duncanjwitham

I've seen enough managers do well at other clubs and struggle at Derby, and vice versa, to know that success doesn't always follow you from club to club.  Everything I can see on the pitch, and from what Warne says, is screaming to me that he has his "one magic trick to win football games", and it worked all the time at Rotherham (in League one anyway), and it's not really working here (often enough anyway), and he doesn't really understand why, but he's going to keep doing it anyway because that's all he knows.

I'm not even sure it's down to trust.  You either have to commit fully to being a team that develops academy players, or you just don't bother at all.  If you genuinely want academy lads to progress through to the first team consistently, you have to be willing to gamble a bit on them sometimes.  Give them some minutes whenever you can, and be aware that it might cost you results in that game, but be willing to accept that, because long-term you will be better off as a club.
If we don't ever play Brown because we don't trust him, he's never going to make the mistakes that he can learn from, and become a player that we can trust.  And then instead of being a 17 year old that needs to develop, he's suddenly going to be a 21 year old that needs to develop, and by then it's probably too late.  Players don't just spring from the academy fully formed and trustworthy.
And obviously I'm not saying throw players in before they're ready at all, or even that we should have put all of the youngsters on much earlier the other night.  But if we think Brown is a genuine championship-level prospect, he should be getting at *least* a couple of hundred first-team minutes over the course of this season.  If he's only getting 2 minutes in a tin-pot cup when we were 2-0 up, he's going to get nowhere near that, especially when he barely even makes the bench in league games.
If you aren't going to be willing to commit to it, you might get the odd Will Hughes-type that comes through and just looks like a first-team player from day one, but you'll never get the conveyor-belt of players that teams like Southampton seem to manage.

I'm not even sure it's down to trust.  You either have to commit fully to being a team that develops academy players, or you just don't bother at all.  If you genuinely want academy lads to progress through to the first team consistently, you have to be willing to gamble a bit on them sometimes.  Give them some minutes whenever you can, and be aware that it might cost you results in that game, but be willing to accept that, because long-term you will be better off as a club.
If we don't ever play Brown because we don't trust him, he's never going to make the mistakes that he can learn from, and become a player that we can trust.  And then instead of being a 17 year old that needs to develop, he's suddenly going to be a 21 year old that needs to develop, and by then it's probably too late.  Players don't just spring from the academy fully formed and trustworthy.
And obviously I'm not saying throw players in before they're ready at all, or even that we should have put all of the youngsters on much earlier the other night.  But if we think Brown is a genuine championship-level prospect, he should be getting at *least* a couple of hundred first-team minutes over the course of this season.  If he's only getting 2 minutes in a tin-pot cup when we were 2-0 up, he's going to get nowhere near that, especially when he barely even makes the bench in league games.
If you aren't going to be willing to commit to it, you might get the odd Will Hughes-type that comes through and just looks like a first-team player from day one, but you'll never get the conveyor-belt of players that teams like Southampton seem to manage.

I'm not even sure it's down to trust.  You either have to commit fully to being a team that develops academy players, or you just don't bother at all.  If you genuinely want academy lads to progress through to the first team consistently, you have to be willing to gamble a bit on them sometimes.  Give them some minutes whenever you can, and be aware that it might cost you results in that game, but be willing to accept that, because long-term you will be better off as a club.
If we don't ever play Brown because we don't trust him, he's never going to make the mistakes that he can learn from, and become a player that we can trust.  And then instead of being a 17 year old that needs to develop, he's suddenly going to be a 21 year old that needs to develop, and by then it's probably too late.  Players don't just spring from the academy fully formed and trustworthy.
And obviously I'm not saying throw players in before they're ready at all, or even that we should have put all of the youngsters on much earlier the other night.  But if we think Brown is a genuine championship-level prospect, he should be getting at *least* a couple of hundred first-team minutes over the course of this season.  If he's only getting 2 minutes in a tin-pot cup when we were 2-0 up, he's going to get nowhere near that, especially when he barely even makes the bench in league games.
If you aren't going to be willing to commit to it, you might get the odd Will Hughes-type that comes through and just looks like a first-team player from day one, but you'll never get the conveyor-belt of players that teams like Southampton seem to manage.

Sorry, my comment wasn’t aimed specifically at you, more at the wider forum comments and that we were lucky to win at Peterborough.

I've never said our forwards are rubbish.  I've been pretty consistent in saying that I think we have a good squad for this level, but we don't seem to have any interest in playing to their strengths, and that's the biggest issue we have at the moment.  
If you get enough balls in and around Collins (crosses, loose balls in the box, whatever), he will score goals at a reasonable rate - he's not a fabulous finisher, but he's decent enough with the right type of service.  Waghorn will score a decent number of poacher-type chances (where he doesn't really have to think about it), and curl one in from the edge of the box every so often etc.  But we don't seem to set out to make those situations happen.  There's no game-plan to engineer a dozen crosses onto Collins head each game, or to get Waghorn cutting in on his strong foot or whatever.  We just seem to stick players into a formation, run around a lot and hope something happens.  So you'll get games where Waghorn sticks all 3 of his chances away (because he's a good player at this level), and sometimes you get games where Collins runs onto 2 through-balls and mucks them up because he's not really that type of striker.  
You can't go into games having to have your striker score every chance he gets, to win the game.  No player is ever going to do that - even the freakishly good finishers (Thierry Henry, Alan Shearer etc) only scored something like 25% of their shots.  With decent players, you will win some games like that, but it won't be enough over the course of a season.  You have to be setting up to create the service that your forwards need to thrive and we just don't.

A big part of the reason I'm so negative about Warne, even when we win, is that I have absolutely zero faith that we can repeat it.  The people flagging up e.g. xG differences vs real life results aren't just picking fault for the sake of it (or anything like that), we're looking at what happened and thinking how likely we are to be able do it again and win again.
That Peterborough game for example -  we could easily have been 3 or 4 down early on, then had a spell where literally every chance we had went in.  Was I happy we won? Yes.  Did I think we were likely to play like that in other games and win them? No.
 

The reason why I enjoy this forum is the variety of opinions and debate about what we all enjoy and what we don't enjoy. 
I don't like the style of football and how the manager thinks about the game. Playing it wide and pumping the ball into the box was great about 20-30 years ago and I would expect that level of football from a small reputation club in our division. Yes, we're unbeaten and our away form is spot, I have to give Warne praise for making us difficult to beat away from home when we couldn't buy an away win for years. Unbeaten runs however are not good enough to get you out of division, the standard of promoted teams is becoming much better. You have to be aiming for 90 points to get out of league. 75-80 won't cut it anymore unfortunately.
With all the resources at his disposal, the manager should be doing much better, particularly at home where we've looked poor without Didzy. Even though he has recruited heavily in the summer, I don't think he's playing to the squads strengths. So many technical footballers yet trying to turn them into running machines. He keeps reference how Man City and Liverpool are brilliant teams because they run. True, but they play with a style which blows people away. We run for the sake of running at times. We can be so much smarter on the ball yet this obsession to hit it wide and blast balls into the penalty area makes is so one dimensional and predictable.
For all my critical analysis, I am never making it personal. Some of the verbal abuse towards PW online is unacceptable and we must not forget there's a human soul underneath that cap. He is a genuine man and he says it how it is. Is he the manager I want at the club, definitely not. But I'll back him and the team at the ground no matter what. This forum is a chance to release some of my frustrations.

It's not so much position, as what he's being asked to do on the field.  To get the best out of him, you want him getting on the ball and driving into the final third or running onto through-balls.  If you play him as a 10, you're maximising his chance to do that, but you can absolutely get him doing it from other positions.  If you're getting plenty of decent possession in the final third, he can be effective from wider.  At times he was effective from fullback, particularly when we were up against wing-backs and he was a spare man with license to bomb on.  What you don't want is him being a defensive fullback, or a winger that's staying very wide to get crosses in, or playing deep in midfield.

It's not so much position, as what he's being asked to do on the field.  To get the best out of him, you want him getting on the ball and driving into the final third or running onto through-balls.  If you play him as a 10, you're maximising his chance to do that, but you can absolutely get him doing it from other positions.  If you're getting plenty of decent possession in the final third, he can be effective from wider.  At times he was effective from fullback, particularly when we were up against wing-backs and he was a spare man with license to bomb on.  What you don't want is him being a defensive fullback, or a winger that's staying very wide to get crosses in, or playing deep in midfield.

It's not so much position, as what he's being asked to do on the field.  To get the best out of him, you want him getting on the ball and driving into the final third or running onto through-balls.  If you play him as a 10, you're maximising his chance to do that, but you can absolutely get him doing it from other positions.  If you're getting plenty of decent possession in the final third, he can be effective from wider.  At times he was effective from fullback, particularly when we were up against wing-backs and he was a spare man with license to bomb on.  What you don't want is him being a defensive fullback, or a winger that's staying very wide to get crosses in, or playing deep in midfield.

It's not so much position, as what he's being asked to do on the field.  To get the best out of him, you want him getting on the ball and driving into the final third or running onto through-balls.  If you play him as a 10, you're maximising his chance to do that, but you can absolutely get him doing it from other positions.  If you're getting plenty of decent possession in the final third, he can be effective from wider.  At times he was effective from fullback, particularly when we were up against wing-backs and he was a spare man with license to bomb on.  What you don't want is him being a defensive fullback, or a winger that's staying very wide to get crosses in, or playing deep in midfield.

Ok, you eight listen up. Don’t concede. Don’t fanny around with it, hit the bloody channels as early as you can. Barks and Laingy what are your jobs? ‘Run fast and cross Boss’. Run fast and cross, good. Got it. Collo you get on the end of it ok. Thanks boys, now remember why we are doing this. Ok. Tactics over.  Sibbo, go get me a coffee. The rest of you go for a run.

And people say "you can't blame Paul Warne". He's literally paid to be responsible.

Warne on the radio saying he didn't want the ball in the middle of the park because they had the overload. Says we needed it out wide as we have the two best wide players in the league.
When Bird came on and we used the midfield, we looked a different side.
And people still say it's not his fault. It's anti football. And he's happy to admit to it.

"Paul Warne's doing pretty well."
"I think his biggest critics should be thinking about taking a break for a while."

That looks worryingly like the 3421 we started the season with.

That looks worryingly like the 3421 we started the season with.

Plumbing and sanitation?
Oh sorry, that was the Romans.

Basically, yesterday they let us play through the middle. They were happy to let Smith and Fornah get on the ball and pass it, because they didn’t want to get into chasing us round and getting caught out. They sat deep, blocked crosses, man marked strikers and dealt with everything we got into their box.  They were happy with us doing what we did yesterday because they thought they could deal with it.  Other teams have pressed us high and that forced us into going longer.  Other teams have done different things and we’ve just gone along with that too.
We don’t seem to go out with a plan in mind of what we want to do, just some vague idea about running around a lot and getting some crosses in.  So what actually happens in the pitch is quite often down to what the other team allow us/force us into doing.  I don’t believe Warne actively instructed his players to play like that yesterday (as demonstrated by his post-match comments about not playing through the middle), so I don’t really buy any of the comments about us playing better yesterday.

The thing is, it’s entirely dependant on what they do, because we just do the same thing over and over again without reacting to what they do.  Yesterday, they ceded the middle of the park to us and tried to defend their 18 yard box. Which they did very well.  So we had lots of aimless possession in the middle but didn’t have the craft to break them down.  In other games they might press us high and we get forced into lumping it long to beat the press. But none of it’s down to what we’re doing.

I’ll give you Anang, but Collins and Sibley played in every game for Rosenior.  McGoldrick only missed 3 games too, before being an unused sub in the 4th.  There’s no obvious other players missing games.
We’ve had at least 10 players pick up injuries in what, a dozen games(?), this season. That’s a hell of a lot.  And there’s a lot of similarity in the types of injuries too - a lot of pulled muscles for example.  It might not be a pissing contest, but at the very least it’s a pattern worth being concerned about.
And several Rotherham fans certainly mentioned the amount of soft tissue injuries they picked up, while Warne was manager, when he was appointed here.
 

I’ll give you Anang, but Collins and Sibley played in every game for Rosenior.  McGoldrick only missed 3 games too, before being an unused sub in the 4th.  There’s no obvious other players missing games.
We’ve had at least 10 players pick up injuries in what, a dozen games(?), this season. That’s a hell of a lot.  And there’s a lot of similarity in the types of injuries too - a lot of pulled muscles for example.  It might not be a pissing contest, but at the very least it’s a pattern worth being concerned about.
And several Rotherham fans certainly mentioned the amount of soft tissue injuries they picked up, while Warne was manager, when he was appointed here.
 

Using your logic, you also need to include Villa's future internationals too: Abraham, Grealish and Mings.
From that squad the following have represented their country:
England - Abraham, Grealish, Mings
Scotland - McGinn, Hutton
Ireland - Hourihane, Whelan, Hogan
Wales - Taylor, Chester
Norway - Nyland
Iceland - Bjarnason
Croatia - Kalinic
Belgium - De Laet
Egypt - El Mohamady, El Ghazi
Ghana - Adomah
Ivory Coast - Kodja
Congo - Bolasie
Australia - Jedinak
From our squad only King, Ledley, Cole, Lawrence, Mount, Wilson and Keogh have so far represented their country at least 5 times.

We should be rotating wingers regularly.  Start 2 of them, let them run themselves into the ground for 60 minutes, then throw 2 others on for 30 minutes against tired legs.  Then next game, swap them round.  Keep everyone fresh over the season, not play NML for 90 minutes every single week so he’s dead on his feet by Christmas.