attack would be running the risk of a cricket score but you also sort of had nothing to lose then.
Saying that we were playing very well and I think you just couldn’t cope with how fast we were on you when you had the ball. In the second half even when we were strolling to a win, I saw 5 of our players surround your lad who had the ball, they were just relentless.
Hopefully for your sakes you can scratch this off as a learning curve for the manager and players and refocus for Tuesday
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As I was writing about Yates I suddenly realised he went to you guys after us.
And you also had Rodwell as CEO. Bloody hell we have similar paths.
Do you have any sort of trust / supporters group ? My thought is that if Hardy is going to buy the club you at least try and make the best of a bad situation.
I would demand a face to face meeting with him, try and get out of him transparency on where the money is coming from. Is he the front or is it just him? What lessons did he learn from his time at Notts and how would he go about this differently etc.
My main concern for you is where the money is coming from. That guy is just not rich enough to fund a club. Maybe 20 years ago he was when Clubs were owned by local businessmen but now you need someone to pump in £1m a year just to break even
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Notts fan here..
So much to say about Hardy.
When he first came in I was opened minded and he did do some good things – attendances went up because some of the offers and PR he did.
The issue is he runs the club with his ego, any business acumen he has went out the window and everything was about him.
I never think its a good idea to have an owner on twitter and this proved to be the case, even before the photo incident he was constantly arguing with fans and upsetting people. He upset Forest so much with what Hardy thought was banter that they recalled Ryan Yates who was on loan with us and we were never the same team after he left.
He made everything about him, the food stands were called Big Als and there was a painting of him in the family stand. He signed up his son to the academy and from what I was told he wasnt very good. Half time entertainment was kids trying to score goals against his kid. None of the staff liked him – he sacked a load of them when it emerged there was a whatsapp group where they slagged him off constantly. He did allegedly get on very well with one female member of staff.
All this could be forgiven if he made better football decisions. Rather than bringing in a decent CEO and giving the manager a budget he was very influential over signings. I am convinced we signed Oxlade Chamberlain because Hardy is a Liverpool fan and dreamt of becoming friendly with the family. We signed players on big money and big contracts which neither he or the club could afford.
He sacked Nolan after a few games and then paid big money to get Kewell who he sacked a few games later. By the time Ardley arrived the club was rotton with a huge squad who were falling out with each other and all sorts. The relegation was inevitable because he had just ran the club like he was playing football manager.
By the time he left wages werent being paid and he was happy to try and sell the club to an out and out conman. He wont accept any of this is his fault and it angers me to think he has the money to buy another club whilst fans had to send in donations for our office staff to get paid.
I hope he has learnt his lesson but his twitter account says different (oh he used to have a load of sock accounts too) If he promised to leave twitter and to appoint a good CEO who would run the club and allow the manager to run the football side he might be ok but I just dont trust a word he says
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