The Lacey Effect

I read a stat yesterday (courtesy of @NottsCountyTalk) that ‘with’ big Centre Half Alex Lacey in the Notts County team last season, Neal Ardley’s side won over 69% of the clubs National league games whilst ‘without’ him the winning ratio in the league was only 33.3%

An exercise that perhaps suggests how important Lacey has been for the Magpies since signing a few months after his release from Gillingham in the summer of 2019 and one that adds scope to the 6ft2in defender extending his contract with the club ahead of the new campaign.

On Tuesday the Milton Keynes born former Luton & Yeovil star now 27 cemented a new deal at Meadow Lane after impressing in his first season at the club in which the side narrowly missed out on promotion back to the football league.

Lacey said “I’m very happy, it’s been brilliant since I’ve been in the team and since I joined in November it’s been a great place to play football”

“To lose in the final was obviously very frustrating and disappointing but you can see there’s a real good core to the team and if we can keep that going through the next season we can do one better and get automatic promotion”.

With no doubt in Lacey’s mind that he wanted to extend and remain at Meadow Lane and challenge for honours with the club going forward he stated “the chance to play for a team and win the league, with some of the players we have got in the team that are league standard, it has huge potential and I think there’s massive potential in the club as well to not just go up one division but to go up a few”

Having played 16 appearances in all Lacey suffered defeat in black and white only once (against Dagenham) prior to the final loss verses Harrogate and formed a formidable partnership with both Connell Rawlinson and Ben Turner having helped the side to eight clean sheets resulting in Notts conceding just ten goals in the matches he’s played.

Whilst statistics don’t always tell the whole story, performances do and Lacey has been a rock at the heart of the County defence heading and kicking everything that comes in his way. An intelligent footballer and one that is happy to either play from the back or go more direct, one that has experience in winning the division back with Luton in 2013/14 and one that will play a key part in Notts County’s attempts this time around to succeed.

The only question on Lacey next season is who will best partner him at centre half. A question which Neal Ardley will have the dilemma of trying to answer.