duncanjwitham

44 minutes ago, NottsRam77 said:

With better players that we would get in the champ, ur able to press harder , for longer and with greater discipline and awareness.

countless teams have played and done well with a warne esq approach its just doing it well and consistently. 
 

like any style, executed well and it looks the nuts.. when executed badly it looks a disorganised mess 

Have they? Which ones? 

I think what he's trying to do is *very* different to the Warnock/Rowett types of setup.  Those teams are solid, well-organised, hard-to-break-down etc.  Warne's "everybody running all the time" type thing is the polar opposite of that.  We aren't setting out to be disciplined, or organised or anything like that.  As far as I can tell, the idea is basically to try and get overloads all over the pitch (defensively and offensively) by out-running them - we're effectively trying to play 2 fullbacks and 2 wingers, 4 defensive midfielders and 4 attacking midfielders, except it's the same 6 players running between both ends of the pitch.  It's by definition chaotic.

And personally, I think there's only so far that can take you.  The ball will always move quicker than players can, and as the standard of players gets better, you'll get diminishing returns as to how much you can close that gap by running more.  Better players will keep the ball better, you'll be chasing it more and getting tired quicker.  And better players will punish mistakes more, because no matter how much you run, in a system like that you will get caught out sometimes, when everyone goes forwards and doesn't get back in time

8 minutes ago, DCFC1388 said:

Warne said he hopes to get a striker & midfielder in next week

He's been saying that every week for the last month though...

13 minutes ago, TomTom92 said:

PW said himself he'd walk away if he came to the ground and people were holding a 'PW Out' flag. If we miss out on top 6 there's no way the fans will accept it. However, at this rate he won't see halloween never mind the final match of the season.

Anyone know any flag-makers? Asking for a friend... 😉

5 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

 Whether it was a Rod entirely of our own making (or to be more accurate, the making of our previous owner) isn’t necessarily relevant. That’s still the situation we (Rosenior and then Warne) faced. 
 

Regarding Rosenior, do you really think he would have been cut that much more slack? I suspect we would just have had a different group of supporters calling for his head saying he should have been replaced by a more experienced manager. I also don’t think anyone with much intelligence ever described PW as “guaranteed promotion”. We failed to get promoted last season that is true but, last season was no more an unmitigated failure than a success. We fell short at our first attempt. Regarding this season, we’ll you’ve answered your own point there “obviously early days”.

I'm not really talking about the admin/Mel Morris stuff.  I'm purely talking the stuff that happened after that.  We had the choice to either stick with the rookie manager and let him have a go, or go and get a proven League One manager with a 100% promotion record.  Choosing the second option instantly raised expectations.  People on here were openly saying words to the effect of "guarantees promotion" when we appointed him.  Various comments made by Warne, Clowes and others have raised expectations too.  By it's actions and it's words, the club is very much saying we expect to be promotion challengers.  So it's no surprised that fans take that on board and judge the club's performance against it.  

There's no doubt that Rosenior would have been under pressure if we didn't go up.  But if the club was putting out the message that it would be a slow road back to stability and we were going to do things properly, enough people would have bought into it IMO.

25 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

The Twitter reply from JamesP just goes to show how things can be taken out of context and marginal facts can used to make a point.

Last season may have been our joint ever lowest finish but have we ever started a season with such a hastily thrown together squad before? Have we ever completed a season under such external restrictions before? Have we ever found ourselves in this league before purely because of a massive points deduction before? If we fail to get promoted this season then yes, it will be our longest ever period in league 1 but potentially only by one season.
 

That's a rod we made entirely for our own back though.  I know there was some unhappiness at Rosenior's management, but if we'd stuck with him, having given him the squad he wanted, I think people would have largely accepted a season or 2 of getting ourselves sorted after the previous mess.  But we didn't do that - we went and got Paul "guarantees promotion" Warne.  That's instantly setting expectations sky-high.  And then we fail last year, and the signs are not good this year either (obviously early days etc).  Add in the comments about the financial restrictions being eased and good budgets.  

6 minutes ago, DRBee said:

What I do find unacceptable is what I see as his complacency. Last year after a very good run mid-season, we fell away and fell into a pattern where we found it hard to win games.

My biggest concern with that, is that I don't think he ever really understood why we were playing well and winning those games.  The first full game after we reverted to a back 4 (Bristol Rovers, we won 4-2 IIRC) he was asked post-match about the change in formation, and basically said he didn't think it made any difference, we'd just worked harder or something.  If he couldn't see that getting the majority of the squad into positions they're comfortable in is going to make us play better, then there's no hope.

The thing with Cashin is, yes he's been struggling trying to do that wide-left-centre-back role, but (defensively at least) he's been struggling and still managing to get it done.  He's not been struggling and failing.  He's not made any disastrous errors, or directly cost us any goals, like other defenders have done.  He's doing the right things and that's letting him get away with it.

Long-term, his lack of height and pace will probably hold him back a bit, but you can learn to mitigate them to some degree.  I always go back to Gareth Roberts (the tiny left back we had for a while).  I know he wasn't the best player in the world or anything, but teams used to explicitly target his lack of height - they'd put a big forward out there and smash long balls at him all game. Except it never worked, because Roberts had been around the block enough to know when to drop off, when to get close to the guy, when to give the striker a nudge in the back and so on.  Cashin will learn those things too, and honestly, I think he's already well on the way.

4 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

I agree with you both, but whoever the writer was has a point. And Warne isn't an idiot. Makes it easier to sell players that the fans don't want though.

It does seem completely out of character for Warne though.  His "good people" shtick would be completely undermined if it turned out he was basically siccing a hate-mob on a couple of relatively young academy graduates, just to get his own way in the transfer market.  The other players aren't idiots either, and I can't imagine it would go down well with them.

I still think that by far the most likely explanation is that he really can't understand why it's not working, so is clutching at straws.

2 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

An interesting free read here (about more than the snippet below):

"Warne's rebuild is only half-done...Perhaps then, his 'heads turned' comment to Ed Dawes was no gross tactical error committed in the heat of the moment. Perhaps he carefully chose the moment to plant the suggestion of disloyalty in the camp into supporters' minds, to "roll the pitch"  before certain popular players are sold to allow him to bring in the 'two or three' new signings he is desperate to make. The obvious assets to sell would be Max Bird, who is well known to be a Hull City target, plus Eiran Cashin..."

That would reflect even worse on Warne than if it was a rash comment made in the heat of the moment IMO.

18 minutes ago, Gabby'sThighs said:

I agree. I've been fairly appalled by the negative posting lately. Constructive criticism is fine, and speculation is part of the fun, but slagging players & staff off for the sake of it is a real drag. I get enough negativity in real-life, football is supposed to be an escape!

There's a chunk of fans who think Derby should win 3-0 every week, win every tackle, score with every shot, and it's just not realistic. Back the club, back the players, back the manager. Accept the financial reality.

I agree. I've been fairly appalled by the cult-of-Paul-Warne-like posting lately. Supporting your club is fine, and speculation is part of the fun, but obsessively absolving the manager of all blame is a real drag. I get enough fake-news in real-life, football is supposed to be an escape!

There's a chunk of fans who think the manager walks on water, can do no wrong, is a football genius, and it's just not realistic. Accept the issues, accept we're struggling, accept we're in a mess. Accept the footballing reality. 😉

23 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Then either Warne plays them to their strengths, or sells them or we shouldn't have appointed him?

That's the point really.  We probably aren't going to be able to sell those players, given their age etc, so it's either keep them or pay them off (which we probably can't afford to do).  So we either accept another season of transition or Warne adapts.  

I do wonder what the recruitment process was that resulted in him getting the job.  If you're getting in a manager in, purely off the back of him being successful at another club, surely the first question is can he replicate that here - what setup was he working in, do we have the same or similar here, and if not, what will it cost us in time/money/whatever to get us to that setup etc.  I can't imagine he was appointed with the intention of giving him 2 years to replace all the players we'd literally just signed.  But equally, I can't see the logic in giving him the job if the intention was for him to do something completely different to what he did at Rotherham.

8 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

But that only matters when you spend the sort of silly money Mel was throwing around. Lots of teams have recruited and sold large numbers of players in one go. How many new players did Blackpool and Wigan have out? It's not like the old days of buying players when 10 year testimonials seemed common.

It matters as soon as you're giving players contracts of any kind of length.  If Warne was here from day one last season, would we have signed any of the players we did? I'm really not sure we would have.  I'm not even sure McGoldrick is really the kind of player Warne wants.  So right now, a year later, we've still got Hourihane, Smith, NML, Barkhuizen, maybe even Collins, on the wage bill.  None of them really seem to suit what Warne wants, and they're probably 5 of the highest earners.  It's going to be another season before they're moved on, so we're stuck paying them and struggling to fit them into jobs they can't really do.  That's not helping anybody be successful.

4 minutes ago, Carnero said:

Agreed, if we were to make a change (which I don't think we will) then we will need somebody that can continue (and improve) on Warne's style rather than switching back to a "football purist". Darren Moore would make the most sense.

My preference would be the opposite.  I think the reason we're struggling is because we've still got a squad full of footballers, not runners.  I think if you put McClaren (or someone like that) in charge, we'd be straight back to 433/4231, playing through midfield, and looking a lot more comfortable.

4 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

The point is that long-termism is only any good with the right 'management' of the Club. I'm sure many would have given Clough Jnr another 5 seasons, but one decent manager showed how resources should have been used. How long do we wait for 'short-termism' to end? 

It has to be bigger than a single manager though.  The transition from Clough to McClaren was fine because McClaren basically carried on doing what Clough was doing, but with some tweaks/improvements.  The issue is when you give Rosenior free reign to build a squad then replace him after 10 games with the polar opposite.  We can't be giving managers 2 seasons to build a squad, then giving the next manager 2 years to dismantle that squad and build a different one.  And we've been doing that stuff almost continuously since McClaren left the first time - McClaren->Clement->Pearson->McClaren->Rowett->Lampard is just the most moronic thing.

1 minute ago, RoyMac5 said:

Is there such a thing? Anyway it's entitlement. I believe a club with our resources, our fanbase and (even after Mel) standing, our ambition, should be higher in the leagues. That we're not is a moot point.

For me it's more frustration.  Like you say, everything off the pitch is there for us to be a mid-table prem team.  The capability is there, and the fact we're not a prem team is entirely down to our own failings as a club.  And for me, rampant short-termism is by far the biggest reason.  Any suggestion on here that we should be thinking about anything beyond the next match/current season is met with howls of derision.  And then we just keep repeating the same mistakes, and people wonder why we're stuck in League One.

3 minutes ago, jameso said:

I agree with you mostly but your comment about Nelson (echoed elsewhere on the forum) makes him sound like Curtis Davies’ level of distribution. No disrespect to Curtis D but Curtis N is clearly better with the ball, if not at the level of a Cashin.

The specific issue I'm talking about isn't distribution so much, as basic technical ability.  I've just re-watched his mistake against Sheffield United, and it's his first touch that kills him - he plays it very wide, and then he's scrambling to get to it before the on-rushing attacker and gets hurried into the pass.  I genuinely cannot tell if he did that deliberately (to give him a chance to bypass the attacker and play it down the line), or if it's just a really bad first touch.  But either way, if he just controls that first time, he's got various options to deal with it more easily (pass sideways to Cashin, ball down the line, back-pass under less pressure).

3 minutes ago, jameso said:

Am I worried that Warne has actually signed two duds at CB? No- I don’t believe he has, but Bradley in particular hasn’t done much to recommend himself in the first 2 matches.

I think the problem isn't that they're duds, it's that they can't do the very specific jobs they were signed for.  If we were playing a "standard" flat back 4, they'd be fine.  But with the way we're setting up - spreading the back 3 wide across the pitch and having everyone else pushing up aggressively - the centre halves get very isolated from each other.  So they need to be mobile to cover the big gaps between them (which Bradley and Cashin aren't), and they need to be comfortable on the ball to get out of trouble when they're under pressure and there's no easy-out pass (which Nelson and Bradley aren't). The first issue is why we keep seeing us get carved open down the middle (the 1-on-1 that Wigan missed is a good example, I think).  The second issue is why we keep seeing the under-hit back-pass type of stuff.

8 hours ago, DerbyAleMan said:

I can remember the great bald Eagle having a terrible start to the season, I was at Tranmere away, Stimac debut, he scored we lost 5-1, I think we won 1, drew 1 and lost 3 of our first 5 games that season thats 4 points from 15 , fans screaming for Jimbo to do one, then come May we are promoted, we move to PP, and played some of the best football for years, lets all get behind our club, it's to early to panic, but after what Mel did to us, we must give our club time to recover, and we will. Once A Ram Always A Ram. 

The big difference there, is that it was Jim Smiths first season in charge.  He'd barely been here 5 minutes, so you have to give a manager time to get something set up.  Paul Warne has been here nearly a year, and has anything improved? Like anything at all?  We still can't beat the top teams (which I assume Wigan and Blackpool are going to be).  We still don't seem to have any organised defensive or pressing structure.  We still keep gifting stupid goals away.  We still don't seem to have any clear pattern of play going forward.  We still don't create enough chances.  We still don't take enough of the chances we create.  The players we already have seem incapable of playing the system Warne wants.  The players we've *signed* seem mostly incapable of playing it too.

10 hours ago, sage said:

They haven't got an answer. Radio Derby immediately said it was Bird. It's laughable that people keep defending this. 

And even if it isn't Bird, people were obviously going to jump to the conclusion it was him, given the Hull bid.  Warne has basically started a witch hunt with that comment - we've already got people who've basically decided that Bird has downed tools and demanded a transfer and should be sold immediately.  How is this possibly helping the club?  

If there are genuinely issues (and I have no idea if there are), then either keep it in-house, or make a generic "Max's head isn't quite right after the bid, so we're going to keep him out of the team for a couple of games while everything gets sorted" type statement and deal with it properly.  It does seem to me like Warne has no clue why we're performing the way we are, and is reaching for random excuses though - he "feels" a couple of players might have had their heads turned, so he doesn't even know anything for sure.

Second half last night was what I was expecting this season to look like (early on anyway) - reasonably solid at the back, lots of running around, plenty of half-chances, but never really looking like scoring one of them.  I wouldn't exactly say it was good, but it was certainly miles better than the first half.  

And FWIW, Bird and Cashin (plus Forsyth and Waghorn), all played well and were probably our best players.

2 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

He was arguably our best attacking player last night

I thought second half last night was probably the best he's played since before he got injured last season 🤷‍♂️

9 minutes ago, Mr Tibbs said:

Just read Cashin is a kick it/head it type of defender. Good lord. Probably one of the best on the ball for us last year. Anticipation is great, which is needed for his lack of pace. Even Nelson looked alright at the weekend. I swear some people just make s*** up to fit an argument. Some really dangerous opinions on here. 

It was me that said that.  It's probably a poor turn of phrase rather than anything.  What I mean is, he's a more of a Vidic than a Rio Ferdinand, more Bucko than Keogh.  You want him winning headers, making tackles, wrestling with strikers, plus he can comfortably pass out from the back well enough to play in a decent footballing team.  What you don't want is him getting into one-on-ones with pacy wingers, or making overlapping runs to cross the ball.

I said to the guys I sit with last night, that Nelson looks the worst of the 3 ability-wise, but probably the most suited to the job he's being asked to do.  I'm not convinced he's good enough on the ball (I think he stopped at least 3 promising attacks in the second half, by overhitting a fairly simple pass), but at least he's reasonably mobile.

18 minutes ago, angieram said:

Fozzy dealt with it a lot better in the second half than Bradley did in the first because he reads the game well and re-distributes the ball quickly. We didn't really change formation, just put Thommo in as the runner in midfield and pulled Bird back alongside Smith. Everything looked better.

Makes you wonder what Hourihane was actually doing (apart from hiding on the wing) in the first half? Yet some on here seems to think it's Bird who's not pulling his weight! 

Fozzy is a basically converted fullback, so he's used to dealing with direct runners at him.  Dealing with quick, tricky wingers is basically his day-job.

And I don't think Hourihane himself was the actual problem, it's more that the 3 in midfield were all too similar, too static.  We looked a lot more balanced with that second half lineup.  We kept the ball a lot better too, which helps relieve pressure on the defence too.

The big question is... does Warne actually understand why all that stuff happened, or does he think we just worked harder, or wanted it more, second half?  If he thinks the second, then we're just doomed to repeat the first half again.

55 minutes ago, SouthDerbysRam said:

I don't think the defence is as bad as folks are making it out to be. I think our problem is defending from the front. Multiple times yesterday, Blackpool walked into our half uncontested. Swapping out the Centre backs is not going to fix our problems.

It's a bit of both tbh.  You're right that we aren't stopping runners through midfield, but we also have defenders that can't deal with that direct running at them either.  If we had mobile, ball-playing centre halves, we'd be much happier dealing with that type of thing.  But we have big, strong, slow "kick-it and head-it" types.

It's a perfect storm of us basically engineering the types of situations that we're worst at defending, and that's why we're making so many mistakes.

5 minutes ago, Loughborough Ram said:

Seriously? I haven't twisted anything you've said, I just don't understand your 'cause and effect' argument relating to the 3 goals we've given away. Implying that we are too high up the pitch for Bradley to make that back pass is crass in the extreme. Paul Warne isn't coaching under 11s, he is coaching seasoned pros and a 30 yard back pass is well within the relevant players skill set. 

The thing is, there's been 3 of those under-hit back-passes in very recent memory while playing Warne's back 3 - Bradley v Wigan, Nelson v Sheff Utd and Curtis Davies v Sheff Wed.  All 3 from very experienced defenders.  If multiple players are all making the exact same uncharacteristic mistake, while playing in the same system, it suggests to me that the system is at least partially at fault.