The Magpies Make Their Debut In Coca-Cola Championship

Hello my friends! I wish to express my gratitude again for the wonderful display of enthusiasm that you showed on my last post, I am extremely happy to have such an active and helpful audience. As you already know I decided to accept the Uruguay job offer, I will manage both Notts County and the Uruguayan national team for a while, that is until they will sack me :)

The Uruguayan Football Association mad things clear right away, they want me to take the team to the next FIFA World Cup.

There will be six games to play in 2011, three friendlies and three important World Cup qualification games, it will be a tough debut.

But I guess that’s just enough about Uruguay, there will be a special post about the national team that will be published after the Notts County December update. Now let’s get back to my Magpies, we were ready to make our debut it Coca-Cola Championship and we had quite a difficult game right away. The first game of the season was away at Portsmouth, a team that just got relegated from the Premier League. They were strong promotion contenders, so I was quite sure that we had to produce a good display in order to get anything out of that match. The first half was fairly even but Tomas Pekhart made the difference after a quick counter attack, we were looking good. The second half began with a brutal foul from Mokoena, he deserved two red cards for that one! We took control of the game thanks to the one man advantage and Tomas Pekhart struck again to give us a very important debut win.

We had the Carling Cup 1st round coming up, we had to do well in that competition considering that we went all the way to the final last season. The first opponent was a weaker one, League Two side Accrington. I expected an easy game but somehow it turned out to be very close to a nightmare. We missed enormous chances throughout the game, shocking misses that made me think that we were having a black day. Right back Ovidiu Dananae attempted a shot from way out, 35 or 40 yards maybe, I think he did that out of frustration, he rarely shoots on goal. And it went in, it was his first ever goal for the club and our ticket to the second round.

Back to the Championship, we had a tough home game coming up against fellow newly promoted side Coventry, they finished 3rd last season in League One and got promoted after the playoffs. The first half was pretty lame, Coventry were slightly better than us but didn’t have what it takes to create clear chances. We played a lot better in the second half, created chances but missed them… Fortunately we managed to win it with a late goal, Kamil Grosicki placed a good header from a corner kick.

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Next up, another home game, this time Swansea were coming at Meadow Lane. They finished somewhere in the middle of the table last season and I certainly wanted a win out of that game. We produced a poor performance though, I still can’t understand the reasons. The 1-1 draw was the just result, Swansea deserved to walk away with one point.

I was slightly disappointed with that performance and I was sure that we had to do a lot better in the next game, we were playing away at Sheffield Wednesday, one of the main promotion contenders as they were relegated from the Premier League. My player’s didn’t let me down this time, they produced a solid performance and I was pleased to see them play with determination and creativity. The only goal of the game was scored after a nice team move, 17 year old Sam Hinshelwood found himself clean through and he passed the ball into the back of the net!

The next game was away at fellow Championship side Reading in the second round of the Carling Cup. I guess after seeing the result there wouldn’t be much to say about the game. There is something though, two players made the difference. First there was Sabrin Sburlea, he was unstoppable and he could have scored even more than four goals that day, he was on fire! The second essential contribution was brought by the goalkeeper, Ben Amos, he made a few crucial saves in the second half, Reading hoped to get back into the game but he kept the door shut with great courage and talent. He earned the place in the first team with a few good performances and he is keeping Kasper Schmeichel on the bench!

We will face Championship side Derby County in the 3rd round of the Carling Cup but there are quite a few more games to play until then. The last game of August was another difficult one, at home with promotion contenders Bolton. It was a very tough game indeed and Bolton made the most out of their experience, they scored through a free kick header and then pulled back in defense and looked to strike on counter attacks. We fought well though and Romanian striker Denis Alibec finally scored his first goal for the club after a great run from midfield. He was disappointing until that game and I was already thinking about packing his bags and sending him back to Jose Mourinho at Internazionale Milano. The goal gave us a good result and gave him the chance to stay at Meadow Lane and prove his skills. We could even have won the game but we missed too many chances, one too many…

The league table at the end of August was looking quite alright for us, we were in 2nd place, still unbeaten.

We’ll have fun in September too with quite a few tough games, at home with Middlesbrough and with Derby in the 3rd round of the Carling Cup.

That’s how it was, I’m looking forward to reading your views about our debut in Coca-Cola Championship.

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