duncanjwitham

19 minutes ago, Stockport Ram said:

Good old (oops,sorry,new) stat calculated greatness eh? I swear by them. Who scored ratings,XG, I’m actually thinking of not watching football any more because I can get all the answers I need from stats. 

Imagine how many hours I’ll never get back as I’ve been foolish enough for the last fifty odd years to make my own opinions from using my eyes and watching games? Sheesh ! 🤦‍♂️

I could have used all those hours to get a degree in statistics....

Personally, I think they’re useful tools, just don’t read stuff into them that they’re not claiming to say.  For example, xG is IMO a “better” indicator of who had the best chances in a game than raw shot counts, or shots on target or whatever.  But it’s not some magic stat that says absolutely who should have won a game.  The Cashin rating is interesting because quite a few people seem to be absolutely slating him based off getting done for pace a handful of times. That stat is saying that while that might have happened, the rest of the time he was probably as good as he always is.  So then you can make a judgement about how you value overall performance levels vs a few specific issues/mistakes.

Just now, Ian Buxton's Bat said:

He got done for speed on three occasions but was otherwise pretty good.

I'm surprised he made it into team of the week based on what I saw live but Who Scored do take all the emotion out of it ....so fair enough.

Honestly, I mostly posted it for arguments sake - I think whoscored ratings are pretty ropey at the best of times.  The more "stuff" you do, the higher your rating.  So if you get caught out of position all the time and end up making a load of last ditch recovery tackles, you get a high rating.  If you mark a guy out of the game, to the extent he never gets the ball passed to him, you get nothing.

Oooh look, it's Eiran "Horror Show" Cashin, in the team of the week...

4 minutes ago, littleover ram said:

EFL confused why in our accounts we’ve put his fee into the 2035-36 season numbers 

Looks like it's amortized in a straight-line to me... 🤔

4 minutes ago, trappatoni said:

He's a chartered accountant who has worked in insolvency and gone into academia - been a Principal Lecturer and is now at a Russell Group uni teaching accountancy.   You are at liberty to disagree with him but by any reasonable standards his experience qualifies him as an expert.    It's not like he's covering the Business Studies class at the local FE college. 

Yet he's been completely wrong about multiple things related to us.  At one stage he was confidently insisting that the new rules meant we would have to pay HMRC 100% of what we owed them, for example.

5 minutes ago, Malty said:

I’m not sure about this. Bielik is no longer on our books and there is no disposals. He could have been fully impaired during the year of course. But that would mean his valuation is less than the full year impairment, so a lot less than £3.3m. I am struggling to work out where the £3.3m has come from. The only players left seem to be Bird and Sibley. Both may have had a signing bonus which could have been capitalised. An alternative is that certain contracts were revalued during the acquisition and that didn’t include knight but did include Bird and Sibley.

We could do with a little more detail tbh.

 

He was only on loan last year, the actual sale occurred in July 2023, which is well after the year-end date in these accounts.  So I assume that accounts for the lack of disposal. 

And I can't see what else it could have been anyway, of the only guys we've paid real money for in the last few years (Lawrence, Jozwiak and Bielik), he was the only one left when we were sold.

55 minutes ago, therealhantsram said:

That 3.3m squad valuation would have included Knight at the time.

Knight (and any other youth players that were in the books) would have been valued at £0, as we never paid anything to acquire him.  That £3.3m would have been almost entirely the remainder of Bielik’s value.

9 hours ago, NorwichExile said:

As excited as I am that we're actually in the running for signing somebody, is he actually any good? I'm usually pretty up to scratch on L1/L2 players (thanks Football Manager) but I don't ever recall seeing him play, even though I know he's played against us.

I'm in the same boat - probably seen him play but don't really recall anything about him.  He's another right-footed winger though (on top of the 4! we have already).  It looks like he's been playing wide left for Charlton, but cutting in and shooting a lot.  He's barely averaging 1 cross per game for them.  So I'm not totally sure where he fits if we're still set on getting it wide and crossing it.

1 hour ago, G STAR RAM said:

Personally, I didn't hear a single call for a change after our second goal, that's probably because at that point we were absolutely cruising and Burton had hardly had a kick.

I think you're completely rewriting history here with the benefit of hindsight.

I was certainly discussing it at half time with the guys I sit with - maybe get Sibley or Thompson on for TJJ because he was barely contributing, and we needed an extra body in midfield.  I can understand why you wouldn't make that change then though.  What I don't understand is how they go from 2-0 down to 2-2 without us changing anything. In fact, it's another 7 minutes before we make our first sub, and that's basically a like-for-like change getting Sibley on for Elder.

1 hour ago, G STAR RAM said:

This was exactly my thoughts. 

What they did was push Hugill up much higher than Bennett was playing, so he was almost a second striker.  It wasn't a massive change of formation or anything, but it was enough to start causing us problems.

20 minutes ago, BondJovi said:

I don't overly think we have played well over the last 4 games. Last night was poor but we got the win.

The way we set up does leave us horribly exposed down the middle. Teams willing to run at us will cause us issues. Bird gets picked on, but defensively he is having to do the job of two players. I have long believed his biggest weakness is not imposing himself in games often enough but the way we play does not lend itself to that. We waste a lot of his skillset. A 3rd midfielder really should be the option.

That said, the way we play is perfect for NML and Barks to do their thing. Get it out to them and see what they can do. Some of our crosses seemed incredibly hopefull and I do wish we could try something different. I worry how much we are flogging the senior players in order to play this way.

Clearly we are scoring a lot of goals from crosses so what do I know. But what I would like to see is us take control of the game once infront, not sit back and give the opposition the go ahead to attack. 

I also think PW has to be more proactive with his subs. Bradley has become the Buxton sub of Nigel Clough days. It is a shame we let them back in as I thought last night would have been a great time to give Brown some minutes.

Hopefully the players we bring in this month will improve us rather than bloat the squad. We are nicely poised for what we all hope is an exciting next few months.

They don't even need to be running, just having a couple of guys stand in the middle of the pitch about 25 yards from our goal causes us problems.  That's basically what Bradford did, and what Burton started doing after they made the double sub.  This is the moment that NML loses the ball:

You can see Bird and Hourihane are both starting to bomb forwards, and they've got 2 guys completely free between our midfield and backline causing havoc.  Even if Seddon doesn't take the ball on himself, they're basically 3 on 2 from one simple loss of possession.

7 minutes ago, jimtastic56 said:

Teams have been running through our midfield all season . We will get away with it this season , but not in the Championship. Be interesting to see if there is any interest in Bird this window ? His tackling is non-existent and constantly passes backwards .

Per whoscored, Bird played 27 passes forward last night, 16 backwards...

1 minute ago, On the Ram Page said:

Very broadbrush, please explain first sentence and what he gets away with.

The obvious one last night is completely failing to react to them making a double-sub and changing shape.  

23 hours ago, Blondest Goat said:

A lot of posters on here seem to expect us to have a squad filled with excellent League One players.  The likes of Bradley, Ward and Elder whose careers indicate they are clearly decent L1 standard aren't good enough for them.

I think it's reasonable to ask why players who have shown they are capable of playing at this level (or even higher), don't look capable of it here and now.  Obviously for someone like Bradley it's probably just his legs have gone (and they've probably gone more than we were expecting them to, if you know what I mean).  But for the others you have to wonder about how they are being used, and whether they were signed for the right reasons.  Joe Ward is probably a decent League One winger (as he showed at Peterborough), but he looks a dodgy-as-hell League One fullback.  Callum Elder is probably a reasonable Championship fullback, but he's not a flying wingback who you can just plug into your "get it wide quickly and cross it" philosophy.

And its the same with people like Max Bird.  He's looked more than comfortable here in a possession-heavy Championship team, but much less effective in a "get it forward quickly" League One team.  You can't just go around putting ability-labels on players without considering how they are being used.  Get players doing what they're good at, they'll look better than they are.  Get them doing stuff they're bad at, they'll look worse than they are.

2 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

We already have Rooney, Thompson and Sibley who  I would put in that group. Put Evans, Bardell, Robinson, Weston and a Brown in for Vickers, Ward, Fornah, Washington and John-Jules and you have your 8. There's obviously a drop off in quality at this point in time, but it's not as if 4 out of the 5 I listed have had much game time in the league anyway.

And you've got to bear in mind, we could have easily still had the likes of Buchanan, Ebsosele, Ebiowei, Plange, Kellyman etc.  The academy setup we have is more than capable of producing a bunch of League One squad-depth players, given time to recover.

16 minutes ago, eddielewis said:

There must be a player in Oduroh somewhere. He was captain of the Man City youth teams so you would expect him to be a reliable, trustworthy player. I think maybe the biggest issue with him is that he was never loaned out so never experienced men's football besides the odd pizza cup game so hopefully this recent loan has done him the world of good. Hopefully Warne has at the very least re-introduced him to senior training this past week. It would be stupid to cast him aside to the under 21's without seeing where he's at.

The bold bit is the root of it really.  He's been coached for years to play Guardiola-style football, which I think is exactly why Rosenior signed him.  But Warne-style football is about as far away from that as it's possible to be.  There may well be a player in there, but I suspect we won't ever see it here.

Putting aside any issues of whether he's good enough, I don't think Odurah is the kind of fullback Warne wants anyway.  I reckon he was signed by Rosenior to do the kind of job he had Hayden Roberts doing (and what John Stones does for Man City, for example), where he drifts into central midfield to give extra passing options from the back.  From what we've seen of him (which isn't much of course), he certainly doesn't look like the kind of fullback that's going to bomb up and down the touchline and whip crosses in.

8 minutes ago, DavesaRam said:

Warne may not have bowed to fan pressure, but the big change happened just after the fans had kicked off

I'm still far from convinced that anything has significantly changed.  When teams have stood off us and we've been able to play out from the back, we've looked OK.  When we've been significantly ahead in player-quality terms, we've mostly looked OK.  When teams have sat deep against us, we've huffed and puffed, struggled to create chances, but quite often got away with it (because NML pulls a goal out of nowhere or something).  When teams have pressed us aggressively, we've struggled.  When team are bigger and stronger than us, we've struggled.  When teams have been better than us player-quality wise, we've struggled.  That's been pretty consistent over the whole season IMO.  We've just had a run of games against opposition that played in ways that suited us.

Last night they were bigger and stronger than us, pressed us aggressively, plus had 2 guys in and around our DM area, and we never got to grips with it.  First half, when we tried to play through Fornah, they closed him down quickly and he couldn't deal with it.  Then when they won the ball back, they always had spare men in that area to play to.  Both Sibley and Thompson were pushed too far forward (and too wide at times) to help him out too.  So we ended up resorting to long balls forward that we never really competed for.

Second half, with Bird and Hourihane in there, we looked a (little) bit better.  We managed to play out a bit more, and certainly got more balls and bodies into their final third, but never really managed to create many actual chances.  At least in part because our final ball was dreadful.

21 minutes ago, Srg said:

Fornah must train like s****. Impressed when he plays but struggles to stay in the team anyway, now off the bench entirely. 

Warne’s all about players he can trust.  Fornah made 2 mistakes that cost us a goal in back-to-back games and he’s barely played since, so it looks very much like he’s stuck on the “does not trust” list.  It will be interesting to see if Ward gets the same treatment after conceding 2 penalties in 2 games.

6-0 now. Have Forest put their first team out or something?

3 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Exactly, why loan someone else's youth (at this level particularly) when your own is potentially as good and will benefit from the challenge?

I actually think that can be ok, at least at Championship level anyway.   Max Lowe is an obvious example - that Lampard season, he clearly wasn't ready for a full season at Championship level (he got absolutely torn apart by Leeds on opening day), and our only other option was Fozzy who was just back from one of his ACL injuries.  So you don't want to be in the position where Fozzy re-injures himself and you're forced to play Lowe all season, even if he starts really struggling.  So the idea of sending Lowe out on loan to play at a lower level is fine, but we should have gone and got a prem youngster on loan for a season, or a 30+ year old on a one year contract.  What we shouldn't have done, is spent big money and wages on giving Scott Malone a 3 year contract, where he just acts as a blocker to Lowe.  Especially since we also had Buchanan who was just on the verge of breaking through too.

There seems to be this attitude amongst certain posters that you shouldn't ever play youth players if they aren't already better than the first teamers they're coming in for.  I saw another poster pretty much saying we should give up on Darren Robinson because his performances haven't been "stunning" so far.  If that's the attitude you have to youth development, we'll never produce anyone.  How many of the youngsters that have gone on to play for us (or other clubs) at championship level  or higher, were better than the guys they were replacing on day one? Or even during season one?  Maybe Will Hughes. Maybe Cashin (but only because we had nobody else in the admin season).  Certainly the likes of Bird, Knight, Hendrick weren't when they first broke through.  Bird, for example, really struggled with the physicality of senior football early on.  But those experiences improved them and they all kicked on to be excellent players.  If we'd taken that attitude, and never given these guys the minutes they needed, they would have never become the players they are.

Nobody is saying youth development is easy, but if you put insane requirements on those youth players abilities before you even give them a chance, you're just making it harder for yourself.

The other point is, while everybody loves a superstar wonderkid, that's not really the best way to judge an academy.  If you get the next Bellingham, or Brennan Johnson, or whoever then great.  What really matters is churning out solid players for the level you're at.  Every academy player that is making your squad on a regular basis, is one less player you have to pay money to acquire (be that transfer fees/ signing on fees/whatever).   You don't need to spend money on a Scott Malone if you have a Lee Buchanan or a Max Lowe, you don't need to spend money on a Jacob Butterfield if you have a Max Bird.  You can then spend that money where it really matters, on a player or 2 that will really make a difference.

Just now, Caerphilly Ram said:

Your previous comments that the club is “flailing around doing stuff at random” or “sitting around twiddling thumbs”, whilst actively dismissing what employees at the club other than Warne have to say seem to do both the club and yourself a disservice.
There is work being done off the pitch to stabilise and grow the club whilst running sustainably, there is a strategy to invest in and grow the academy, some are keen to argue that the first team not being populated with academy graduates is a problem yet Bird, Sibley, Cashin, Thompson, Rooney, and Knight last season have all played minutes under Warne, Brown and others have been training consistently with the first team.
Have there been opportunities for Warne to give more minutes to young players? Yeah sure there has. Is he completely ignoring the academy? Not in my opinion. Could it be that the challenge of balancing a squad of seasoned pros all drawing a wage at the club has to take some priority in the short term? Could it be that some of those senior pros will move on at the end of the season and allow further opportunities to some of the current academy crop who will have benefitted from spending time building their skills and confidence in their own age groups with the occasional experience around the first team? There are other perspectives and possibilities to consider for me. 
 

You are of course entitled to your views, I just see it being quite clear there is some work being done on the academy that may well bear fruit in the medium term rather than the short. 

To be fair, I never meant the club is sitting around twiddling their thumbs - that was specifically in reference to another poster effectively saying the only way we ever get to the Prem is if a rich owner throws money at us.  My comment was more of a "what else do you expect us to do, twiddle our thumbs while we wait for that?"  I have no doubt that there is good work being done on the academy side of things, but I think the first team management are effectively working counter to that good work, and until the entire club is pulling in the same direction, it's mostly wasted effort.

I really don't think you can count Bird, Knight and Sibley as youngsters when they've played 100+ games already. And Cashin had already established himself in the first team before Warne got here.  Thompson and Rooney have only ever really been used as last ditch replacements when there's literally nobody else available.

The thing that really winds me up, is that it's not even difficult opportunities that we're missing.  Warne hasn't even had to go out of his way to give minutes to youngsters, there have been opportunities right there in front of him (3-0 up with unused subs, for example) that he hasn't taken.  It's very clear from both what he does and what he says in interviews that he has no intention of really using the academy.

11 minutes ago, Archied said:

I’ve got it ,,,,,,, let’s do away with the first team and concentrate on developing youngsters 😂😂😂,

good win yesterday, in to the top 6 ( hull dropping out ) , closer to the autos than last season ,,,, who cares 😂😂😂😂😂

I refer you to my previous comments...

On 22/11/2023 at 13:36, duncanjwitham said:

And when I see fans almost actively celebrating it ("I don't care about academy players, we won 3-0" type stuff) I just find it a bit sad really.  I want the club to be in the premier league, I want the club to play good football, and I want to see academy players getting into the first team and doing well, and I want the club to be actively trying to make all that stuff happen, not just flailing around doing stuff at random and hoping that one day it might work.

43 minutes ago, Caerphilly Ram said:

Have you listened to the recent interview with Matt Hale about the academy and the direction there? There is clearly an intention from the club to invest in and rebuild the academy, it may just take more time than some are willing to give it. 
So many people seem hung up on Warne being this barrier to the long term success of the club, he will either serve a purpose in the club moving forward, or he won’t and he’ll be gone. It’s clear to me from what I’ve read and heard from the club beyond just Paul Warne being the first team manager that infrastructure is being put in place that will benefit us in time, either with players able to join the first team squad or for selling on. There isn’t any “sitting around and twiddling thumbs”

At the sake of repeating the massive post I made only a page or 2 ago... If you don't give chances to the lads that are ready to break through, then you're basically writing off that bunch of players.  They won't break through if you don't give them chance to.  And you're also sending the message out to potential academy recruits (and current academy lads who are being linked with moves away) that there's no point being a youth player at Derby, as they don't give youngsters a chance.  We had a fantastic reputation for bringing players into the first team, to the extent that young players were picking us over premier league academies, and we're systematically shredding that reputation.  So it really doesn't matter what Hale and co are actually doing to the academy, if the manager doesn't have the same vision.

41 minutes ago, jimtastic56 said:

I think you are making the mistake a lot of us Rams fans make - that a 30k ground = Prem football. Attendances mean nothing in the Prem. That’s why the likes of Bournemouth don’t improve the ground. What you do need is an owner to invest millions in the right way . DC has saved us . Let’s not try to run before we can walk. We are probably 5-10 managers away from the Prem. Warne should be able to get us up the first step while losing just £3million season.

I'm not saying that a 30k stadium gives us a divine right to be in the prem or anything, just that we have the capability and facilities to be one.  So what do we have to do to make that happen?  We can't just sit around twiddling our thumbs hoping a rich owner comes along, because what happens if one never does?  The onus is on the club to do everything it can to make the most of the stuff that we can control. 

Academy-wise, we are in an excellent position - we're a one-club city, with only 2 other major clubs within any kind of distance, so we should be in a strong position to compete for the best youngsters across the whole East Midlands.  That is a massive in-built advantage that we should be chasing, not binning off because the current management don't seem interested in anything beyond the next 5 minutes.  If we can't compete with the rich clubs for for buying players, then we should be focussing on developing our own.  You don't get to be "5-10 managers away from the prem" if your current manager isn't actually building anything.

And beyond anything else, a strong academy system is an attractive feature to a potential rich owner.  Who would you rather buy, a club with a squad full of 30 year olds who are all out of contract in the summer, or a team with a load of promising 18-23 year olds in the team, and a bunch more ready to come in if they move on.