The Magpies — November 2011

Welcome back my friends, the Notts County Football Manager 2010 story continues with a brand new episode! We were down in 2nd place at the end of October, out of the Carling Cup after a quick defeat at Old Trafford but our fans were as happy as they could be. The reason was the Nottingham Derby victory, we beat Nottingham Forest at The City Ground and that was enough to see our fans singing in the streets for days.

I knew that one win wouldn’t be enough for a successful season though, we had to pile up the points and build a solid position in the Championship table. The first game of November was away at newly promoted Huddersfield, they were in 14th place. We had lots of trouble with the last season in League One and they still had a solid team. Right winger Sam Hinshelwood gave us the lead early in the game, he missed a lot of chances last month and I was quite concerned about his lack of confidence. We scored again just before the break and had the game under control in the second half too, we could have scored even more.

The next game was at home with 7th placed Southampton, a very good team. The game started very well, Carlos Martinez played a perfect through ball for Szalai and we were in the lead right away. The Saints played better than us after conceding that goal, we were under pressure throughout the first 45 minutes and Southampton deservedly scored before the break. Things changed after half time, we were all over them in the second half and created lots of chances to score. Tomas Pekhart converted just two of them, we could have scored a handful.

We had another tough home game coming up, 6th placed Newcastle were coming at Meadow Lane. I was expecting a close game but we had a big chance to win it despite Newcastle‘s first half goal. They were down to 10 men in the 63rd minute but we failed to create more upfront. We missed the few chances that we created and that was it, our first league defeat. I guess that moment had to come sooner or later. I hoped that it would be later.

We had to get back on track right away, the next game was at 19th placed Peterborough. The lads played with great determination, they wanted to prove that the home defeat was just an accident. Szalai was absolutely unleashed, he scored a superb hat-trick but missed at least another three huge chances. Anyway, it was a good win to get the smiles back on our faces.

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The last game of the month was at home with 15th placed Barnsley, I wanted to end the month with another win. The performance was not good enough though, we should have created a lot more pressure on Barnsley‘s defense but we failed to do that. We simply missed way too many passes in midfield and we didn’t place any good crosses in the whole 90 minutes! I was quite disappointed.

There’s an interesting thing that I noticed, we played worse at home than we did away. We have 4 wins, 4 draws and one defeat at home while the away record shows seven wins and two draws! I can’t explain this but the pitch might be a reason, our Meadow Lane pitch is terrible and that might have an effect on our game since it is based on quick short passes. The pressure could be another reason but still, the pitch looks like a swamp!

Anyway, despite the not so good results we were top of the table again after 18 games!

We’ll be quite busy in December, 6 league games and the FA Cup 3rd round. The second game of the month will be quite important, away at 2nd placed Derby County.

That’s about it, thanks for reading. Now I’m eager to see my lads performing in December, stay tuned to find out how it goes!

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