duncanjwitham

6 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

We are behind the team - this is our Club. It doesn't mean that Warne has to be loved by all. What was that nonsense today he spouted about Cashin?! 

I *think* he was trying to say that not playing Cashin wasn’t the main reason we lost - something along the lines of playing Cashin over Bradley (or whoever) doesn’t make the rest of the team any better.  But honestly, it’s so hard to figure out what he actually means.

2 minutes ago, DavesaRam said:

Hard to see from our camera angle. But Wildsmith was absolutely adamant that the ball hit his chest. Perhaps if the ball had hot his chest there would be a red welt across his chest. So he should have lifted his shirt front to show the ref - who would book him for removing his shirt!

I can't tell either (from a low-quality Twitter video), but he seems to throw his arms towards the ball like he was diving for a save.  So he hasn't really helped himself, even if it did hit his chest. 

1 minute ago, Kokosnuss said:

We haven't signed a "defensive midfielder" only to use him as a box to box midfielder without protecting the defence, have we?

Hahahaha, look at you thinking positions exist.  This is WarneBall baby.

Just now, Srg said:

Keep the ball at the back… look forward and no one is moving to make space because of the aforementioned inability. 

What's the alternative though? We get it forward quickly, lose it, and that lack of mobility is getting exposed even more chasing them.

1 minute ago, Srg said:

Because they’re nearly all old, unathletic and lack the ability to do the move part. 

That's an argument for us to keep the ball and make the other team do the running though, not us to try and outrun them.

1 hour ago, S8TY said:

Do you ever stop moaning  ....🤣

Maybe you're happy to settle for mediocrity, but I'm not 😉 😛

11 minutes ago, Blondest Goat said:

We put in something like 27 crosses against Wigan.

And how many of them were actually good crosses, that ended up vaguely near an attackers head?  Not many from what I remember. Lots of crosses getting blocked etc.

Edit: and having checked, we had 6 headed shots on goal in that game.  4 were from set pieces.  The other 2 were from open-play, but both were from Curtis Nelson, so they were likely following set pieces too.  So that's probably 0 headers on goal from open-play crosses in the entire game. 

4 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

Nah I'm just saying thay trying to blame Warne for the poor quality of a lot of our crossing just seems to be looking for a stick to beat him with.

I could conversely say that all corners are bang on the money because they are a free cross under no pressure. 

I'm not exactly having to look very far for a stick, he does rather seem to leave a lot of them lying around 😉.

I just find it very frustrating that we apparently want to be a team that puts a lot of crosses in, then we start the season lining up with no wingers and only one striker getting in the box.  The same as we apparently want to be a team that presses aggressively from the front, yet we started with only really 3 guys pressing (Bird, Collins, NML), and a bunch of slow midfielders sat behind them.  If we want to be something, you can't just say we want to be it, you have to actually make it happen.

22 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

Not really. Lose count of the number of times corners fail to beat the first man.

So why do we bother having defenders at all then? You're basically arguing that getting close to a winger, pressing him, closing down space, doubling up on him etc literally makes no difference to the quality of crosses they produce.

2 hours ago, G STAR RAM said:

Extremely worrying if we have players who are only capable of crossing a ball from certain areas of the wings. 

It's not about "only capable". Every player in the world is going to put better crosses in if they are in better positions and have more time and space.  

8 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

How does a change of system make players be able to put better crosses in?

Because a wingback starts maybe 10 or 20 yards deeper, has no support from an overlapping fullback, and faces much more serious consequences if they lose the ball.  A winger can afford to gamble and just try and go past a fullback, knowing they have cover in behind, a wingback knows if they lose it doing that, the other team is breaking straight onto our (slow) back 3.  So wingers are normally crossing from better positions (closer to the byline) and in more space (because the defence has to cover the overlapping fullback too, or the winger has already gone past the last defender).

3 minutes ago, The Last Post said:

 How so? are they all fictitious or all true?

12 minutes ago, Curtains said:

For goodness sake  . He’s fine for us long term or short term 

I don’t see any problem with him. 

What is it about Paul Warne's 100%-relegation record in the league we want to be in, that makes you think he's a good long term fit? 😉

1 hour ago, G STAR RAM said:

Its something even Paul Warne alluded to in one of his interviews. Something along the lines of 'if we could get Collo to spend more time standing between the posts we think he'd score a hatful of goals'.

If we managed to put more than 1 or 2 decent crosses in a game, then maybe he'd spend less time hunting the ball and more time waiting to get on the end of them, eh Paul?

Amazingly, switching to playing actual wingers rather than wingbacks seems to have coincided with getting more crosses in (who'd a thunk it?).  I reckon NML put more decent crosses in the first 45 against Fleetwood than he, Wilson and Ward had managed between them in the previous 4 games (not a criticism of the players, more of the system).  So obviously we dropped Collins and went for players who are less effective in the air than Collins up front. 

1 minute ago, Caerphilly Ram said:

How can his ability to get the most out of the players at his disposal be “pretty unrelated” to his motivational skills? The two are inherently linked.

Yes Warne has shown some deficiencies with his tactics at times, and he’s also shown some competence with it occasionally (and yes often through circumstance rather than seemingly by choice), but as @FlyBritishMidland has just commented, almost reading my mind, it strikes me as a sort of double standard when people are keen to jump on and criticise things Warne has said but then don’t give the same positive credence to when his players say positive things. 

They’re unrelated in this context, because people aren’t criticising his motivational skills, they’re very specifically criticising the way he sets his teams up and the way he uses the players he has available to him.  Just because those 2 things sometimes get lumped together doesn’t mean that being good or bad at one automatically makes you equivalently good or bad at the other.

4 minutes ago, Caerphilly Ram said:

On the above point, one of the criticisms several posters have levelled at Warne for the past year (ish) is that he doesn’t get the most out of the players at his disposal, now there’s a direct quote from one of the players commending Warne’s impact on him

Those are 2 pretty unrelated things though. Nobody has ever really questioned Warne’s motivational skills. The issues with not getting the most out of players are all tactical - playing players in roles they cannot do, or not giving players the support around them they need.  No amount of motivation is going to turn Hourihane into an energetic midfielder, or Bradley into a mobile centre half.

8 minutes ago, Archied said:

Really , where did I say these players were left over scraps? I said they were the best we could get in our circumstances 

because we would have spent the same amount being told rosenior couldn’t be judged ( if given permanent job )until he built his side with some windows not governed by the extreme mess the club was in

as I say , you don’t want warne , don’t like his approach,,, fair enough but this build , knock down , build line your creating is a joke 

You literally said the players were hopefully good enough to avoid relegation.  How else is anybody supposed to take that? 

I'm basically the one defending Warne here.  I'm lining up all the mitigations as to why we under-performed a bit last season, and early doors this one, and you're denying them.  There's no way IMO that Warne wants to be lining up 4231 with Smith and Hourihane (or Bird last season) in midfield together, and the fact we're having to do that to get results means we're clearly not getting "full Warne-ball" (if you know what I mean).  We might get closer with Fornah in there (I haven't seen him play yet, so no comments either way from me on that one).

25 minutes ago, Archied said:

and yet barks and nml had decent season under warne ( wonder how much of theyre career s have been spent in teams playing out from the back , same question for other ros/ Rooney recruits ? )

Just seen your edit after I replied.

NML only really played well when switched away from Warne's preferred formation.  Barkhuizen had a good run of games around Christmas but then was randomly dropped and barely used again.  That good run also coincided with not playing Warne's preferred formation.  Neither of those players looked remotely comfortable when playing at wingback, or the sort of inside forward role NML had towards the end of last season and early this.

I'm not saying that they aren't good players or that they can't play in various styles, but they were signed to do specific things for the team that Rosenior was building.  And Warne wants completely different things from players in those areas of the field.  Rosenior wanted composure on the ball in midfield and pacy wingers to stretch teams and create space.  Warne wants wingbacks and energetic midfielders that can get up and down.  We had a bunch of players that can do the first lot of things reasonably well, but not the second lot.

Do you really think Warne wanted to play 433/4231 for most of last season? Do you really think he wanted to have to switch back to it after 4 games this season?  He's struggling to get results out of this squad (and last season's) when he lines them up in the type of system he wants to use, because we (still) have a bunch of players on our books that don't really suit it.  

And honestly, if you think we didn't need a load of new players in to make Warne's approach work, then that's a damning indictment of Warne's performance last season.  If he had all the players he needs, and still failed to even make the playoffs...

1 minute ago, Archied said:

Totally disagree and the players you quote have been playing pro football for a long time , before playing out from the back became an obsession with some and played successfully in lots of teams that didn’t play that way so no I’m not under egging how much these players were hand picked to fit only one style of football and yes I believe you are vastly over egging the need for warne to totally rebuild after rosenior / Rooney one window recruitment 🤷🏻‍♂️

5 minutes ago you were saying these players were basically the leftover scraps we could find, that we were hoping would save us from relegation.  And now they're pro players who've played in lots of successful sides 🤷‍♂️. 

So if we had lots of players who could successfully play in a lot of different styles, and we didn't need a rebuild, why did we spend all of last season being told Warne couldn't be judged yet because he didn't have his own players in?

1 minute ago, Archied said:

So you reckon nml barks and Collins are play out from the back players ? I really think you are over egging what the priority of recruitment under escaping from bankruptcy was , we tried to get the best quality of players we could with what we had and the priority was to even have enough numbers to put eleven on the pitch and non of the players you mention only suit playing out from the back , so in my view we got in enough players to fulfill our fixture list hopefully of the quality not to get relegated , to my mind rosenior or warne faced a rebuild from then on so not much lost with keeping rosenior or switching to warne maybe warne type team players more freely available and cheaper 🤷🏻‍♂️

Certainly I think Barkhuizen and NML were signed to play the wide roles in a 433/4231-type system, with us playing out from the back.  Collins is maybe a case of us having to settle for what we could find, which is why I separated him off the from the other 4 when I listed the players.

Honestly, I think your under egging what a good job Rooney and Rosenior did getting those players in.  It wasn't a last minute scramble when we came out of admin, we were being linked with the majority of them for weeks while still in admin, and they all signed very quickly when the admin was done.  They clearly had a vision of how the wanted us to play and went out and got the best players they could to play that way.  It absolutely wasn't anything along the lines of "sign a the best bunch of players we can and hope we can get a team out of them".

2 hours ago, Archied said:

Rooney and rosenior built a squad to get us through 1 season , no problem with that because it was pretty much all they could do under the circumstances and in fairness they did it well , we can moan about some of Warner’s incomings being on the older side but they are younger and have a few more seasons in them than those who went out , his job is to get us up to the championship not find players we can improve and sell on , we are derby , not Peterborough 🤷🏻‍♂️

Basically, none of that has anything to do with what I posted 🤷‍♂️.

Rooney and Rosenior built a squad to play football out from the back.  A fair chunk of whom were given 2 year contracts.  (And to be clear, I have no problem with any of that, they did a decent job.)

We then appointed Warne, 10 games later, who didn't want to play out from the back, he wanted the polar opposite.  So we had the whole of last season being told we couldn't judge Warne because he needed his own players in.

This season, we've still got the likes of Hourihane, Smith, NML, Barkhuizen, maybe even Collins, who either do not fit the fit/mobile type of player that Warne wants, or play in positions that don't exist in his preferred system.  That's arguably 5 of our 6 biggest signings from the previous summer (McGoldrick being the 6th), and I reckon maybe a quarter of our total wage budget (purely based on 5/~20 senior players).  I don't see Warne really being able to consistently get the sort of team he wants on the field until most of those players are gone, which realistically means waiting until their contracts expire.

None of that is a criticism or Warne (or Rosenior), it's just that as soon as we did a massive shift in playing style immediately after a complete rebuild, the instability was baked in for the next 2 years.  Sticking with Warne isn't going to make the problem of playing gas-out football with at least one of Hourihane/Smith in midfield, and NML stuck somewhere he can't play, disappear.

3 minutes ago, Andicis said:

Dismantled the squad how? Warne is using a lot of the players from the prior year other than expired contracts and the sales of Knight and Bielik. I take issue with the idea that Warne has done away with any stability when basically we had a small squad to begin with, and he's built on that as opposed to dismantling anything. 

I really don’t know why you’re struggling with this.  It’s not even really a criticism of Warne specifically, more of changing the style of manager radically, 10 games into a complete rebuild. The second we did that, any pretence of stability was gone. If we’d signed Warne in the summer, let him build a squad and then sacked him for Rosenior after 10 games it would probably have been the same.

So any people wanting stability in the short term are not going to get it, whether we keep Warne or not. We’ve signed 10 players this summer, and probably moved as many out.  We’ll probably do the same next summer.  That’s the definition of dismantling a squad, and pretty much the definition of instability IMO.

1 minute ago, Andicis said:

This is absolute drivel. He hasn't dismantled anything and any manager was always going to build a squad of players that suits them. If you are going to hate on Warne, at least come up with plausible reasons not this bargain bin justification.

I mean, you’ve literally agreed with my point, while calling it drivel 🤷‍♂️.  He’s dismantling the squad we had, by replacing most of the players we had with different players.  There’s no way Warne was going to have the team he wanted with those players, or most of the other players we signed last summer, and the majority of them were on 2 year contracts with little resale value. So it was always going to take at least 2 years of turmoil while we moved them all on.  It’s not a “bargain bin justification” it’s a simple statement of fact.

39 minutes ago, Brailsford Ram said:

most of us look forward to some stability if that's possible

The chance of stability disappeared the moment Warne was appointed (in the way he was, anyway).  It was always going to take him 2 seasons to dismantle the squad we’d just built 10 games earlier, while we wait for the likes of Hourihane/NML/Smith/Barkhuizen’s contracts to expire.

3 minutes ago, Andicis said:

I agree, it's early days. So maybe we shouldn't use that as a rod for the manager's back? 

It's not just Elder though, is it?  Players being given jobs to do that they seem incapable of doing has been a constant throughout Warne's time here.  We had the whole of last season being told that we couldn't judge Warne because he didn't have his own players, it's not his fault that the players can't do what he needs them to do.  Well now he's got his own players, and they don't seem any better at doing what he needs from them, so it's hard not to be infuriated by the whole thing.