Richo's double blow

Richardson watched from the sidelines last night as he side provided one of the worst Notts County displays in living memory, deservedly losing 5-0 at home to the mighty Maccesfield.

The so-called display was so bad that 90% of the home crowd had left long before the final whistle, and NCM even decided against doing a match report such was our disgust at what we had seen. It was an impossible task to write-up such rubbish.

And the Notts County manager, understandably, was not happy afterwards.

"It is hard to say how we can go from being so good against Scunthorpe, to being as bad as we were last night," Richo told the NEP.

"It was just so hard to explain. Perhaps some of the lads were too confident after the weekend.

"We said to them before the match don't just lump long balls down the throats of their three central defenders.

"But that is exactly what we did, even after we had said the same thing at half time."

The shambolic display came after Notts had managed to keep 5 succesive clean-sheets in the league, but they certainly made up for lost time last night, with Maccesfield striker Jon Parkin helping himself to a hat-trick.

But, while admitting it was not good enough, Richardson insists the defeat was just a blip and his Magpies side will bounce back this weekend when they travel to Leyton Orient.

"There were plenty of words spoken in the dressing room last night and it is up to us to lift them again in time for Orient," continued the Notts boss.

"Hopefully this was just a blip and it is up to us to prove that at Leyton Orient on Saturday.

"It is frustrating and it hurts, but we have to maintain a sense of reality. We know we are better than that."

Meanwhile, further bad news came for the 34-year-old when his bid to get playing again from a knee injury that has ruled him out since September hit another major problem.

Richardson was expected to feature in today's reserve game but hopes of that - and him playing in the forseeable future - have been put firmly on hold.

"I trained properly for the first time yesterday and it caused me a lot of pain, the knee really swelled up badly," he said. "The surgeon looked at it last night and he is sending me for a scan either on Friday or Monday.

"It seems there is a new problem at the back of the knee, completely separate from the cyst I had before.

"The best case scenario is that I have two weeks of complete rest, which could solve the problem, then I will be able to play again. The worst case scenario is that I have two weeks of rest, the problem doesn't get better and I have to have surgery again - and I am out for a lot longer.

"It is not ideal given the performance we saw last night, but I am not going to rush back again and set myself back again. We won't know either way until the swelling goes down. It is very frustrating."

More reaction from last night's defeat to come here on NCM.