The Lower League week - Coventry's ten points and Northampton Town's bonfire of the memories

A not-so-happy Northampton Town coach

And now for some light relief

In the last week before the season started, Torquay United added Krystian Pearce to their squad, and I promise, this is how their official site reported the story:

OFFICIAL site always gets there last…I get my info from the fans’ forum or Bob in the pub….grumble, groan and moan.

Hang on a minute, briefly forgot where I was.

We can now confirm that defender Krystian Pearce has passed his medical and signed all the paperwork on a two-year deal with the Gulls.

We know this has been reported elsewhere this morning but within the club, we are reluctant to speculate on transfer dealings until everything is confirmed. Now we can climb out of this pond of self-pity, the important thing is that Krystian is fully signed up to the United cause and ready for action.

In the modern interconnected world, most transfers or near misses will have made it out somewhere – onto Twitter, forums or the pub – before a pen has been put to paper. Clubs can often get a kicking for being poor communicators when they’re desperately trying not to spread news that a player’s available, just in case of an eleventh hour bid.

It’s good to see a club willing to defend themselves, and having a bit of fun in doing so!

Fan ban

In the last week before the start of the season, Crawley Town announced they had banned a fan, Paul Prendergast, because of things he’d said towards Ian Holloway in a 3-0 pre-season victory over Crystal Palace, which included “making observations about the quality of their team.”

For whatever reason, Holloway didn’t appreciate the feedback and made a complaint to the club. Maybe Prendergast should have enquired as to the score at that point of the contest.

It does seem slightly rich for Crawley to be the team to clamp down on this, given that they stuck by previous manager Steve Evans through a ludicrous amount of touchline bans and several claims that he’d tried to wind up opposing players to put them off their game.Thankfully, Crawley rescinded the ban, which probably works out best for everyone.

Northampton Town’s bonfire of the memories

This week, Northampton manager Aidy Boothroyd revealed that after losing in last season’s League Two playoff final, he instructed players to bring a memento of last season into the first day of training… and made a bonfire of them. Though it’s childish, I like to think that one of the players brought in a shirt from their favourite performance and watched aghast as it went up in flames.

The bonfire idea is a little odd, especially as most of the season will have been very enjoyable, but Boothroyd seems the type to be consciously trying to think outside the box. He was talking about Moneyball before it was well-known in Britain, and his Watford team brought a form of high-commitment physicality to the Premier League before Stoke did.

There’s not many managers who’d find inspiration for man-management techniques in an episode of Six Feet Under. I look forward to watching Aidy Boothroyd having detailed discussions with his dead dad.

Notts County Jinx Liddle

Gary Liddle, a free signing from Hartlepool United last summer, was an ever present for Notts County, playing every minute as a ball-playing centre half. To an extent, it was understandable that the club chose him to front adverts for season tickets.

Unfortunately, he won’t be repeating his ever-present achievement this season given that on Friday, just 13 minutes into the new season, he charged in from a distance towards Chris Porter, karate kicking him in his armpit. Despite playing with ten men so long, County competed well and kept going when they went a goal behind, equalising before the Blades took the lead again.

The Notts County marketing department should have known not to tempt fate.

Robins rocked

Peterborough strolled to victory over Swindon, with fans from both sides saying Posh massively outclassed last season’s League One playoff losers. Despite the changes at Swindon during the summer, and the fact that they are currently ‘managerless’, this is a worry – they’ve made a number of loans from Tottenham among their summer signings, at least some of whom you’d assume would be good enough to hold their own at League One.

Mark Cooper, the caretaker manager and previously assistant manager, already had detailed thoughts on the players under him, and has been in charge of several clubs himself so should know a few things about the art of management. They’ve been overshadowed by Coventry this summer, but Swindon are in a bit of a mess themselves.

Feel for Gary Liddle, who’s never been a dirty player, but this from Notts County was bound to jinx him pic.twitter.com/aE5wDOvjXY

— David Stringer (@Joe_Bloghead) August 2, 2013