duncanjwitham

8 hours ago, Rammy03 said:

We improved until about February of last season then went backwards 

Did we even improve (as in continuously get better over time) until February? There was a definite uptick in performances when we reverted to a back 4 in October, but I wouldn't say we actually got better between October and February.  Arguably the best performance in that time was the one that kicked it off, Bristol Rovers at home.  And I'd say performances were pretty inconsistent (some good, some less good) throughout that time, even when we were finding ways to win.

Cocu and Te Wierik both struggled with the step up in tempo and physicality between the Dutch and English leagues (struggled in slightly different ways of course).  They aren't the first to struggle with that and they won't be the last.

1 minute ago, Anag Ram said:

We have an issue in that Nelson has proven worthy of his place. Cashin, now he’s with us, has to start. Forsyth remains reliable but probably isn’t the athlete PW wants at LWB. 
Those three are the basis of a half decent defence, but probably only as three of four. 
We don’t have a natural RB unless he gambles on Bardell or goes back to Smith.

Wilson and Ward are RWBs but we don’t really have the blend of CBs for that unless it’s Nelson, Forsyth and Cashin, which then needs a good LWB.

I still think 4-3-3 is our best and most competitive formation but we need that RB.

Wouldn't be totally surprised to see Nelson starting at RB for a while, until Ward/Wilson are back.

5 minutes ago, Caerphilly Ram said:

Looks like we have;

 

I think that makes it pretty conclusive that the red was for the handball, not the tackle.  The club will have seen the ref's match report and know exactly why he was sent off before they appeal it.

And I'm *fairly* sure that they can't go back and retrospectively change the red card to being for the tackle, if the ref didn't originally give it for that.

4 minutes ago, Archied said:

What I want is quite simple , I want to be off my seat as often a possible celebrating a goal , off my seat as often as possible hoping a goalmouth incident/ chance is going to hit the net and I want to be off my seat at the final whistle celebrating a derby win 🤷🏻‍♂️

We all do, obviously.  I'm just not convinced we're any closer to that now, than we were a year ago under Rosenior.  At best we've swapped one extreme for the other - instead of being too conservative with the ball and keeping it at the back too much, we're too aggressive with it and we get it forward quickly, but often don't have the control or the support there to do anything with it when we do.  

1 hour ago, Magicman said:

Why assume Rooney is out for the season , has this been announced today ?

 

I don't think anything's been announced, but if it is an ACL injury (and it looked very much like one, unfortunately), then the absolute best case is probably the Will Hughes one - he's back for the last 10 games or so, but is nowhere near match fit.

4 minutes ago, Alty_Ram said:

I think what frustrates me personally is when you think back to the Fleetwood game. There was a move just before Waggy's goal where we played some fantastic crisp one-touch passing football and went quickly from our own penalty area the theirs, leaving Fleetwood chasing shadows. The crowd really responded and it showed that this squad, for all its shortcomings, can play some high quality football. So why do we not do that more often, and why did the players choose to do it at that moment but rarely again ?

My tuppence worth, and I thought this for a lot of the good run last season too, was that if you put a bunch of good players on the pitch together, then they are going end up putting some good patches of football together, regardless of what the manager is telling them.  Good players will take up good positions, and other good players will play good passes to them etc, just by nature of them being good players.

Where it falls down for us, is I don't think we're setting up to encourage that to happen.  We're more interested in getting the ball out wide quickly to get crosses in, or getting it forward quickly for people to run onto, than actually getting balls into players feet.  So when it does happen, it's almost by random, not by design.

8 hours ago, Rammy03 said:

Warnes whole football philosophy is based around pressing and gegenpressing ala Klopps Liverpool.

I read a really interesting article a while back, about how Klopp had to adapt his style when he moved from Dortmund to Liverpool.  I'm not sure if this is the same article, but it's the closest I can find and it does make some of the same points:

https://totalfootballanalysis.com/article/klopp-his-tactical-evolution-from-dortmund-to-liverpool-tactical-analysis-tactics

The gist of it was, the German league is a much more open, attacking league so you can basically always counter-press, because the other team is always going to come and have a go at you to some degree.  At Liverpool, he was having to deal with teams coming to Anfield and just setting up to not lose, and you can't press in the same way if the other team has no intention of ever really playing into it.  The net result being his Liverpool team keep possession a lot more than his Dortmund one, and have to create their own chances more, rather than just relying on pressing the other team into a mistake.

I do wonder if there's something a bit similar happening here - smaller teams are possibly much more willing to come and have a go at Rotherham than they are at Pride Park in front of 25k+ fans.

11 minutes ago, oodledoodle said:

There are more managers out there than just Warne and Rosenior.

Honestly, at least when you're talking about tactics, systems, styles of play etc, it's just easier to say RoseniorBall or McClaren-type football than describe exactly what's going on on the pitch.  If I say RowettBall, then pretty much everyone on here knows what I'm talking about and I don't have to start talking about compact back 4s with 2 holding midfielders, and using pacy front 4s to counterattack.

4 minutes ago, sage said:

Both hands came out at one point 

If they did, it's certainly not in the extended YouTube highlights.  

9 hours ago, sage said:

It hit his chest. I think he was sent off for the initial tackle. You could see the ref signalling advantage before the alleged handball..

I don't think he is signalling advantage there, advantage is both arms pointed straight outwards, the ref only has one pointed forwards, bent at the elbow.  It looks more like he's telling the Bolton player that Wildsmith tackled, who was appealing for the foul, to get up because it wasn't a foul.  This is immediately after the Wildsmith tackle:

And even beyond, when the ref is showing the red card, you can clearly see Wildsmith pointing to his chest repeatedly, they're obviously talking about where the ball hit.

For all the talking about giving players time to gel this season, I thought Rosenior's team looked absolutely like a team that hadn't quite gelled yet.  You could see what we were trying to do but players weren't quite on the same wavelength yet, and we were behind on fitness too after the shortened preseason.  To me anyway, if we had started moving the ball slightly faster, cut out a few of the needless backwards passes, been a bit more clinical in the final third etc, we would have turned into a more than decent team. We're talking like 5% improvements or something here, not massive changes.  You don't need to cut out many backwards passes to completely shift where you are playing.  There were plenty of times where we passed 5 or 6 times at the back, worked an opening into midfield and then instead of keeping it there went backwards.  You cut a few of those passes out and all of a sudden you don't have to keep starting again with the 5 or 6 passes at the back so often, and you're passing around the edge of their box a lot more.  We go from a Cocu-type team, to a McClaren-type team.  And I think a lot of that would have happened anyway as we got fitter, got used to playing together etc.

Not wanting to put words into peoples mouths, but I do wonder how many of the "Rosenior's football is boring" people actually wanted that too (RoseniorBall, but a bit faster, and a bit further up the pitch), rather than the endless diagonals out wide, and aimless chipped balls over the top to nobody, that we seem to get with WarneBall.

Do we need a Big Trav poll thread? I say we give him until Christmas and review it then.

The way I see it, there are 2 completely separate aspects at work here.  Do I like what Warne is doing, and do I think he can be successful doing it.  I think it's obvious to everyone that's read my posts where I stand on the first - I think we should make the ball ours and it should mostly stay on the grass until we decide to kick it in their goal.  But I absolutely accept that there are other ways of playing. I didn't like the way Rowett set his team up, but he was reasonably successful because he set his team up well, recruited to fit it etc.  He had a sensible plan and executed it fairly well.

Regarding Warne, obviously I don't like the way he wants to play football.  I want to see us having the ball, controlling the game, dictating it ourselves rather than focussing on trying to stop them etc.  But beyond that, I do not believe that his particular type of gas-out football can be successful at higher levels, you can't just work harder, you have to work smarter.  You can probably get it to work at this level if you have good players (i.e. better than most of the other teams), which we saw at times last season, and he obviously managed at Rotherham.  But at Championship level, you're facing teams with pots of prem money and good players who will rip holes in you if you let them.  We aren't going to have better players than most of the league, and we aren't going to be able to outrun them all over the course of 46 games.  I think we're trying to build something that just will not work at the levels we want to be at.  That's why I'm so anti-Warne, it's not just about not liking the way his teams play.  (And for clarity, I think his particular type of football is *very* different to both the solid, pragmatic Rowett/Warnock types and the gegenpressing that Klopp-type teams do.)

And even beyond that, we aren't even executing WarneBall very well.  We don't have the players for it, we don't seem to be able to recruit players for it, the academy isn't (wasn't!) developing players for it.

I think more than anything, he was absolutely the wrong appointment at the wrong time.  It's unfortunate for him (because I think he was parachuted into a situation where he was pretty much doomed to failure), and unfortunate for us, because we're quite possibly stuck with him.

3 minutes ago, Ellafella said:

Agree up to a point but doubt he’d have made a living out of football if this has been career-long. 

That's where my last line comes in though.  I suspect at Luton he very rarely had to deal with these types of situations because of how they were setting up.  From what I remember they were a lot more compact and solid, so he would have had other defenders around him, midfielders tracking the guys closing him down and whatever.  So in that setup, you've got a defender who wins all his tackles and headers and very, very occasionally gets caught in possession or something, and you can work with that as a manager - every defender is going to cost you a goal or 2 per season, in some way or other.

7 minutes ago, Ellafella said:

When a player makes regular mistakes like this it’s invariably because his mind set isn’t clear. When a player from the opposing team is close by and the ball is at Bradley’s feet, he fluffs it. I suspect he goes into a mild panic which interrupts his thinking - split second stuff but sufficiently long to lose control & the rest is history. If I was managing Bradley he wouldn’t play at all again until this was addressed through 1-1 coaching. It’s akin to a batsman constantly being caught out playing the wrong shot. In cricket that would result in hours of net time eradicating the error. Why oh why did Warne bring Bradley on instead of Cashin? 
Bradley has done this 3 times now - it’s habitual & cost us the goal each time. It’s not random error that befalls all players - it’s part of Bradley’s football behaviour pattern. 

It's all basically what I was saying though - his basic technique (first touch in these cases) isn't good enough to be a ball-player (as opposed to a kick it and head it type defender).   What you want is for a player under pressure to just fall back on their basic technical ability, let muscle memory take over etc.  They shouldn't even be thinking about it at all, it should be automatic.  And I'm not sure you can address that through coaching at this stage in his career, he's not going to unlearn 15+ years of ingrained stuff in a few months.

For what it's worth, I think Curtis Davies was the same (see the mistake against Sheff Wed last season), although not to the same extent, and I suspect he's had far better coaching, at a far higher level, than Bradley has ever had.  I think some players just have better or worse technique than other players and there's only so much you can improve with coaching.  So the onus is on the manager to, you know, manage that.

12 minutes ago, DRBee said:

But is it to do with speed? He looks as though clearing the ball whether into to touch or up front has been coached out of him. Brain speed  deficient?

I think they're separate issues.  His lack of pace gets exposed because we spread the back 3 wide, leaving big gaps between the centre halves, and he struggles to get across to pick up people running into those gaps.  That's why we keep seeing other teams run straight through our backline like it's not there.

The thing that's mostly caused the other issues (like yesterday, and the Wigan goal) is his first touch letting him down.  He's not controlled the ball well enough, so he's scrabbling to adjust his body shape. And because he's isolated and being closed down, he can't do it quickly enough and either gets dispossessed or hurried into a mistake.  That's what I mean by being ropey on the ball.

Just now, angieram said:

Are you saying I'm a turkey? 

Hopefully not if you're voting for Christmas.

30 minutes ago, Papahet said:

Also, why does it matter what Warne did at Rotherham? Nigel Pearson did an alright job at Leicester and yet failed miserably here.

I suspect Paul Jewell is a more apt comparison - did very well at 2 relatively small clubs (Bradford, Wigan), struggled badly at 2 bigger ones (Sheff Wed and Us),

12 minutes ago, angieram said:

I voted Christmas

You know what they say about turkeys voting for Christmas... 😉

1 minute ago, Kokosnuss said:

Name 5 genuinely positive things that Warne has done and/or reasons which justify his continued tenureship without mentioning Rotherham or the EFL, or the fear of the unknown etc, you know? an actual defence of Warne and his football that isn't based largely on blind faith and past successes at a very different club.

I think 99% of it is just repeating “you have to give a manager time”, like if you do it the right number of times, while wearing the right shoes, you’ll end up back in Kansas (look at me with all the modern references…).

I’ve always said, you have to give a manager time, but you also have to believe in where that manager is taking you.  If we gave Warne as long as it takes, all the money he needs etc, would we really be happy with a 100% WarneBall team for the next decade? I suspect the answer is no for a quite a lot of us.

3 minutes ago, MaltRam said:

Hold on, a simple pass back as per Wigan should be within the scope of any professional to complete 999/1000.

A simple nudge out for a throw as per today likewise.

To lose us two games out of 3 starts with such Sunday league morning-after-the-night-before errors is nothing to do with systems or his role. It's bog standard basics.

Pretty much all of the mistakes he’s made have been the same type of situations - him trying to control and pass the ball while unopposed attackers close him down.  He’s very clearly not comfortable with the ball at his feet under pressure.  You can argue whether he should be good at that, but he’s a League One defender - he’s probably going to be rubbish at something or other, or not great at a whole bunch of stuff, otherwise he’d be playing at a higher level.

The point with systems is, the spread back 3 that Warne plays, combined with the midfield that go box-to-box all the time, means that we’re basically engineering the situations that Bradley struggles with the most. He’s going to end up with the ball at his feet, no other defenders within 20 yards and no midfield cover, a whole lot of times in every single game.  If we played a compact defence, or had someone sitting protecting him, it would happen a lot less often.  And the more often he ends up in those situations, the more likely he is to screw one of them up in a given match.

4 minutes ago, Jourdan said:

The squad McClaren inherited took 4-5 years to build. Rosenior built our squad in a matter of weeks having to get what he could, and with little to no thought to the future.

That’s the point.

McClaren was able to come in and raise levels so quickly, one because he is a very good coach but also largely because all of the hard work and laying of foundations had been done and the blood, sweat and tears had been wiped away.

We are still in the blood, sweat and (a lot of) tears stage. So maybe that’s the reason why Warne hasn’t had the same impact as McClaren - because the squad still requires a lot of work due to the restrictions in place, and perhaps he will have to build those foundations.

I still refuse to buy the idea that Rosenior’s squad was just some random bunch of players chucked together with no real thought.  Obviously it was put together under unusual circumstances etc, but it was absolutely a squad that was built with 433/4231 possession-based football in mind.

McClaren succeeded because the squad he was given fit with the way he wanted his team to operate (you can debate whether it was McClaren adapting to fit what he was given, or a good appointment to fit what we had etc).  Warne is struggling because the squad he was given do not fit with what he is trying to do, he is unable to adapt to fit it, and he is struggling to change the squad to fit what he wants (financial restrictions etc).

The length of time it took to build the squad really doesn’t matter that much, it’s whether the manager is using what he has well or not.  Warne is currently not.  You can argue whether that’s Warne’s fault, or a bad decision to appoint him in the first place.

7 minutes ago, Millenniumram said:

Yeah he’s terrible 99% of the time

Joking aside, the point I was trying to make is that you can probably use Keogh in pretty much any type of system and he’s going to be good 99% of the time and *really* bad 1% of it.  But Bradley has a fixed set of thing he’s good and bad at.  If you play him in the right system, he’ll be good 100% of the time.  If you play him in the wrong system, he’ll be bad 100% of the time.  Luton seemed to have been in the second group, and we look like we’re in the first.

1 minute ago, Kokosnuss said:

We were sold on the idea that Warne could develop along with us and alter his style to suit. At least by those justifying his appointment in the early days.

I don't really want to quote things I haven't heard or have misremembered  but I have seen others say that he himself said he could adapt? I could be wrong. Apologies if so.

Either way, or perhaps both, it just appears that we've been missold.

 

It still doesn’t really make sense to me though. If you’re employing him entirely on the back of his success at Rotherham, then why would you want him to do things differently?  The entire rationale for his appointment is wanting him to reproduce here what he did there.

Maybe if it’s a manager who’s managed to build a reputation of building varied teams or something, but my understanding of Warne at Rotherham is that he was promoted from fitness coach to manager, and his entire managerial philosophy was basically out-fitnessing the other team.  Nothing about that suggests adaptability or room for development.  He’s got one thing he does well, and that’s what he always does.

And likewise, if you want a guy to develop, we had a very highly thought-of young coach here already. If you sack him and get a proven guy, it’s because you want success now.