Our Notts County columnist Julian McDougall reflects on a Notts County’s season that has delivered another play-off push - but under a model that feels as safe as it does limiting...
Play offs again.
Following a football team is irrational and emotional. The first of these monthly columns this season reflected on what the characters in Lowry’s famous Going to the Match might each of been thinking, what intersections of personal narrative and collective identity might have been at work in the meanings they gave to the ritual. Through the season, this approach to ‘Left Magpie’ has sought to be more like the fanzine writer than the informed analyst. It was fitting, then, that on the morning before the Bristol Rovers game, with the miracle still possible, this publication hosted another screening of the films made about The Pie and Brian, which accompany the digital archives Left Lion have produced for those fanzines. A few hours later, reality had bitten, and the facts are, the known knowns are … really quite boring.
Bromley are, of course, the outlier, and fair play to them. But, them aside – and notwithstanding that they won the league, so they are as big to put aside as they are physical with set pieces – the teams above Notts at the end of the season, MK Dons, Cambridge and Salford – all spent more money on the team.
Notts were the 6th highest spenders on player budget. Notts finished 5th in League 2. According to our model of sustainable growth, this is progress. Boring. Economic science. Predictable. There is nothing poetic, romantic or despairing to write about this. To make it even worse, it has been clear since we returned to the 92 that in this division, the only way to shift the dial and go up without spending big is to ‘do a Bromley’, with hard, physical, anti-football and the dark arts.
So what about Notts County? 6th highest spenders*, 5th in the league. We will never, under our current owners, fill the team with giants and go the Bromley way. But it also seems that our data driven, sustainable growth model means that nor will we ever be in the top 3 for player expenditure. When rivals splash the cash in January, to get over the line, Notts invest in young players for the future. Belshaw was a crisis situation, another significant outlier, and we don’t know for sure if it is true that Ndlovu was a big investment. Either way, the big impact season changing signing(s) did not arrive, again.
Spend 6th and finish 5th.
Why is this boring? Partly because, whilst we are content with the security of the club and finishing in the play-off places almost every season is exciting and means we usually win, when you sit in a crowd of 16k on the final day, when you have to hope you have enough loyalty points in addition to a season ticket for big away games, we see the potential to go up again, and maybe again, to ride this momentum, to just … invest a bit more, then surely to recoup more? On the other hand, we know that the boom-and-bust disaster zone is always the flipside. So we are, on balance, happy to be back in the football league and matchdays are a good experience. It is never boring, in the moment, on the pitch, in the stands, on the away days. Far from it. But the sense of inevitability that we won’t quite make it, because – we spend 6th and finish 5th, is frustrating, irritating, tiring and, at the end of the day, when hard, cold economic metrics outweigh romance and emotion... boring.
April, then. We took the ‘known unknowns’ of March to Salford and that very obviously not boring extra time psychodrama made things very, very hard for us going into the final month. Worse was to come, Jatta’s ban applied retrospectively, 3 games. Then Newport at home, we bounce back, once again, the trend continuing, when we lose, we win next. Generally against very weak teams, but still. It helps. And so to Cambridge, and I just can’t write anything about that. But next, we are at home with everything still to play for due to Cambridge slipping up and opening the door again. Barnet at home, and we have so many players out, but we never lose 2 in a row. Until we do. At this point it is almost all over, but we get over the line and look decent at Colchester, despite the horrific injury to Lewis Macari bringing perspective, so we are confirmed for the play offs and can go to the last day with the miracle still alive, fill Meadow Lane and know also that a win at least secures a second leg at home in the play offs. In the result, a draw made no difference, since Cambridge got their point, but at least we go to Chesterfield first.
It is impossible to predict what will happen next but there is a heavy sense that we are not a strong, resilient, high pressure play-off team, combined with how badly we have done against the Spireites since that Wembley day. But there is also the ‘hope that kills you’, and a full house for the deciding leg. And here comes the punchline, the fact that will, in the next couple of weeks, either confirm the narrative of this piece or provide a beautiful disruption.
Chesterfield – spent 5th, finished 6th. They are the inverse.
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