The ghost of the Dover defeat was firmly laid to rest as Notts recorded an impressive first win of the season against an enterprising Altrincham FC in front of the television cameras.
It was a nervy start by the Magpies with Altrincham having the better of the early exchanges but Woottons first on 15 minutes help to settle the nerves as Notts grew into the game.
Fair play to Altrincham who stuck to their game plan and continued to try and play it on the ground and Mooney's excellent strike was well deserved. That said their insistence in persisting with this and not using the high press was probably their undoing as it gave Notts' the space they needed to play their possession based brand of football.
Dion Kelly-Evans came in for the unwell Adam Chicksen and did a great job of ensuring Neal Ardley has to consider him as a starter for the game on saturday at home to Barnet.
Notts kicked off in a familiar 433 formation in a game that saw them leap up to 8th place in the league with 3 points and a +1 goal difference:
Looking at the key match stats Notts clearly had the upper hand with 17 shots to Altrincham's 7 and continue the trend of having the most possession although this does tend to reduce the number of attacks as build up's can often be slower.
There's just enough minutes on the board now to start the minutes played chart with 6 players currently on 180 minutes after two games.
No visuals yet but Kyle Wootton is obviously leading scorer and is averaging a goal every 81 minutes. Thomas has the most assists with two he set up for his strike partner. Meanwhile Callum Roberts grabs an assist for setting up Jake Reeves for his tap in.
With two games on the board I can now start to publish the "Points Needed" visual. This is where we have target lines for the estimated points needed to avoid relegation, make the top 7, 3rd place and 1st place.
The dotted line shows Notts' current trajectory and a predicted 66 points from 44 games.
Last season we followed league position progress after each game. For this season as a comparison I have left last seasons progress on the chart.
First look at goal time segments below. Interesting to see both goals conceded so far have been in the final 15 minutes.
All 3 of Notts goals so far have come from open play with two goals scored in the box and one scored outside the box.
The goals conceded included one from a corner and the other from outside the box. I'll look to create a visual for this after the Barnet game.
Notts home attacking efficiency and defensive resilience are plotted below.
Moving on to player ratings now and the 3 goals and assists have helped to add a bit of variety to player scores. The list below shows player points for the last much plus season total which is used to list the player positions.
To understand more about the ratings you can view an explanation here
Wes Thomas is rewarded for his man of the match performance closely followed by Kyle Wootton. Newcomer Jake Reeves hasn't taken long to make his mark and Callum Roberts as expected is up and around the leaders.
Finally, Neal Ardley's record updated which I will continue to post after every match.
So onwards to Saturday and another home game against Barnet who had a good win away to Dagenham on Tuesday night and a chance for Notts to show the rest of the National League how to broadcast a quality live stream!
Until then . . . COYP!
Richard