Four games in to the EFL season. Seven points. One point behind the team in third place. Would you have taken that at the start of the season? Probably you would.
Would you have taken it after the first game of the season, when Notts were rooted to the bottom of the table after a 5-1 thrashing by Sutton United? Yes, of course you would.
So will the real Notts County please stand up? Is it the ‘car crash’ that we saw at Sutton, or is it the side that imperiously disposed of Doncaster Rovers on Saturday?
Of course, time will tell; but what can’t be denied is that things are starting to come together. This team that beat Doncaster looked a million miles from the one that crumbled at Sutton. And, in truth, it was a big improvement from the side that in the end were (despite dominating the game) ultimately relieved to get a point at Morecambe last week and the side that struggled to overcome Grimsby at Meadow Lane a few days earlier.
We know already that conquering League Two won’t be the walk in the park that the optimists (and indeed the bookies) thought it would be before the season started. Lulled perhaps into a false sense of invincibility by the record-breaking exploits of last season and the resilience shown in those amazing two play-off games at the end of it, we now realise that we have to do a little more than just turn up; this is, literally, a league above the National League, and a lot of the teams in it are significantly more adept than many of those that Notts have been playing for the last four years.
But yet…it’s difficult not to get a little bit excited by what we’re seeing right now. It’s difficult not to wonder what Jodi Jones is truly capable of doing this season, based on his performance to date. It’s difficult not to speculate on how much of a weight will be lifted from Macauley Langstaff’s shoulders now that he has opened his account with a brace. It’s difficult not to imagine Richard Brindley commanding every game he plays. And it’s difficult not to fantasise that Jim O’Brien, a veteran of Notts’s last EFL away win a mere 1603 days earlier, might, in the twilight years of his playing career, help Notts to a second successive promotion.
And there’s also a sense that we haven’t yet seen the best of the likes of David McGoldrick and Aden Baldwin. When the stars truly align, when Notts start off on a run of impressive results like we know the team is capable of under Luke Williams, what will it lead to?
In the space of two weeks we have gone from a state of cautious pessimism to now having to rein in our excitement. Two home games now await us, one of them against a team which hasn’t won away from home since February (Tranmere). How many of us will admit to trying to predict where we will be in the table if we take six points from those two games?
The optimism and the excitement come with a heavy dose of wariness, of course. It’s Notts County, so we know that it’s never going to be easy; we still remember home games against Yeovil and Dagenham & Redbridge from last season. We still harbour concerns over the Notts defence, highlighted even amongst the joy at Doncaster, when the concession of a goal deep into injury-time meant that Notts still have a negative goal-difference (the only team in the top 15 of League Two to do so). We also know that some good teams in the division have yet to show anything like their best form, not least last year’s unlucky play-off losers Stockport and (who else?) Wrexham, who showed a determination to continue the Hollywood script-writing with a crazy comeback to draw 5-5 on Saturday. And that’s all before we take into account the clinically impressive start from big-spending Gillingham.
But this time it feels a bit different. In Luke Williams we have a head coach whose intelligent words are matched – probably even surpassed – by what he gets from his players on the field. There’s a joie de vivre about the team. The players smile at each other. They smile at the fans, who turn up in massive numbers to both home and away games (on Saturday, no League Two team had more away fans than Notts took to Doncaster). The club continually puts out social media offerings of a calibre well above what other League Two clubs are doing. Yes, it all feels very different from what we’ve been used to over the years at Notts.
Perhaps, this time, we really can dare to dream.