Notts County head coach Stuart Maynard has admitted that the job is tougher than he expected after his side dropped another two points in League Two, all but ending their pursuit of the playoffs.
At the start of the year, it was announced that Luke Williams would be leaving his post at Meadow Lane to take up the vacant managerial position at Swansea City in the Championship, jumping two tiers of English football to try to save the Welsh outfit from a possible relegation.
Maynard was appointed as the Magpies’ new manager on a three-and-a-half-year deal, having previously been in charge of non-league club Wealdstone, guiding the Stones to their highest league position in 35 years by finishing in 13th-place in the National League last season.
However, the 43-year-old has had a dismal start to his time at Notts County. The Nottinghamshire club have picked up merely one win in 10 since he took the job, losing seven times in the process. Furthermore, the side have dropped from fifth in League Two all the way down to 17th.
To Maynard’s credit, the team were not in cruise control when Williams moved to Wales. The newly-promoted side had picked up just two wins in his final seven matches in the dugout and four from his last 12 in total.
On Saturday, County took the lead twice away at Accrington Stanley before eventually succumbing to a 2-2 draw at the Crown Ground and now have to take on Bradford City at the Valley Parade on Tuesday night.
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Speaking ahead of the trip tomorrow, Maynard has claimed that the job “has been tougher” than he expected when being named as Williams’ permanent successor two months ago [quotes via Nottinghamshire Live]:
“With the results that we’ve had, it has been tougher than I first expected. I do feel there is a very fine line that we work on because this is a very tight division in terms of the strength of the teams throughout.
“For that reason, it is fine margins that decide games, and we saw [against Accrington] that we ended up with a point, but we quite easily could’ve come away with three,” he continued.
“We always go game by game, we’ve got to pick up as many points as we can and see where it takes us. There has been a lot of frustration because when you’re on a losing run, that usually means you’re not performing well, and we saw a level of anxiety in our players [at the weekend].
