Chesterfield beat Notts County both home and away in the 2025-26 League Two season – the only other side to do a league double over County were Salford City.
This is the first EFL play-off meeting between Chesterfield and Notts County, but they’ve met in two in the National League – in the 2020-21 quarter-final County won 3-2, while in the 2022-23 final they drew 2-2 before County won 4-3 on penalties to reach the EFL.
This is Chesterfield’s fifth EFL play-off campaign, winning promotion once in 1994-95 from the fourth tier. Last season, they were knocked out 4-1 on aggregate by Walsall in the League Two semi-finals.
Notts County were knocked out in last season’s League Two play-off semi-final by eventual winners AFC Wimbledon – the Magpies have lost four of their last five games in the EFL play-offs (D1) since winning 1-0 against Crewe Alexandra back in May 1996.
Chesterfield (15,553) and Notts County (15,602) ranked in the top two for successful passes in League Two this season, while the Spireites had the most open play sequences with 10+ passes (365), ahead only of the Magpies (348). Notts County’s Jacob Bedeau was top for successful passes among all players with 1,922.
This will be Paul Cook’s fourth EFL play-off campaign – across six matches with Chesterfield (L4) and Portsmouth (D1 L1), he is yet to win. Only Uwe Rosler (7) has ever managed more games without winning in the history of the play-offs.
Across 2024-25 and 2025-26, only Michael Cheek (41) has more League Two goals than Notts County’s Alassana Jatta (34), though only one of those 34 goals was scored across four appearances against Chesterfield in that time, netting in a 2-2 draw in October 2024.
No player got more assists in League Two this season than Chesterfield’s Liam Mandeville (11) and across the last two seasons Mandeville tops the charts for assists (18) and only three players have created more chances than him in that time (118).
