By Nathan Jackson
February 3 2007

I'd be lying if I said I was only a little bit frustrated with the game at Notts County, however, not all is about Mr Rennie. Although I do offer some less than complimentary sayings about the referee, we'd have lost no matter who the referee was today because we were quite literally not good enough

There are several aspects to cover this week so let’s get starting by talking about something you’d probably find down your toilet. Uriah Rennie is an incompetent piece of ****e. I’ve never such a ridiculous piece of refereeing in my life, and it comes as no surprise that a referee with a reputation for being a piece of ****, has been cast out of the Premiership and is forced to ply his trade in the lower leagues. Uriah Rennie is a perfect example of human waste, and the quicker that the FA realise he couldn’t referee his way out of a paper bag, the better. I don’t like to complain about referees but this was just beyond a joke.

However, it wasn’t Uriah Rennie’s fault that we didn’t cause their goalkeeper any problems whatsoever until it was too late. Pilkington didn’t have to make a single save until we were already 3-0 down, making it seem almost ironic that there was an article in the County programme asking how they would be able to stop our “Goal Machine.” Well it’s pretty ****ing easy when you don’t have single shot on target until it’s beyond a point where you could have possibly got back into the game.

I’m not going to blame any individual players because this piece of crap was a team effort. There were a few players who did relatively well, Stallard, Beevers, and N’Guessan, and I’m going to leave them out of this little rant. Infact, even Marriott is going to be left out of this observation as he couldn’t really do anything about the goals he conceded.

Actually, I thought N’Guessan was excellent when he came on, he and Stallard seemed to link up really well. Hopefully with Forrester’s now impending suspension, N’Guessan can get a decent run in the first team. The moment of the match as far as he’s concerned it beating 4 Notts County players by touching the ball just twice.

As for the rest of the so called “team” you’d be hard pushed to find someone who was up for the fight, and half look like they can’t stomach the fight for an automatic promotion challenge. At this rate we’ll be looking straight down the barrels at yet another playoffs defeat and quite frankly, we’re starting to deserve that ending. Just standing there watching the ball go to County players, or even some passing it straight to the Notts County players. I can appreciate the occasional off day now and then, but since we went top back in October, the fight, effort, and most importantly the bottle to maintain a challenge for automatic promotion has slowly been fading.

Paul Mayo said the other day that the players would be inspired by a good atmosphere from the travelling Imps support, but the players shouldn’t need a decent atmosphere to play well. There are plenty of teams that have been in this division that have had a shite atmosphere in recent years and gone on to win promotion. Leyton Orient, Scunthorpe, Southend, Mansfield, and several similar teams have been promoted with little or no atmosphere. Atmosphere means nothing, and if the players need the fans to have a bit of a singalong to get them going, then it really starts to make you worry.

Everyone keeps talking about how they’re looking forward to playing Leeds, and possibly several other former Premiership sides next season. However, I’d be prepared to bet at this point that next year we’ll be heading to Dagenham, Darlington, and several mediocre League 2 teams. I genuinely thought that this would be the season, the one where the club would finally take that step into League One, the season where the players had the stomach for a fight. I guess I was wrong.