After 157 years the Football League’s oldest club are coming to terms with life in the Vanarama National LeagueThose 157 years of history were not out there on the pitch. They were in the away sections of Eastleigh’s Silverlake Stadium, where 796 fans of Notts County gathered on Saturday to resume the ordeal of supporting what was, until May, the oldest professional football club in the world with a continuous league history. Only in England, surely, could a fifth-tier match attract a crowd of 2,668, of whom almost a third had travelled half the length of the country to watch their team, so recently humiliated, attempt to take the first steps towards rehabilitation. Related: Alan Hardy the speedster leaves Notts...
The world’s oldest professional football club are used to hard times but their present dire situation on and off the pitch has reached a new lowWhen the wind was coming from the wrong direction, the most salient feature of a visit to Notts County in the old days was the smell drifting down from the abattoir further up Meadow Lane. Last week the stench was coming from inside the club itself. From the chairman’s office, in fact. To add insult to the injury of sitting plumb last in the fourth tier, the world’s oldest professional football club was in the hands of a man who, during the course of a spat on Twitter, pressed “send” on a photograph of his...
Notts are on their third manager of the season, eight points off safety at the bottom of League Two and straying dangerously close to losing their title as the oldest Football League clubIn ordinary circumstances Notts County, rock bottom of the entire Football League, would have been preparing to play Newport this weekend. These, of course, are not ordinary circumstances. Newport had an FA Cup tie against Middlesbrough to take up their time and that left the 92nd-placed club in English football facing a blank weekend. To borrow an old line from Jasper Carrott, their best result for ages.Not that the supporters of this proud old club will find that particularly amusing when Notts are currently eight points off safety...
Michy Batshuayi might be just what Chelsea need, VAR creates fresh farce and Coventry’s on-field outlook brightens at lastCardiff are not the first team to irk Pep Guardiola this season with their aggressive style but the constant fouling and Lee Mason’s conservative use of cards meant Manchester City were lucky to get away with only one injury in their victory at Cardiff City Stadium. Leroy Sané was the victim of a heinous shin-high challenge from Joe Bennett at the end of the first half that was punished only with a yellow card, the Cardiff defender eventually being dismissed in the closing stages of the match for a late lunge on the teenager Brahim Díaz. Guardiola rightly lambasted Mason after the...
A vital point and rare clean sheet may have felt like a victory of sorts at Meadow Lane, but with a new broom in the boardroom sweeping in hope, their fledgling manager will need fortune to favour expectationsKevin Nolan, appointed on Thursday, was all but anointed on Saturday. Notts County’s manager had arrived at Meadow Lane the day after Alan Hardy’s takeover from Ray Trew was completed and their first game in charge was the lunchtime derby at home to the Stags of Mansfield. After 10 successive league defeats County were the ones in a rut and the goalless draw was a triumph, their first clean sheet since October.Two hours later Cheltenham’s defeat of Accrington Stanley sent the world’s oldest...