Gabby'sThighs

I have no idea what your opinion is. You've had three bites of the cherry and I'm none the wiser. My best guess is you think I contradicted myself badly enough that you had to pass comment. After mild pushback, you're now playing the victim/free speech card. This conversation is insufferably boring...

What a bore.

I think we'll go up this season and Warne would have to get the credit. I think he'll struggle in the Championship, but that's just an assumption. If we miss out via the play-offs, I expect Clowes will keep him. The rebuild this summer is going to be massive, particularly if we go up, and that's going to be a huge challenge for any manager.

Are you seriously that much of a pedant? Do you really think I'm saying that a professional footballer with over 600 appearances and 200+ goals has zero technical ability? Or do you think Collins has bags of technical ability because he scored ONE scissor kick goal? Do you think he's suddenly Dennis Bergkamp? 🙄

He's the kind of player I would loathe if he was playing against us - a scrappy, fighty, argumentative sod who throws his weight around and bullies defenders - and I didn't take to him at first. He's often offside and, while his willingness to close down is to be commended, he often charges in, misses the tackle, and leaves a big gap behind himself. But what he lacks in technical ability he more than makes up for with work-rate, stamina, strength, and determination. And, dammit, he has scored regularly enough to justify himself. A number of great headers and that fantastic scissor-kick. I'd love it if he got to 20 league goals.

I feel very strongly that Paul Warne should be sacked if he does badly but stay if he does well. Am I doing this right?

Is Elliot Bonds worth a shout? 23, central midfielder, English but plays for a minor, non-European national team? That's our vibe.

Warne in! Until Saturday evening anyway.

s*** ref

Bird & Mendez-Laing are a joy to watch when they're playing well.

Oh, I meant that there are plenty of other things to criticise him for, not this sub. I wasn't very clear.

I think Warne deserves some criticism but you should absolutely take off a player if there's a risk of exacerbating an injury. Defending that throw-in should have been simple stuff. Wilson and Collins both fell asleep to let the runner go, then Thompson slid on his bum for some reason when he could have blocked the cross. And, let's be honest, Nelson & Barkhuizen both should have scored the winner. It's exhausting that we've got to the point of nit-picking Warne to this degree - it's not FIFA.

"Oooh, matron!", etc.

His first interviews suggested that Warne had been after him over the summer but couldn't get a deal done. Wasn't the assumption at the time that he was expecting to join a Championship club but that never materialised? Seems reasonable given his record at Blackburn & Wigan. Rooney's injury motivated us too.

You talk about getting promoted as if that's a negative! Isn't promotion part of getting the club back on it's feet, i.e. building for the future? Signing decent 27-28-year-olds seems like a good way of building a squad for that target, but they're unlikely to join on 2-year deals. It's easy to put the responsibility for all the negatives at Warne's door and ignore any positives we've seen from the recruitment team. The football is pretty crap to watch and often we're tactically all over the place, which I think Warne is certainly to blame for, but we have a decent shot at the autos with 15 games to go. Cheer up.

Well, the first stage was signing enough free transfers just to survive, mostly done by Rosenior. That was, predictably, a mixed bag, and we just missed out on the play-offs last season, with a thin squad running out of steam. Then PW signed enough decent free transfers to challenge, and we're currently 2nd in the table and on course to get more wins & points than last season. Getting promoted would be part of the building process, but we'll see if that happens. Signings like Wilson, Nyambe, Fornah, and Blackett-Taylor point towards the future, and Cashin's contract extension at least secures a decent fee when he does go. NML renewing means retaining arguably our best attacker, and the players we shed this summer (Smith, Hourihane, Waghorn) should free up enough wages to allow us to go for younger replacements. I'd argue that giving more playing time to some U21s would be an encouraging sign of building for the future, but the academy have at least been getting new players in. There are some green shoots, surely?

We're 2nd, 6 points off top with a game in hand on Portsmouth, who have shown they're liable to drop points. Everyone from Barnsley down would happily swap places with Derby. Importantly, Peterborough are in danger of dropping out of contention if they don't beat Vale tomorrow, which would leave a top 4 pack. BUT they still have Portsmouth and Bolton at home, Bolton being on the last day of the season, so they could do a job for us. There are so many big games between Derby, Portsmouth, Bolton, Barnsley, and Peterborough, plus Stevenage & Oxford, a lot could change between now and 27th April. All-in-all, the last 15 games look set to be very exciting, even if the football is pretty crap to watch. We just have to back the players. Warne is not going to be sacked before 27th April so you may as well enjoy the run-in as much as you can.

It was a disappointing result but I agree with the hundred previous posters who have pointed out that we're tactically naive. We started defensively against a team who had scored 6 away goals. We should have got stuck in from the first second. Too often this season the first 45 minutes is simply wasted, and then we're chasing the game in the second half after an adjustment. I read the Guardian's report on the Leverkusen-Bayern game, and an observation there stuck out to me: "But what distinguishes this Leverkusen team is how little they rely on moments of individual quality. They defend and attack as a unit..." We rely almost entirely on moments of individual quality! In recent games particularly, it has been flashes from Bird, NML, Hourihane, or Collins to pull a result out of the bag. With a coherent system, we have good enough players, and a deep enough squad, to demolish most teams. I don't think any individual had a bad game yesterday - in fact, I thought Sibley, Bird, Nyambe, Adams, and Nelson played very well - but they're being asked to set up in seemingly random, incoherent, and ineffective ways, from game to game. Second half was a good performance, and I was impressed by how they kept going and nearly snatched a winner through Nelson & Barks, but it should have been all over by then. Shrewsbury were pretty crap, and we let them off. Still, 15 games to go, all to play for, and enough rubbish sides in this league that I still think we can struggle our way to an automatic spot!

If only that boy could head the ball downwards, he'd be on double figures this season....

2-1 Exeter...

I'd say top 6 is pretty much guaranteed at this point, there's nice gap between 7th and 8th. I think we'll get 2nd spot with Bolton top. Based on the grit of the last performance, the squad strength, and that our run-in is preferable to Portsmouth, Bolton or Peterborough. Barnsley are out of the running if they don't A lot will come down to the head-to-heads with Pompey & Bolton. The squad depth is very strong atm with Bradley, Ward, and Sibley looking good lately, Nyambe coming back in, and Forsyth & Washington getting fit for March, Bird in a role better suited to his ability. We have multiple options in each position, or at least we should do soon enough. (opinion subject to change if Bolton & Peterborough both win away tonight)

It's great that Bradley performed well against Charlton, and I hope it continues until June. On a human level, I have felt bad for him as he was clearly struggling after being out injured for a long time, and his confidence has been shot for months. It must have been a crap time for him. Well done to him and Warne for managing his way back into the team but I still think we should probably boot him in the summer, definitely if we're in the Championship next season. Signings like Bradley - I assume he's a top earner - should justify themselves by consistently performing to a high standard. Obviously, once a club in Derby's position have invested in a player like Bradley you are obliged to work your nuts off to get him back up to standard, but I really wish we'd seen this level of time invested in a young CB. Giving someone like Bartley ten or twenty minutes every week could reveal a quality player, whereas we now have a wobbly 32-year-old who is probably going to be gone in summer 2025 either way. p.s. he didn't get fouled for those penalty shouts, he just grabbed a defender and yanked them over

Furthermore, from a practical squad management angle, players like Collins, NML, Hourihane, and Korey Smith are all over 30, have played a huge number of minutes this season, often playing whole matches, and could have done with some more rotation. We've certainly seen fatigue and injury as a result. Smith played the full 90 on 13 occasions before he got a knee injury.

Exactly. Here we are in need of a forward and Brown has played a grand total of 13 minutes in L1 and is now out on loan. Korey Smith, Hourihane, Collins, Barkhuizen, Sibley are all likely to leave this summer, and what have we seen of Weston, D Robinson, Fapetu, Lindsay, Cruz Allen, etc.? It's great that Cashin has signed a new deal but a big offer would take him out, Bradley is 32 and obviously not up to it, Elder & Ward have struggled. Maybe Bartley, Radcliffe, Cox, or Bardell could step up and follow in Cashin's footsteps. Maybe we'll never find out if these lads are good enough. It's so bloody short-sighted!