Lac291884

Caught the local bus down to Portsmouth harbour this morning and asked the bus driver if he'd accept my gold card. He said, "From God's own county - definitely!" He was wearing a Derby County lanyard and turns out he is from Allestree! Got to be a good omen, that. 

Arkwrights and Angels are by far the best in Belper for Real Ale.
After that the Railway, Devonshire, Thorn Tree, Cross Keys and Grapes serve good beer in roughly that order

Circa 22k supporters couldn't be arsed to turn up, Circa 15 players couldn't arsed to play...sums up this competition, You can't keep turning the tap on and ask players to perform when they aint fussed, It's nowt to do with pride or application...it's about promotion.

Collins was about 3 yards off side, is the reason he didnt pass 

I think the counterpoint to that is, if you're having to consistently rely on a top-class striker taking the one chance that comes his way to win a game, then there's something fundamental going wrong elsewhere.  Obviously we'd all love a proper goal-scorer, and no doubt the recruitment in that area has been questionable etc, but we've still got 3 senior strikers who have all scored at reasonable-ish rates at this level or higher before, and plenty of others in the team who've shown they can chip in too.  The fact that they aren't scoring at those kind of rates this season has to be down to how they are being used.  You can't just shrug and say "nothing we can do, no striker", as a manager you have to find a way to work with what you've got.

I had such high hopes for the bloke. Great record in this division, couldn't take Rotherham any further I assumed due to budgets. Let's see what he can do at a big club. And I think now we've all seen what he is capable of. Nothing.
The bloke hasn't grasped the size of the job at all. Did he really think hitting the ball wide as early as possible and smashing crosses into the box was going go down well with supporters? The good managers evolve their ideas over time. He is expecting really technical footballers to become athletes who can run half a marathon and bulldoze the opposition on the break. No wonder tactically we are all over the place.
This squad is top 6 easily, any half decent manager could at least be competitive. We have the biggest wage budget in the league. And what this manager has produced is nothing short of something I'd expect on a Sunday morning on Alvaston Park. Pathetic, amateur standard of football where crossing the ball gets clapped at like seals on our bench. Bottom half league one teams can easily figure out our game plan within 5 minutes. We've got all these quality midfielders and we still insist on avoiding them at all costs when we attack. It is painful to watch. Is this really the best this squad has to give? 
I'm done with it. I was so excited to see what he could do with a summer and implement a plan to fire us up the league. Currently, we're firing into the midtable wasteland. It is embarrassing. He's got all these resources at his disposal and quite frankly, he's a rabbit in the headlights facing an inevitable doom.
Lovely man I'm sure. But a football manager who has a clear glass ceiling and has demonstrated he cannot take his work to the next level. 

We played Cambridge, who missed relegation by one point last season, we should be beating teams of their standards if we want to be in the promotion mix. Especially at home where under Warne we have only won 2 league games since the begining of March. Yes that 11 matches with just 2 wins, both a miserly 1-0 result.

I think I'm starting to lean more towards out. We should be having a squad that looks like it is now settling down and starting to take shape a couple of months into a season, but we still look disjointed and a bit lost. The football has never been massively to be taste, but nor is that necessarily a requirement, however the style is however we should look more coherent than we do. 

Couldn't agree with you more.......these polls are really boring

He's a good guy. He's not a good enough manager to be at DCFC.

Its poor. "Wait till hes got his own players"...."Wait till hes had a pre season"...Its been a year and its worse. Bordering Boring!! Wildsmith made more saves today and some people thought we had played well. 

I think it only further highlights how dog awful this league really is.
We don’t need to play well to beat half the teams in League One. We can actually play crap yet still have enough to claim three points against the likes of Carlisle, Burton and Fleetwood.
But without sounding like a broken record, our promotion aspirations will come down to games against the better teams.
Whether that is to get top two or go up in the playoffs. 
So far we have played Oxford, Bolton, Pompey, Posh and Wigan. Five likely top 10 sides. We have taken just five points. Replicate this throughout the season and we will be borderline top six even if we win 75% of the games against bottom half opposition.

I actually like Ed Dawes. I find that Dave Fletcher very boring. 

It's quite an unpleasant forum on here sometimes isn't it.
The blokes doing his job,has some time off for unknown reasons and gets personally slagged off by fellow derby supporters whilst he does so.
 
 
 
 

There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about Bloomers. 
Shrewsbury wore T-shirts with his, and another supporters’ name on, when they celebrated that promotion.
Fantastic broadcaster, wonderful bloke. I miss him. 

Copied over.
 
Hands are tied behind our backs because we offered Warne a nice juicy contract to tempt him to join our club. As much as I can't stand the football being offered, I believe we have little choice other than to keep him until the end of the season unless we fell well away from the top 6. I also believe Warne seems to be the type of chap who would walk away from a job if he felt he was not delivering his aims.
 
I personally don't like his recruitment policy of buying older players on bigger contracts. I've seen it too many times over the years where we've bought too many twilight career footballers and feeling more disappointed when they are not performing well. The balance of the squad doesn't look right to me. The best teams I've always seen have a good blend of youth, prime and experienced players. We have too many over or approaching 30. I've never believed in the "experience buys promotion" idea. Has it ever worked for Derby in the past? It only seems to result in a bloated wage budget and not being able to shift people along.
 
The Waggy situation has annoyed me and provides more doubts about PW. I'm really glad the player is back and we are lucky to have brought him in after what happened originally, our manager outright dismissing him at the first opportunity. It makes me wonder how many good players have we may have missed out on because Warne prejudged their character. To say he's a people person, why would you flat out refuse a player of that calibre and not speak to them about their situation. That fortunate piece of luck has already saved the manager from more criticism.
 
Ultimately he just isn't the manager for me. I can completely understand why our owner went for someone like Warne. On paper he's a great fit. Unfortunately now we've digged deeper into his playing style, tactical (or lack of) knowledge and recruitment policy, I don't think he is the right fit for the club.

It is a interesting point you raise.
I think with LR at least you could see the improvements and progress within a short space of time, in terms of entertainment and creating good chances. Was it Fleetwood away where we absolutely destroyed them and somehow we couldn't hit the ball in the net. 30 plus shots or something ridiculous. As a supporter I came away thinking we were highly unlucky and you can see a plan and pattern of play being created.
With Paul Warne there is no plan. There is no pattern of play. He is trying to turn technical footballers into 15km a match athletes. A polite term would be clunky football currently. Today I will give him a pass because he nearly beat a very competitive Portsmouth team. But the football was hideous, we looked like the away side, he is so lucky how many supporters still turn up every week to back him and the team. This squad has so much more to give in my view and yet they are being hampered by a manager who still has not got his head around managing a bigger club. When you come to a larger reputation team like ours, the manager needs to adapt and evolve his ideas. I'm not saying play Pep slick passing football every week. At least if you want to play a counter attacking style, identify and recruit players with pace and energy and not lads in the twilight of their careers.
Lovely chap off the pitch, he could talk my ear off in a pub. Watching his dreadful attempt at football is becoming embarrassing. And I'll cheer the lads until the 98th minute at the ground. If we was an underdog team in this division I could accept the Warne way. With this budget and caliber of player, surely we can play much better than this?

He's clearly no mug, as demonstrated by his time at Rotherham. I get the sense that he's good at building a culture.
The issue is, that's irrelevant if the tactics are crap and the results are poor.

So you were at the Oxford and Blackpool games as well then 😉

Sibley has "absence ability improvement delusion syndrome" from fans.
The more he is absent from the team, the better his perceived abilities are.
He might yet make it, but delivering on promises has been where so many a gifted young player has evaporated.
 

Which is where xG comes in to it...

No, if anything they’re too low from some fans. When did losing at home to teams like Oxford become acceptable?
We have the best team in this league, and we should be getting promoted. So far this season has not been up to standard.

I guess I need to adjust my expectations and consider midtable in L1 playing awful football to be acceptable.

I will concede that there were glimpses of good football last season, but you have to admit McGoldrick was a large part of that. 
But your last part is the key point of my argument. Where has this gone?  You believe good football will come back this season. On what basis? To me its going the opposite way so far. Why has he persisted with this dull 2 up front system? I just find it so boring and backwards. Its worse than last season which is the worst thing. Judging from his comments as well, he seems quite content with the style of play as well.

Imagine spending not insignificant chunks of your budget bringing in ‘Championship’ defenders and having to constantly replace them with a player you were clearly trying to phase out. 
 
Forsyth, what a player he’s still showing himself to be. 
 
Seriously though a defence of Smith Foz Cash Sibley was so much more solid than this.