‘Randomness’ of football is seen as a big factor in Notts’ issues
NOTTS County’s end-of-season fan forum brought out some interesting lines from the club’s board about the performance of the team this term.
The Magpies ended their first campaign back in the EFL with a 14th-place finish in League Two – a disappointing conclusion after a very promising start results-wise.
Now looking back in reflection, the start the team made to the season was not a true reflection of how they were performing and how it would all end if they continued at that level.
Director Richard Montague said: “I think if we just look at the results, you can break the season down into thirds.
“In the first third of the season, we had 30 points from 15 games and then from that point on, we’ve picked around one point a game on average.
“That is clearly not good enough and that would suggest it was a first-third of the season that was great followed by the other two-thirds which weren’t.
“The interesting thing from our perspective is that we weren’t really performing at a level that we thought was going to result in promotion throughout the whole season.
“It wasn’t just one part of the season that wasn’t at the right level – in our view, we weren’t performing at a particularly high level at any point in the season, which is something that we feel we need to get to the bottom of to try and understand why that happened.”
The first year back in the EFL has been a time of learning for the club as they dive properly into why they could not sustain a promotion push throughout the season.
Obviously, it did not help that the club were forced to change their head coach midway through the campaign, when Luke Williams moved on.
That may well have affected the progression of the team but the club hope now, with a fresh start, they can go again and get the performance level back up to where it needs to be.
Montague added: “We’ve been having those conversations for months regarding why we haven’t hit the heights we hoped for.
“Obviously, we’ve gone up a division but it still came as a surprise to see us drop our performance level.
“There are lots of things we can think about, like the balance of the team, the signings we make, how we recruit and how we play – there’s lots of different questions we’ve been considering, because we know this season didn’t match what we aspired to.”
The owners released a statement not too long ago that outlined their disappointment with the team’s performance but the data they have looked at suggests that not as much needs to be altered as many might think.
Notts co-owner Chris Reedtz explained: “Looking at the numbers, the number of chances we created and conceded stayed at a fairly similar level throughout the season.
“There’s no real evidence (beyond results) that suggests the team’s performance levels changed midway through the season.
“I think much of our form this season was dictated by the randomness of football, because the players used and the way we used them stayed largely the same.
“We’re as disappointed as anyone else with the league position we ended up in but we don’t feel as much needs to change as it might suggest.”