The unofficial AFC Rushden & Diamonds messageboard

Welcome back Nabil!

http://www.afcdiamonds.com/shariff-rejoins-the-club

Absolutely buzzing with this news, made my day!

Amazing to have him back! Him and Macleod up front could be lethal.

This may be an unpopular opinion but when he left a couple of years ago I thought it was the right thing for the team at that point in time, even though it wasn't our decision. You can't deny the man, he puts the ball in the back of the net and was unplayable at times, but he likes/liked to receive the ball with his back to goal and I felt it slowed things down and made us predictable. Possibly we were too reliant on him and if it became apparent in the first 10/15 minutes that a side was going to cope with him fairly easily, you knew it would be a grim afternoon. When he left and both Ben Diamond and Ryan Robbins joined, our attacking play became a lot more aggressive and unpredictable with Gyasi and Fairlamb on the wings. The rest is history.

Having said that, things are very different now, both in terms of the level we're playing at and the opposition we're facing. Our style of play is also incomparable really with all of the aforementioned players long gone. If he scores at the same rate he did previously he can play whatever way he likes for all I care.

I remember towards the end of his stay with us we were becoming a little stale predictable and one dimensional. After Nabil left we developed imaginative attacking options with wing play and played some marvellous football. However I don’t think the change was down to Nabil departure more the other options we had wide and tweaks with formation. He was clearly unhappy and wanted to push himself to a higher level which is fine.
If Nabil can give us a goal every two or even three games at Step 3 I will be happy. Perfect game tomorrow for him to start. Hopefully will give us that little bit of edge up front and gives an option with Ryan Dove also returning soon.

Has he done much scoring since he left us? We certainly need goals, so welcome back. As previously mentioned, he did like to have his back to goal and turn and hit it.

Can he play tomorrow?
He has already played for Stratford in the competition this season.

Press release says he's available for tomorrow night.

To be totally honest, l wasn't too bothered about the cup match tomorrow night, but, now Nabil is back and likely to feature in this game, l am going along with renewed enthusiasm.
COYD

I guess there’s no such thing as ‘cup tied’ when it’s a cup competition within the same league.