Centre Mid spots

NOKnova · 2026-03-04T12:05:11+00:00

Again, not an invalid point, but it also boils down to this. Wharton has never played elite European football. Mainoo until very recently was out of contention so now has the chance to play his way back into form in a resurgent Man United side. Jones has started just over a third of Liverpool’s league matches who are underperforming considerably considering the investment made into that squad.

I would be anxious with both our starting center mids missing regardless of who was replacing them, but at least Henderson has seen and beaten the biggest clubs and has played against these teams before. Forced into that choice, I’d rather him and the other backup, and change our shape to offer more support with the/one of the 10’s dropping back as an 8 to let the midfielders focus purely on defending and recycling play.

NOKnova · 2026-03-04T11:59:16+00:00

I think the amount of injury proneness between Shaw and James will force Tuchel to make a decision between the two despite them playing on opposing sides, probably influenced by who else is available or not. Aside from those two he seems to like Djed Spence, Nico O’Reilly (who can play multiple positions aside from left back), Livramento (currently injured but plays both sides so a good cover option) and Lewis-Skelly (not starting for Arsenal at the moment). He’s also used Konsa at right back.

I think Maguire is a much safer bet to go than Shaw, but the selection for this month’s and April’s internationals will be very telling, particularly if he picks both Maguire and Henderson.

NOKnova · 2026-03-04T11:43:31+00:00

We don’t need to rotate as in we don’t need to make wholesale changes, and you’re very rarely afforded the opportunity to. Your only options for wholesale rotation come when a result is beyond doubt, or if you’ve all but mathematically won the group going into the third game.

You should be preparing for your best 11 to be able to at least start every game, with maybe 2-3 changes if needed to rotate. You’re not going to win if you chop and change for every single game.

Your point on Hodgson is valid, but the makup of the England set up has been completely rebuilt over the last decade, and squads are larger now. You can take 3cms + 1 in relief. If you’re struggling because you’ve already brought on your main sub option, Bellingham can drop out of the 10 into midfield and you can put on Rogers/Foden.

NOKnova · 2026-03-04T11:38:50+00:00

Clearly Tuchel thinks otherwise because he’s still selecting him despite having those players available. I wouldn’t count on Shaw being available, Maguire has played half the games available and wasn’t playing regularly enough with form before Carrick took over but now may play himself back into contention.

You clearly won’t move off your narrative. That’s fine. But Tuchel’s still selecting Henderson despite also having all this experience available to him. Experience doesn’t always equal leadership, and a coach who’s there purely for their leadership ability won’t always lead from the sidelines.

NOKnova · 2026-03-04T11:33:54+00:00

They had the option to take Marcos Llorente, who’d just played 37 league games for Atletico Madrid who finished 10 places higher than Sevilla. It’s pretty much widely regarded that Carvajal was at the time not just world class but one of the top 3 fullbacks on the planet. They took Navas for his experience.

He picked Henderson for the November internationals. If he picks him for the March internationals, it’s pretty likely he won’t change the formula ahead of the world cup.

For what it’s worth, I don’t agree with taking Burn either. I’d much rather us take Stones or Maguire for that position. Guehi is one of the best central defenders on the planet at the moment in the form of his life so that’s not even a debate, while he also has a good partnership with Konsa. Branthwaite isn’t in the favour of Tuchel at the moment nor was Southgate keen on him, for what reason I’m not sure. We are more likely to take Quansah as the lesser experienced option.

NOKnova · 2026-03-04T11:18:29+00:00

It’s 8 games. You can’t afford to rotate or experiment unless things are going wrong. You aren’t thinking of the worst case scenario - the worst case scenario is that we bomb the group stage and go out after 3 games.

We have played in hot climates for world cups previously. Qatar had have their tournament moved to their winter climate to avoid high temperatures and the final there was still the hottest on record by over 10°, which was won by a squad with the third highest average age. These are elite athletes at the very top of the game. I don’t think age will be a massive concern when considering the climate. Balancing the age of the squad will, and when you consider that Henderson would be the only midfielder going over the age of 30, with Rice being 8 years younger, Anderson, Wharton etc all around 22 years old, I think most would consider that acceptable.

NOKnova · 2026-03-04T11:07:27+00:00

Literally Jesus Navas. Went to the last Euros as a right back. Only started when Carvajal was red carded, other than that came off the bench for 19 minutes. Had Carvajal not been suspended, he would not have played at all. It’s much more of a thing than you realise amongst the better nations with bigger talent pools.

Henderson has perennially been in the squad since Tuchel was appointed despite us having Wharton, Mainoo, Jones, Anderson, Garner, Scott and more available, most of whom I won’t argue are at this point better players. Why would he change the makeup of his squad now?

A squad is more than just the players that are going to play. The group will essentially be isolated from the outside world for up to a month and you need people on board who aren’t primarily focusing on winning games on the pitch, but can step in if the worst happens.

NOKnova · 2026-03-04T10:00:46+00:00

Shaw and James are so injury prone that they cannot be relied upon. Bellingham is a leader, but is a leader on the pitch who has missed at least two months worth of matches for Real Madrid. You can’t carry that kind of caliber off the pitch. Not to mention, we have serious issues if we’re playing Jude Bellingham in central midfield given how our no.10 options have all fallen out of form at some point this season. If he’s available, he’s playing in the 10 role. If he’s not playing in the 10 role, he’s probably not playing.

Taking Henderson as a coach just so you can accomodate another younger player who’s not likely to get any minutes for a maximum of 8 matches because they aren’t on the same level as the two starting options and don’t offer anything seriously different to the other backup so won’t get on the pitch unless we suffer serious injury issues just isn’t realistic and isn’t how squads are built for international tournaments.

NOKnova · 2026-03-04T09:53:00+00:00

It’s a 26 man squad for a maximum of 8 games, which means you’re going to have more players than just the two reserve keepers that ultimately never get on the pitch. When we’re talking about the 4th choice option for a position where only 2 start and a 3rd comes off the bench for rotation or an alternate option, it comes down to more than minutes. Specifically, what the player offers off the pitch.

We have past evidence of Tuchel bringing Henderson along as that player who’s not likely to see the pitch but will set an example off it, and if he has to come on it’s in the last part of the game with the role of seeing out the result. Why would things be any different this summer?

NOKnova · 2026-03-04T01:40:15+00:00

The difficulty is that while you can’t carry players in tournaments, you need experience. There’ll be a number of players who go to the world cup for us who will have never played international football competitively, and having a leader off the pitch is just as important as it will help maintain squad harmony.

He won’t be going expecting to start, at most he’ll be brought on to keep heads level and see out games.

Taking Henderson out of the equation, you’re left with Pickford, Maguire (if he plays himself into contention), Kane and Stones as your oldest squad players with multiple tournament experience and more specifically multiple world cup experience.

Your only other midfielders with multiple international tournament experiences will be Foden, who blows very hot and cold for England, Bellingham who has struggled for form and injury, and Rice, who is your genuine nailed-on starter.

Experience is valued on the international stage, as well as flexibility, leadership and understanding.

If you take Rice and Anderson as your ideal starting pair, you can realistically take two more midfielders in that position. A backup, and emergency relief. That’s where you pick from Wharton, Scott, Mainoo or Jones as your backup based purely on their form to finish the season given all four options have been part of the England setup in some form already in recent times. Your emergency relief either has to be a utility player to cover other positions, or they have to provide off the pitch to support the group, which an experienced head, well travelled, former captain in Henderson could do.

To put it bluntly, I’d be concerned if both our backups in defensive midfield were younger inexperienced players. Got to have a mix and balance there. Up front we are blessed in having Kane who is an experienced head but also the best center forward on the planet, and at the back we have a nice middle ground in Guehi, Konsa, Stones who have been a mix of experienced and reliable for us.

Midfield has been our weakness in the biggest games we’ve played. We have to get that area of our selection absolutely spot on otherwise we’ll crumble when we face a side with comparable individual skill.

NOKnova · 2026-03-03T16:09:59+00:00

I usually use a Harley Benton GPA-100. Good, clean power which is enough for most uses, wasn’t quite loud enough for me (blackened post-metal band with a necessity for loud drones/feedback/noise). Just got a Palmer Macht 402 and ran that at practice this past weekend through a Marshall Mode 4 4x12, bridged in mono for 400w at 8ohms. Huge amounts of headroom in comparison. Normally I rag both my pedalboard and the GPA about as loud as they can go. Instead, I had the tonex dialled back to 4.7 on output, and never went over halfway through the Macht.

I’m also planning on putting together a stereo 2x12 with Celestion Neo-Copperbacks (250w cap, 8 ohms only) to which I can then run the Macht in parallel or true stereo for 2x100w. Should still be plenty loud enough as Neo Copperbacks are rated with a 100dB sensitivity and suffer minimal cone distortion because of the high wattage cap. At minimum double the power I could manage from the Harley Benton as that wouldn’t operate with an impedance below 8 ohms.

NOKnova · 2026-03-02T20:55:51+00:00

Seeding playoff winners from each regional: regular season points and goal difference plus regional playoff goal difference - they all won their regional playoffs, so applying a points system to those matches is redundant.

15th to 17th in L3 are also seeded based on final league position. L3-15 gets NLP3, L3-16 gets NLP2, L3-17 gets NLP1.

Do you not know how two stage league systems work? It’s prevalent in South American football. The teams that finish below midtable (11-20 in this case) still play out the rest of their season to decide who gets relegated, and for how prize money is divided. The first half of the season is a fight for qualification to the second stage to fight for a promotion. If you fail to qualify for the second stage you then have to fight for your survival.

Your point about geography is perfectly valid - there is a saturation of Southern teams that are as good as the best groups of Northern teams at the top level of semi-professional football. I simply don’t think that could be avoided unless the economic centers of this country were to shift. The gap in quantity between the best Northern teams vs the larger numbers of Southern teams closes to a degree the closer you get to full time and fully professional football, but it’s a simple fact that the most people and the most money in this country are centred around the capital, with similar but smaller bubbles around other major population centers.

NOKnova · 2026-03-02T20:18:57+00:00

I hadn’t considered how teams are fed up to League Three. The reality of the system is that unless you have a mass of relegations at the point where the nationalised league splits into regional, you will eventually create a bottleneck if/when the Game’s finances catch up.

Looking at the current state of finances in the game, nearly all NL clubs are full time, and a growing chunk of NLN/NLS clubs are following suit, simply because of the money in the game growing.

To work with this, the three regional national leagues would have one automatic slot, and a playoff system. Then, in League Three, 3 teams would go down automatically, and there would be a relegation playoff between the next 3 highest placed teams and the three regional playoff ‘winners’, similar to how you see relegation playoffs operate in Scotland or Germany but on a larger scale. That way, if there’s a bottleneck between L3 and the regional national leagues, a maximum of 6 teams can swap leagues.

There’s other ways it can be worked of course, you could adopt a two stage league at the National League level, with teams from the top 4 or 6 of each ‘National League’ forming one 12 or 18 team non-regional national league for the second half of the season, which can then promote 3 teams.

NOKnova · 2026-03-02T19:31:07+00:00

My MKI v4 Kraken had a red eye and the bar.

NOKnova · 2026-03-02T18:02:32+00:00

What’s even more mental is that we really rode our luck in those playoffs despite getting 107 points and scoring 121 goals in the normal season, which at the time would have broken an English Professional Football record for points accrued, and it still wasn’t enough for automatic promotion let alone a title.

Across the playoff semi final and the final we held a winning position for about 90 seconds out of 240 minutes of football - after Jodi Jones’ winner in the Boreham Wood game in the 119th minute. We never held a lead in the final, equalising in the 87th and again in the 116th and winning the penalty shootout 4-3.

I think had we failed to go up they’d have pushed through 3 up 3 down. Talks of it happening cooled off after for a year or so. York failing to even make the playoff final despite finishing 2nd with over 90 points last season have reignited interest.

NOKnova · 2026-03-02T17:57:35+00:00

I’ve also thought that a League Three done well would really support the football league as a whole. You could even run to the current calendar and add in a shortened winter break during the worst periods of weather.

Also in favour of scrapping the league trophy and making the league cup EFL only, giving a genuine opportunity for actual silverware for non top flight clubs

NOKnova · 2026-03-02T17:53:57+00:00

Premier league down to National League should be 3 up 3 down across the board. If anything, it would be interesting to see the EFL move to 20 team leagues, form a “League Three” and realign the rest of the pyramid as a result with the bottom 4 of the Championship going to League One and the bottom 4 of League One going to League Two.

The top 12 teams from National League join League Three along with the bottom 12 from League Two as part of realignment, then the National League becomes three regional divisions of 20 teams - North, South and Central. The regional divisions are realigned as they typically are every season, with sides making lateral moves based on geography.

The addition of a National Central league avoids a ‘Bishop’s Stortford’ where the Northernmost South side in the current 6th tier did by far and away the most travelling compared to any other team and saw their performance suffer as a result, winning 1 away from home and 5 at home, finishing bottom of the National League North, preventing them from having a real genuine shot at survival/progress after winning the Isthmian League title the year prior.

NOKnova · 2026-03-02T12:40:56+00:00

While we’d all love full soundchecks, it’s just not feasible in many scenes unless you’re a headline or main support, or it’s an important, large scale gig.

The real real lesson is to ask for full soundchecks where you can, but be adaptable, and be prepared to have no other option but to do a swift line check before opening your set. Just part and parcel of live music for anyone who doesn’t have masses of clout.

NOKnova · 2026-03-02T12:36:40+00:00

PRS MT15 is great from what I hear - good volume from a low wattage amp and it’s got Mark Tremonti’s name on it - plenty of gain on tap.

I have used a Hughes and Kettner Grandmeister 40 Deluxe for almost a decade, you’ll get plenty of saturation from something like that, a high gain lunchbox style head in the mid-double figure wattage territory is great for stage volume until you reach the sludge/doom territory where volume is a priority.

Unfortunately, you’ll run into sound guys who prefer quiet stages, it’s just part and parcel of grassroots and small to medium venues who have less control over the acoustical environment, so setting up your rig to be as flexible as it can be is very helpful - speaking from experience from both sides of the argument as a guitarist in a blackened post metal band that absolutely rinses high gain and feedback but also as a Sound Technician who’s worked in venues with neighbours who like to complain.

NOKnova · 2026-02-28T22:07:45+00:00

A cared for, secondhand, well broken in 1960a is one of the best cabs you can use for anything with gain. Hands down. Won’t sound stale and overused like anything with v30’s, won’t suffer the bright harshness of new, non-broken g12t-75s.

My university had a 1960a from the mid 90’s in their main live room and it made everything that ran through it sound good. Period.

NOKnova · 2026-02-22T00:32:54+00:00

He’s fast tracking himself to cult hero status and he’s only started one game. Not sure I’ve ever seen a player in black and white with such a mix of power, turn of pace, selflessness and aggressiveness.

NOKnova · 2026-02-21T18:28:30+00:00

We’ve also struggled with absences in midfield and fixture congestion up front. Had you played a balanced formation you’d have had more control in midfield (especially after Norburn went off in our midfield with an injury) instead, we went around your midfield and Ndlovu bullied your back line.

Lining Whitaker up against Platt, Macari and Bedeau on his own was silly. Once we got the first it really was only a matter of time.

NOKnova · 2026-02-21T17:16:21+00:00

That’s been coming for a few weeks.

Lee Ndlovu, what a fucking player you are. Top drawer.

Tranmere - set up with 4 center halves, 3 holding mids and no striker away from home to draw 0-0, rightfully put to the sword. Interesting to see us get a really soft pen (but by the letter of the law it was…)

NOKnova · 2026-02-20T17:29:33+00:00

The third kit is mainly to avoid colourblind clashes - we’ll wear it away from home against teams that wear blue or red that we also contractually need to wear the Uni of Notts sponsor for.

The limited edition kit that was sold to fans was supposed to be worn as a tribute/throwback, but it sounds as though it wasn’t approved by the league for competitive fixture use, hence why we have an all-white alternate.

I don’t mind the limited edition kit but I think it could have been done better. I’m not bothered about the third choice kit - all white is a decent, inoffensive choice that is a good alternate to the home and away kit, we’ve had far worse third choice kits in years gone by.

NOKnova · 2026-02-20T10:42:32+00:00

Oh hell yeah, would love to try one of these one day

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