duncanjwitham

That's the problem though - none of the midfielders are going to make the runs Martin needs, they're all slow and sit too deep. If you're playing Martin up front on his own, you need to get lots of players buzzing around him, and Russell is the only player in there that will really do that.

It started out like that, but Bryson earned his place back in the team and played pretty much solidly from mid-december onwards.

Hence "the manager doing it wrong" - it was clearly a tactical decision from the Pearson and Rowett, not anything of Bsyon's choosing. When he came back into the team under McClaren he was back to his old self (the goal against Leicester being the obvious example).

Bryson and Butterfield have different jobs in the team. You want Bryson breaking beyond the forwards. If he's doing that, he's not going to be making forward passes, and if he's not making forward runs, the manager's doing it wrong. Butterfield sits much deeper, so forward passes should be a much bigger part of his game.

Really? I'd say Nugent, Wisdom, Davies and Forsyth are almost certain to start. And Russell and Bryson have a decent chance too. That's half the team.

He's another one that I don't object to on an individual level - every team needs some players like him, Whelan, Boyd, Curtis Davies etc. And it is something we've been lacking. It's just the overall impression of shifting out youngsters and replacing them with high-waged 30+ year olds, that goes against everything Morris has been preaching since he got here .

Good to see Rowett finally getting to work on increasing the number of first team players who have come through the academy. We've been struggling on that count a bit since Lee Grant left.

They don't need to be amazing passers, but they need to be good enough to move it quickly out from the back. I keep going back to Shackell, as he's by far the most obvious example we've had recently - with bucko there, if the ball went into the back 4, within 3 or 4 touches, it would have come across the back 4 and back out into midfield and we'd be going again. With Shackell in there, it takes him 3 or 4 touches to get his body shape into position to even attempt the first pass. So everything slows down, the opposition are set and it's so much harder to play through midfield. If we're loading up on slow players and poor passers, yet trying to play out from the back, it will not work. And likewise, if we're intending on going direct, we need a different striker as Martin is no good at dealing with long balls. This is what I'm getting at. It doesn't matter what formation Rowett plays, it matters what style, and the squad needs to suit that style. And as it is, we still have a mish mash of a squad that doesn't really suit any style. And Rowett is only talking about 2 or 3 more coming in, so I don't see it changing.

The Ince comment is pretty much the point I was trying to make - why would Ince want to stay when the manager is not playing to his strengths? And Hughes works as hard as anybody, so I refuse to believe he left out of laziness.

Them not wanting the ball at their feet isn't magically going to turn them into good passers though. Shackell never wanted the ball at his feet, but we were forced into it because of his lack of pace (meaning the team sat deeper) and his poor technique (meaning the ball came out for the back 4 too slowly). It's not about writing the season off, but I just want to see some semblance of a plan. The biggest issue over the last 2 seasons has been the scattergun approach to signings and managerial appointments, leading to a mish mash of a squad with no obvious way of setting up a team. With the business we've done so far, I don't see any suggestion that this is changing.

The issue is why they want to go in the first place. If it's because they genuinely just want to go and play in the prem and don't want to be at Derby then okay. If it's because they don't think Rowett plans on playing them, then that's a different matter.

The slow passing around the back 4 is happening for a reason though, we're not doing it by choice. Sitting too deep, lack of technique and composure in certain players, forwards getting isolated etc all contribute. And selling Ince, Hughes (and maybe Keogh) and signing Davies and wisdom fixes none of that, and in fact makes it worse. So it's okay saying move it forward quicker, but unless we're getting a load of new players in and radically changing tactics, that's just going to result in direct balls to Martin, and losing the ball a lot.

That's happening because of structural issues with the way the team is set out though. We sit too deep, so there's a big gap between the midfield and attack, the forwards get isolated and we struggle to get quality passes into their feet. We move the ball too slowly - mainly because of poor technique in a number of positions (Shackell and Johnson being the prime offenders), so opposing defences have time to get set against us. We have too many players that only look to make runs in behind (Vydra, Weimann, Bent, Anya and so on), so whenever a midfielder does pick the ball up, all of the forwards are running away from him, not showing for a pass. What's worrying me, is that we've signed Curtis Davies (slow, so we sit deep) and Wisdom (poor on the ball). And we've lost Hughes (who can play those more difficult passes into forwards feet, when other players can't) and Ince (who's slightly more willing to drop deep and show for passes). That's just going to exacerbate the issues above, rather than fix them. Obviously there's more signings to come, so I don't want to completely jump to conclusions yet, but I don't see how we're going to be playing out from the back with the squad we have, and I don't see how we're going to play direct with the squad we have.

Well in that case, Thorne and Martin may as well leave. There's no point them being here if we aren't interested in playing to their strengths. If we spend the entire season with Thorne watching 50 yards balls sail over his head to Martin, who can't then deal with them, we're going down.

It's not about playing 'worldie passes', it's about moving the ball quickly out from the back into the midfielders feet. And Keogh does that as well as anyone in this league. He's consistently at the top end of the pass completion stats (across the whole league), and consistently at the bottom end of the 'giving the ball away'-type stats. Believe what you like, but we won't get a better passer of the ball the Keogh for the kind of money we'll be spending.