Maynard wants Magpies to make winning ‘a habit’

COUNTY BOSS REVELS IN BACK-TO-BACK WINS AND SEEING PERFORMANCES YIELD POINTS

STUART Maynard hopes Notts County have rediscovered the winning habit after striking up back-toback victories for the first time under his tenure with Saturday’s success over Walsall.

Macaulay Lanstaff, Aaron Nemane and Sam Austin were all on target as the Magpies were the 3-1 winners at the Bescot Stadium, with the side adding to last weekend’s 3-0 victory over Harrogate Town for a six-point week.

They have the chance to make it three wins on the spin when they welcome promoted Stockport County to Meadow Lane tomorrow night (7.45pm).

Mathmatically County still have a chance of making the League Two play-offs, but it would require a huge swing of results elsewhere and Notts picking up maximum points from their remaining three games.

Maynard, though, has not exactly ruled out a top-seven finish, but for now is focused on building on some new-found momentum after a tough start to his reign.

“I’m delighted with back-to-back wins for the boys. They deserve it,” he said.

“It kind of hindered us a little bit when they went down to 10 men because the game went a little bit chaotic and it took a bit of structure out of the game.

“If you look at our intensity out of possession today, it was outstanding from minute one, it started with the front two setting the press, getting after them early. I thought we were excellent today.

“Winning is a habit and that is something we want to install again. We are starting to see the results are coming with the performance levels.

“We knew that with the bad batch of results we’d had, the play-offs had been taken away from us but we will keep going to the end. It is disappointing that we are not closer to being in that race.”

Defeat for Walsall, meanwhile, who had to play the final 30 minutes with 10 men after Brandon Comley picked up a second yellow card, left a dent in their hopes of making the play-offs.

Saddlers’ boss Mat Sadler has now challenged his side to use the injustice they are feeling to drive their topseven push. “I’m frustrated we conceded so early,” he said. “But there were many frustrations – the goal Josh scores is frustrating, disallowed for offside but it wasn’t. He’s definitely onside.

“Sometimes football is like that – we are at the whim of human decisions and human errors, and that’s the same for us. We are all fallible. But they didn’t go our way today.”