During close season The Magpies' recruitment appears to have ticked over seamlessly. Keeping hold of Macaulay Langstaff (for now) whilst retaining key players like Kyle Cameron and Aaron Nemane, strengthening with the permanent signing of Jodi Jones and bringing experience and quality in David McGoldrick, Dan Crowley, Aidan Stone and Will Randall represents a learned and financial commitment from the club to ensure they are in the best possible place to consolidate their return to the football league.
The only loss in this scenario was that of influential Ruben Rodrigues who decided a move to Oxford United after his contract ended would provide him with new challenges in the third tier of the English game.However, questions continued to be raised about the potential lack of depth at the back leaving many of the fan base willing the club to strengthen the rear guard.
Jesse Debrah is one player lauded by many, us here at NCS News included, as the player who could fill the void, and whilst the player remains a free agent having run down his contract at Halifax it seems the club, for the time being, had different ideas, culminating in the season long loan of Wolves U23 defender Oliver Tipton.
Tipton, on paper, appears to be the perfect addition. Defensively strong but also good with the ball at his feet which has seen him sit in as a defensive midfielder as well as fulfilling his more usual role of central defender, both in the middle of a back 4 or to the right of a back 3.
One area of Tipton's game that will have pleased Luke Williams is his progressive passing. Considering the data we have available for him over the last three seasons he scores highly when it comes to accurate passing, successfully completing 85.30% of all passes and 73.00% of all forward passes. Additionally he has to date successfully completed 62.80% of all passess to the final third.
The young defender also offers an attacking threat having scored 12 times within the data sample published above, albeit 8 of those whilst playing in the U18 Premier League.
Tipton's all round stats make for generally good reading, however an element of caution should be considered with the majority of these match action stats completed at U21 and U23 level with 5 senior appearances made in the Papa John's EFL Trophy.
One thing we know for sure is that under the guidance of Luke Williams and his back room team Tipton will continue to develop his game, something the Wolves hierarchy must have identified in Notts.
Finally, it's not without merit to claim that the recruitment under the current regime at Notts is nothing short of meticulous and with that in mind we can be hopeful that Ollie Tipton really is the missing piece in the Magpies defensive jigsaw.
For more in depth analysis of Notts' new signing why not check out NCS News contributor Tom Williams' tactical analysis on Twitter.