MCLEOD IS MAGPIES’ STAR TURN
RICARDO Moniz is grateful he doesn’t have to face Izale McLeod after Notts County’s two-goal hero helped down tenman Luton in a five-goal thriller at Meadow Lane.
The striker, who cost the Magpies around £100,000 when they signed him from Crawley in the summer, gave his side a commanding lead with two sublime finishes.
But Luton came back from the dead to draw level when Cameron McGeehan and Jonathan Smith both struck to give John Still’s side hope of an unlikely win.
However, Scott Cuthbert saw red in the final stages following a professional foul and Liam Noble rammed in the resulting free-kick from 20 yards.
“We trained on McLeod’s first goal,” Moniz said. “We’ve worked on it constantly on the last ten days because we knew that it was their weakness.
“He can attack the ball very well and it was a fantastic header. The second goal was another chip over the keeper and was similar to the goal he scored against Mansfield.
“The fact he can do everything such as score with head and his feet makes him the complete player for us.
“We can counter all lines of defence with him. You can’t have enough players like him, somebody who can decide games with goals.
“As for Liam, we spoke about his discipline and that’s why I am so hard on him, but that’s only because I know what a fantastic player he is and what he can be.
“This kind of genius decides games. He doesn’t know how good he is. I have to give him confidence and tell him to realise it because he can be a top player.”
Still said that clawing the game back to 2-2 had given him hope of a second successive win, but blamed bad defending.
“If I am disappointed it wasn’t with the performance, it was with the defending,” Still said.
“Two of the goals were very avoidable.We had done everything to get back in the game.
“I looked at them with ten minutes to go and they were sitting down, they were struggling and I thought all we had to do was press and press and press. Then one ball beat us.
“The second goal killed us but we just upped the tempo. At 2-1 I thought we would get back; 2-2 I wouldn’t say I thought we would win it, but the opportunity to win it might come to us first.
“Then we got really done between the two centre halves. Scotty got caught under it, Wilko’s got to get around it and they only had one down the middle. It was poor defending.
“Once the referee gave the foul he had to go off, so I have no issues with it at all. “Credit where it is, he struck the free-kick into the top corner. If it wasn’t a sending-off he still scored from the free-kick whether we had ten men or 11 on the pitch.”