LeedsCityRam

It is a very admirable quality. I would probably be very happy if Paul operated my Carehome, or the Day Nursery of my Grandchildren. I would probably be very happy too if he was manager of my small underfunded, lower tier football team. Time will tell if his qualities get us up a level, but I remain of the view that we are second in the league in spite of Paul’s tactics and team selection, not because of them.

My concern is that this season we are likely to post one of the highest, if not the highest ever wage bill recorded by a League One team. I think Ipswich 22-23 at £19.7m is currently the highest and that includes promotion bonuses. We could easily go over that with last season's wage bill at £17.2m. I suspect it will likely exceed £20m. 
This has to be it for Warne - make or break. If he doesn't win promotion then we go into another rebuild next season, ok without restrictions, but the club is already losing roughly £10m at this level from just standing still. I just don't see the appetite there for another Warne season - especially given the increases in season tickets which make us one of, if not THE, most expensive in the league. 
We miss out on promotion, which frankly will be through nothing but losing our own bottle and you're charging near on £600 for a season ticket on the West or East stand  next season. It's almost a given that you're going to have to replace managers in order to create a sense of excitement and a fresh start.
The very last thing the club need now is fans to stop turning up to games. 

Every Derby fan is behind the team but some see it in different ways. 
 
You can be disappointed with the Northampton and Wycombe results and be happy we are 2nd but we are making it such hard work of it all.  
I don’t enjoy this League sorry 
PS. Drama queens !
You might be one if we miss out which I hope we don’t. 
 

Happy to chuck a small donation in for a great cause - and to remember your brother/mate/fellow Ram b4. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Happy birthday @B4ev6is  
Raising a pie and a pint heavenwards, buddy. 
🥧 🍺
xxx
 

Happy Birthday Daniel. Will be having a drink for you tonight. Fingers crossed for a birthday win tomorrow 🎉🐏💖🎂

Sonny Bradley is available. 

Personally wouldn't have Hourihane or Waghorn in the line up if I could help it. Hourihane runs like he's pulled both his hamstrings and offers absolutely nothing. Waghorn is just poor.
Surprising people wanting CBT on the bench cos he's had one bad game. Id start him.
Also find it bizarre anyone could possibly want NML up front. 
Id go with a 433. Hopefully Bird is fit. If he is I'd go:-
                 Wildsmith
Wilson, Nelson, Cashin, Sibley,
                    Adams,
              Bird, Thompson.             
Mendez-Laing, Collins, CBT
Smith for Bird if Bird isn't fit. We need energy in midfield.

Not sure the addition of Bradley and Hourihane will 'freshen it up', or much else to be honest. Dropping Smith for the latter in particular, seems akin to an act of self-harm. We've looked ok defensively, having reverted to a back 4 and I'd fear a complete meltdown amongst the fans if we bring in the two slowest players on the roster for a game we absolutely need to be winning.

Pride Park Stadium – KO: 15.00
After a chastening visit to Wycombe Wanderers, next up, the Rams play host to Leyton Orient. I know the whole, ‘must win game’ is horribly overused cliche in sport, but sadly, it actually applies on this occasion, as it will do for all of our remaining games. On the basis of ability and potential, you’d fancy our chances strongly, but as has been the case through a good deal of the season, the team remains somewhat Jekyll and Hyde and it’s anyone’s guess which Derby will turn up on Saturday. Having been concerned about the Wycombe game being a potential banana skin, I’m less so for this match, but it’d taker a braver man than I to be dogmatic about the outcome.
Leyton Orient:
Founded in 1881 as the Glyn Cricket Club, they began playing football as Orient in 1888 and joined the London League in 1896 after success in the Clapton & District League. The club adopted the name Clapton Orient two years later and were elected into the Football League in 1905. Most recently and under current manager Richie Wellens, the club was crowned champions of League Two in the 2022–23 campaign and sit mid-table in this current season.
Form Guide:
In the corresponding away fixture, we rode our luck a little early on, but having scored 1st, the game turned on a somewhat controversial sending off, with Brandon Cooper dismissed for a foul on Max Bird. Derby ultimately ran out comfortable 3-0 winners and this with Collo spurning a brace of golden opportunities, but even then, I felt the scoreline flattered us a little - Please see the match highlights link below. FWIW, my view is that Orient are a tidy enough side for the grade and should not be taken lightly. Much like Wycombe, they will be able to relax a little more than our lads and we need to be controlled and alert throughout the 90 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zPSKzMlFGE&ab_channel=DerbyCountyFootballClub
 
Most recently, Orient’s form has been decent enough, with a 1-0 victory away to Stevenage followed by two losses by the odd goal only to Lincoln and Peterborough. Their last two matches, both at home, yielded a 3-1 victory against Cheltenham, followed by a 2-2 draw against Exeter.
The most obvious dangerman would seem to be the ever-present Ruel Sotiriou with 11 goals and 5 assists across 42 games played. Shaquai Forde is next best with 9 goals and 5 assists, with Oliver O'Neil chipping in with 5 goals and 4 assists. Their preferred formation is seemingly a 4-2-3-1, but perhaps someone who has actually watched them regularly can confirm, as my research yielded conflicting data.
Head 2 Head:
Historically, Derby have the edge and perhaps more significantly, we have not lost at home to Leyton since 1981, with 5 home losses in total since the clubs first met way back in 1907 in what was then the 2nd division.
Games won: 23
Games drawn: 8
Games lost: 18
Team News:
Warne again has some worries to address. Our own @Caerphilly Ram has battled manfully to keep us all informed against an ever-changing background and his latest summary suggests the something akin to the following scenario for Saturday:
Joe Ward – was said to be out for 2 weeks at time of injury – 50:50 for this match is perhaps mildly optimistic
Max Bird – was mooted as a possible for the Wycombe game – may well figure from the bench
Dwight Gayle – not expected to play this weekend, but may be available for the last 2 games
Craig Forsyth - not expected to play this weekend, but may be available before season end
Callum Elder – groin injury, status unknown
Ryan Nyambe – out for the season
Tyreece John-Jules – most likely out for the season
Jake Rooney -  most likely out for the season, but has been ‘back on the grass’ we’re told. No jokes please!
I do have some sympathy for Warne as it seems every time he has the lads playing well, injuries to key players undermine any momentum, but that said, we’re not alone in that regard and we’ll need to make do as best we can.
Line-Up:
I think PW will start with a very similar line up to the last game. I’m going to suggest a slightly controversial tweak (assuming Ward is s recovered) and a change from the MF 2 we seem to favour, to variant of an undeniably old fashioned 4-4-2 – yeah, I know, straws...clutching...much… If Ward is indeed fit, he comes in for Nate, who looks like a man in need of freshening up – perhaps he and Max might be best deployed as ‘finishers’ off the bench when legs tire and the game is more stretched, assuming we’re not winning comfortably. Likewise Barks, who could also play on the right if Ward remains out. That said, if Max is healthy enough to start, I'd be sorely tempted to switch to a 4-3-3 with he and Corey either side of Ebou and Washington dropping to the bench. Irrespective, we must control the game better than we did in the 2nd half at Wycombe, where we repeatedly left a yawning chasm in front of our back 4, for their midfielders to play into.
The front two and CM remain unchanged for me; despite both Wash and Collo looking understandably short of match sharpness, IMO, they remain our best current options. Once again, the back 4 pick themselves, as do Corey and Ebou in at CM. Joe keeps his slot, having done well enough since his return to the fold.


The Match:
Honestly, I’ve no idea which Derby will turn up. After Wycombe, some will want wholesale changes, but my take on what was an admittedly hugely disappointing result, is that Wycombe should have been dead and buried inside 40 minutes. I’m not sure that the subsequent slaughtering of Warne for what was to my eye, the profligacy of his forward line, is entirely fair, but each to their own. He remains the incumbent, for better or worse and whatever might happen next year, it seems a long way off right now. As such, the focus for yours truly remains the next 3 games and nothing else.
A last word, as I’ve avoided reading all bar the last couple of pages of the last thread, would be that despite the stuttering effort against Wycombe, the travelling Rams faithful were magnificent in their support for the team. It’d be grand if we could mirror that at home and all try to channel our inner B4 and help carry the lads over the line. At least remember that Warne and his players are trying their best and are just people, like all of us and hurtful appraisals will only serve to undermine their confidence further.
Enjoy the game one and all.
COYR
BE MORE B4
  

It's a tough one. The way I see it, I can only think of four or five games this season where we rolled over the opposition, and there have been plenty where we just haven't turned up, we've let crap teams back into the game, or we've just scraped a last-minute winner. Yes, Derby are second, but it doesn't really feel like the performances warrant being up there, just that we have better players than most other teams.
You can certainly blame the players for individual poor choices and errors (Wildsmith's charging out, or CBT's terrible miss, for example) but there have been so many occasions where the line-up has been wrong, Hourihane & Bradley have been shoe-horned into the XI, players are out of position, we've been set up timidly against weak opposition, substitutions are bang-on one week then bizarre the next, we persisted with 2 CMs when it clearly wasn't working, youth players have been totally ignored, we've signed crocks, and some players (Collins, NML) have been run into the ground from lack of rotation. On top of that, the players are obviously being coached to pump cross after cross into the box, and it's a style of football which is dire to watch most of the time.
However, I was recently reminded by a mate who is a Sunderland fan that they had 6 seasons in L1. Portsmouth have spent 11 seasons out of the Championship, Ipswich were down for 5(?) seasons and got pumped up by new investors, Bolton have been here since 2019/20. It could be worse, and League One is difficult to get out of.

My hope is that we go up this season and PW gets the boot asap. (I realise this will sound stupid). He may well get us up but he is not the future. If we dip out of the autos, it won't feel like we've made any progress, especially with the huge rebuild and turnover of players needed, Knight & Bird leaving, Cashin possibly going, etc.

Some don’t like Warne’s football (me included) but it’s very childish for some posters to accuse Derby fans of wanting to lose to prove a point. I hope we get promotion. I will be overjoyed for weeks but will hardly remember any of the football

Good points but I think we'll be lucky to keep Adams if we are in L1
Personally I'd rather we tried a different coach who's going to use our younger players more ...if ready of course the squad needs major overhaul to me and not sure i want Warne to be conducting that 

Hardly battered. They scored an early penalty and hit us on the counter in the 2nd half.
We still had 10 shots in that game (5 on target), with their keeper making some excellent saves. Also, Collins and Mendez-Laing both had goals ruled out for offside.

I think it boils down to two things....possibly three:
Whether you think the team is better than its sum parts.......that's what good managers achieve and many don't believe PW hasn't achieved that, despite us being in 2nd place.
Is the football good to watch?........I see a lot of snarking at those who are openly critical of the style of play but very few who openly think it's great.
But, I get your point. I'm not sure how it works..... but you can enjoy the season and the results without particularly enjoying the football itself. I'm sort of in that position and reasonably confident we'll hold on to 2nd place.
The other possibility is that we get very high quality football pumped into our living rooms for the rest of the week and unrealistically expect our squad to play error-free in the same manner. I find Man City quite boring to watch on occasions but the game against Real Madrid was a thriller. City made nearly 700 passes with over 90% completion and their outfield players only played 10 long balls. Last night we made 375 passes with less than 70% completion with 60 long balls by outfield players. 
Mrs Bat said to me this morning "I know we've got season tickets again and we may get promoted but I can't stand another season of this sh*t"
That's where a lot of people are I'm afraid.

We have had multiple seasons of below moderate expectations ... even by the madness of the elite english  football world our recent history has been a dreadful downward spiral of a story .
Since the club was saved from the abyss we are making giant strides of progress behind the scenes with acadamy , corporate and communication being keystones . 
The disallusionment comes from the regular dire , just plain awful, performances of the first team .
Yes we are still 2nd 
Yes we can still get promotion via autos or playoffs 
With a squad so highly rated by many outside of the club , we ought to at least turn it on occasionally and take a comfortable victory .
Every game is on a knifeedge . 
The head coach will trot out how dangerous a team Leyton Orient / Cambridge and Carlisle are and that no team will come and get their bellies tickled . 
Ffs just thump them all 4.0 and hope posh and bolton dont match our results .   We need at least 1 big win as the precious goal difference advantage has almost vanished too.
How many times have we royally screwed up this seaaon when in a great position to really take an advantage ? 
Ad nauseum over the last quarter of a century ....
There is still time to get glory in 2024 .  
But that time is running out ..
 
From a fan who is teetering on the edge of losing the plot . 
 
 

Not trawled through all the matchthread (gave up around p40) but I think last night was a game that has summed up our season.
Take both those early chances and we would have been celebrating another "get the job done" win and admiring a disciplined second half defensive performance. 
But we all know to score two, we need six chances, not just two or three.
To create six chances, we need the football to flow. Ward makes that happen in recent games. He's injured, so we replace that role with Collins, playing out of position.  He's a striker, not a midfielder. We leave Tommo on the bench, who would have been the natural link between our deep sitting midfield two and the attack, would have been available for the pass from Wilson and Sibley (who were both desperately looking for feet to play into and finding no-one there) and who can press and harry just as well as Collins.
Warne needed to select either Washington or Collins, not both, and play an attacking midfielder. If he doesn't rate Thommo, he could have put Hourihane in there. 
He didn’t,  and we faltered. I wish Warne would stop trying to create new systems and patterns and just do the simple stuff sometimes. 
Footballers are a bit simple too. They play instinctively in patterns that are ingrained from an early age.
Take them out of their natural positions, play them in different systems and they have to think more quickly in order to be successful.  It fails more than it works. 
Add in the factor that our forwards aren't world beaters, we need to be giving them all the help we can to play their natural games. 
I think we were one player choice away from that routine win last night. So disappointing. 
 

Yes, Wycombe played much better stuff than I'd expected...some of their passges of plays were quite neat & opened us up easily. Also didnt think they resorted much to dark arts, it was a fair contest throughout. Their lad up top (Kone) looked a handful, add a bit of end product & he'll be playing at a much higher level.
It would have been difficult for a neutral to work out who was the team in 2nd & who was the team in 15th. Particularly galling given the difference in rest since last game & what was on the line for us. Was very disappointed with our approach, the ball seemed to be a hot potato at times, sensed a lack of urgency (Wildsmith taking ages over restarts) & the decision making was poor. Corners for instance...I get their keeper had a howler on Sunday but did every corner taker have to try & score directly!? Washington also seemed very ponderous on the break, the only exception being his ball to CBT who could have taken a touch & should have scored.
The side looked disjointed with Washingtoj & Collins up top..the latter was anonymous throughout and think we'd have been better served putting in Thompson as an extra midfielder to dominate territory & inject some creativity. Credit to Adams & Korey Smith who played well all night & stopped us being overrun.
Onto Orient & now needing favours from others. If I see Sonny Bradley in that starting line up, Im going to go spare. Dont even think about it Warne.

Yes, Wycombe played much better stuff than I'd expected...some of their passges of plays were quite neat & opened us up easily. Also didnt think they resorted much to dark arts, it was a fair contest throughout. Their lad up top (Kone) looked a handful, add a bit of end product & he'll be playing at a much higher level.
It would have been difficult for a neutral to work out who was the team in 2nd & who was the team in 15th. Particularly galling given the difference in rest since last game & what was on the line for us. Was very disappointed with our approach, the ball seemed to be a hot potato at times, sensed a lack of urgency (Wildsmith taking ages over restarts) & the decision making was poor. Corners for instance...I get their keeper had a howler on Sunday but did every corner taker have to try & score directly!? Washington also seemed very ponderous on the break, the only exception being his ball to CBT who could have taken a touch & should have scored.
The side looked disjointed with Washingtoj & Collins up top..the latter was anonymous throughout and think we'd have been better served putting in Thompson as an extra midfielder to dominate territory & inject some creativity. Credit to Adams & Korey Smith who played well all night & stopped us being overrun.
Onto Orient & now needing favours from others. If I see Sonny Bradley in that starting line up, Im going to go spare. Dont even think about it Warne.

Remember when you used to practice keepy uppies and you were getting close to your record and then the ball started to drift away and you were reaching for it to try and get the record breaking touch? That’s Derby after three passes

Yes, Wycombe played much better stuff than I'd expected...some of their passges of plays were quite neat & opened us up easily. Also didnt think they resorted much to dark arts, it was a fair contest throughout. Their lad up top (Kone) looked a handful, add a bit of end product & he'll be playing at a much higher level.
It would have been difficult for a neutral to work out who was the team in 2nd & who was the team in 15th. Particularly galling given the difference in rest since last game & what was on the line for us. Was very disappointed with our approach, the ball seemed to be a hot potato at times, sensed a lack of urgency (Wildsmith taking ages over restarts) & the decision making was poor. Corners for instance...I get their keeper had a howler on Sunday but did every corner taker have to try & score directly!? Washington also seemed very ponderous on the break, the only exception being his ball to CBT who could have taken a touch & should have scored.
The side looked disjointed with Washingtoj & Collins up top..the latter was anonymous throughout and think we'd have been better served putting in Thompson as an extra midfielder to dominate territory & inject some creativity. Credit to Adams & Korey Smith who played well all night & stopped us being overrun.
Onto Orient & now needing favours from others. If I see Sonny Bradley in that starting line up, Im going to go spare. Dont even think about it Warne.

Yes, Wycombe played much better stuff than I'd expected...some of their passges of plays were quite neat & opened us up easily. Also didnt think they resorted much to dark arts, it was a fair contest throughout. Their lad up top (Kone) looked a handful, add a bit of end product & he'll be playing at a much higher level.
It would have been difficult for a neutral to work out who was the team in 2nd & who was the team in 15th. Particularly galling given the difference in rest since last game & what was on the line for us. Was very disappointed with our approach, the ball seemed to be a hot potato at times, sensed a lack of urgency (Wildsmith taking ages over restarts) & the decision making was poor. Corners for instance...I get their keeper had a howler on Sunday but did every corner taker have to try & score directly!? Washington also seemed very ponderous on the break, the only exception being his ball to CBT who could have taken a touch & should have scored.
The side looked disjointed with Washingtoj & Collins up top..the latter was anonymous throughout and think we'd have been better served putting in Thompson as an extra midfielder to dominate territory & inject some creativity. Credit to Adams & Korey Smith who played well all night & stopped us being overrun.
Onto Orient & now needing favours from others. If I see Sonny Bradley in that starting line up, Im going to go spare. Dont even think about it Warne.

Completely exposed our one dimensional way of playing, if getting it wide and chucking it in the box doesn't work we really have no clue.
NML, CBT, Collins were all poor, Washington looks like he won a competition to be a footballer.
Smith had a good game, as did Sibley and Wildsmith.
Warnes in game management poor as well, too slow to make changes in the second half and even when they did come he didnt do enough. Looked too scared to lose the point to actually go for it.
Its another game in this season thats a missed opportunity, and another game they bored me to tears.

Joe Ward has added significantly to the fluidity we have had recently and he makes Wilson play better. We missed him