duncanjwitham

Good post.
The other thing I'd say is, if you are the kind of team that wants to move the ball forward quickly (which is what Warne openly says he wants his teams to do), rather than build up slowly through the thirds, you are going to get less goals from your midfielders.  The game gets stretched a lot more, there's a lot more vertical distance between your players, and you get less of the types of situations where forwards are laying the ball off for midfielders to score goals.  
If you look back over Warne's seasons at Rotherham, the goal totals are always dominated by forwards.  You'll maybe see one midfielder taking a bunch of set-pieces/penalties and getting a decent goal return, but you don't really see lots of midfielders (or even wingbacks) getting in the 8-10 goals range in the same season.

You're regurgitating the same old rubbish as many others. 
In terms of end product, Bird's end product is exactly what you expect from a holding mid in a 3 man midfield.
From open play, he was only 4 goal contributions behind Hourihane (1 more assist) despite playing as the deeper of the two.
A lot of people keep suggesting Brannagan due to his end product, yet 6 of his goals and 1 assist came from set pieces. He has fewer open play contributions than Bird (8) despite playing a role further up the pitch closer to Hourihane's. Wing is another one - 7 out of his 14 contributions came from set pieces.
Bird matched Plymouth's best CM, whilst only Morsy bettered him from Ipswich's squad (10),
I've also gone into great detail to show out 2 man midfield of Bird and Hourihane matched anything Plymouth and Ipswich had last season. Both in terms of goals/assists and defensive contributions. That's before we factor in the other midfielders who contributed when Bird and/or Hourihane weren't on the field.

He was joint 10th in League One for assists amongst all central and defensive midfielders.  That includes a fair few players that played a lot further forwards than he did, and almost all of them played more games than Bird (10+ more games in some cases).  There aren't plenty of League One holding midfielders that are getting loads of assists.
If you exclude assists from set pieces, he jumps up a few places.  You can argue if you should include set pieces or not, but Bird barely took any set pieces, so I think it seems harsh to criticise him for not getting assists from them.  And if you do have him taking them, you're just moving assists from one player to another - Bird gets a few more assists, Hourihane gets a few less, but you're not gaining anything as a team.

He's runs around a lot so fits into what Warne wants?

He was joint 10th in League One for assists amongst all central and defensive midfielders.  That includes a fair few players that played a lot further forwards than he did, and almost all of them played more games than Bird (10+ more games in some cases).  There aren't plenty of League One holding midfielders that are getting loads of assists.
If you exclude assists from set pieces, he jumps up a few places.  You can argue if you should include set pieces or not, but Bird barely took any set pieces, so I think it seems harsh to criticise him for not getting assists from them.  And if you do have him taking them, you're just moving assists from one player to another - Bird gets a few more assists, Hourihane gets a few less, but you're not gaining anything as a team.

His job has never been to score goals or get assists though.  He gets goals and assists at the same sort of rate as other holding midfielders do at all levels.  Rodri only got 1 more goal and 2 more assists than Bird did last season, and he's probably the best holding midfielder in the prem and played for a title-winning team.  Bird got more assists than Declan Rice did (although a few less less goals) and he's a possibly about to be an £80m+ player.
Ironically, if you actually want Bird to get more goals and assists, then you tell him to literally never pass to wingers/wingbacks (as they're much less likely to score themselves, so Bird won't get assists) and just shoot from 30 yards every single time he gets in that sort of range - a few of them might creep in.  Job done, Bird inflates his stats, but is the team better? Absolutely not.

His job has never been to score goals or get assists though.  He gets goals and assists at the same sort of rate as other holding midfielders do at all levels.  Rodri only got 1 more goal and 2 more assists than Bird did last season, and he's probably the best holding midfielder in the prem and played for a title-winning team.  Bird got more assists than Declan Rice did (although a few less less goals) and he's a possibly about to be an £80m+ player.
Ironically, if you actually want Bird to get more goals and assists, then you tell him to literally never pass to wingers/wingbacks (as they're much less likely to score themselves, so Bird won't get assists) and just shoot from 30 yards every single time he gets in that sort of range - a few of them might creep in.  Job done, Bird inflates his stats, but is the team better? Absolutely not.

His job has never been to score goals or get assists though.  He gets goals and assists at the same sort of rate as other holding midfielders do at all levels.  Rodri only got 1 more goal and 2 more assists than Bird did last season, and he's probably the best holding midfielder in the prem and played for a title-winning team.  Bird got more assists than Declan Rice did (although a few less less goals) and he's a possibly about to be an £80m+ player.
Ironically, if you actually want Bird to get more goals and assists, then you tell him to literally never pass to wingers/wingbacks (as they're much less likely to score themselves, so Bird won't get assists) and just shoot from 30 yards every single time he gets in that sort of range - a few of them might creep in.  Job done, Bird inflates his stats, but is the team better? Absolutely not.

You're basically throwing all your eggs in one basket.  If they don't score enough goals to get us up in the next season or 2, we're stuck with a bunch of past-it 30 year olds, probably on big contracts (for League One).  And if we do go up, is there any evidence that they can cut it at Championship level? Not really. So again, we're stuck with a bunch of players that aren't good enough that we need to shift.
I can maybe understand the logic of say throwing a bit of money of Clarke-Harris if the rest of your team is there, but you just need to add goals to it.  But the idea of selling your best young players just to fund a one-time shot at a bunch of players in their late 20s, while the rest of your squad still needs major surgery, is crazy IMO.

You're basically throwing all your eggs in one basket.  If they don't score enough goals to get us up in the next season or 2, we're stuck with a bunch of past-it 30 year olds, probably on big contracts (for League One).  And if we do go up, is there any evidence that they can cut it at Championship level? Not really. So again, we're stuck with a bunch of players that aren't good enough that we need to shift.
I can maybe understand the logic of say throwing a bit of money of Clarke-Harris if the rest of your team is there, but you just need to add goals to it.  But the idea of selling your best young players just to fund a one-time shot at a bunch of players in their late 20s, while the rest of your squad still needs major surgery, is crazy IMO.

Exactly. Who was creating those goals and assists? 
I don't get all this plucking names out of stat lists and dumping all our own players every season. Some fans need to be careful what they wish for.
It's a team game.

D be very disappointed in those trades, especially with Bird being thrown into the mix. Where's the resale value in that group? If you're lucky, you'll get back what you spend. The value sof Bird and Knight will only increase from this point.
Clarke-Harris - already at his peak, one dimensional, risk at Championship level
May - not suited to the style we'll play, already 29, hit a purple patch in his career, never played above league 1
Brannigan - another in the peak of his career, weaker defensively than Bird, only a little bit more creative, assists less, goals come mostly from penalties
Bonnis - another risk due to onpy ever playing in the N. Ireland leagues.

Sibley didn’t have a “breakout season” though, he played a handful of games, including that hat trick, and then we barely played him for a year.  If we wanted to get a good price for him, he should have been played regularly, not dropped for half a dozen games every time he had a slightly below par performance.  
The fact that Burke struggled to get into the Millwall team last season, and has failed to establish himself at any club, suggests there really isn’t much difference in quality.  It’s basically all down to the marketing - Forest put him in the shop window and got a good price. We didn’t do that.

Sibley didn’t have a “breakout season” though, he played a handful of games, including that hat trick, and then we barely played him for a year.  If we wanted to get a good price for him, he should have been played regularly, not dropped for half a dozen games every time he had a slightly below par performance.  
The fact that Burke struggled to get into the Millwall team last season, and has failed to establish himself at any club, suggests there really isn’t much difference in quality.  It’s basically all down to the marketing - Forest put him in the shop window and got a good price. We didn’t do that.

Burke goes straight into Forest team, has a good season and they sell him for big money. Sibley breaks into ours, then spends a season on the bench, then we get relegated and appoint a manager who plays him at left back.  There’s absolutely a world where Sibley plays 35 games the season after his breakout, scores 15 goals and we sell him for big money.  That that didn’t happen is nothing to do with how good the 2 academies, or the 2 players, are.

Since you aren't counting Bogle (signed aged 15), you also can't include some from Forest including Brereton and Cash 

No player is going to be good at everything though, it's impossible.  And "shaped towards a style of play" is exactly what I'm getting at.  If you want to produce players for a Paul Warne team, you'll recruit, train and develop those players very differently to if you are doing it for a McClaren team.  Would Max Bird be the same player if he'd spent his formative years running box-to-box in a 343 system, rather than sitting in midfield in a 433? I suspect not.
And as for the Premier League teams, the teams that have successfully developed young players are the ones who've had a consistent style of play for a long time.  Southampton and Arsenal are obvious examples - changes in managers fairly often, but never radical changes in how the first team plays.

That's part of the issue I'm getting at though - we were just starting to see the results of the investment Morris put into the academy, many years later.  You'd got the ones that did break through Bird, Knight, Buchanan, Ebosele, Lowe etc. And Kaide Gordon, Liam Delap, Dylan Williams, the lad that went to Villa etc, the 3 lads that went to Man Utd etc, all basically forced out due to admin/cost-cutting.  
If we want to radically change the type of academy players we're producing, we're basically writing off the next 5+ years.

Yes. Absolutely. 100%.  
The academy is a long term project. It takes *years* for players to progress through it.  And almost certainly Paul Warne (and any other manager in fact) will not be here by the time the current younger age groups to come through.  We either have to decide that we want to be a club that really relies on its academy (in which case we need to decide what direction we want the club to going in football-wise, and *stick* to it), or we accept the fact that it's basically blind chance whether the youngsters coming through actually fit what the current manager wants.
And for what it's worth, it's not about the manager fitting the academy, the club (be that the board, the chairman, a director of football, whatever) should have a clear vision of what kind of football we want to be playing.  And the academy should be geared up to produce those kind of players, and we should be appointing managers that play that kind of football.

I'm not really talking about U21s though.  I deliberately didn't mention the players we picked up late on who came through (Plange, Ebiowei, Bogle etc), as there's obviously a bit more flexibility there.  But if you're recruiting for the U11s or something, there's just no point even considering what the current manager wants.

Literally none of that has anything to do with that I posted 🤷‍♂️.  Midfielders are still going to get assists in Paul Warne's system, if they're the right kind of midfielder for it.  Max Bird isn't.  If you tell Max Bird you want him running box to box, tackling, shooting, whatever, then he's not going to play as well as if you have him sitting in front of the back 4 picking the ball up and progressing the ball through midfield.

Nah, spend millions on an academy that produces small, technical, ball-playing midfielders, then appoint a manager who only wants to lump it forward and wants midfielders that just run around a lot.  Then when those players at at the lowest value they could be at, sell them for peanuts. It's the Derby way.

It's certainly what Bird is.  And arguably Sibley, Thompson, Robinson etc too.  I don't really see how any of those actually fit into what Paul Warne seems to want in his team.

I think that would make sense if we're a Championship club. Rooney is 19, nearly 20 now, and Thompson is 21.  If we think they're good enough to play first team football at League One level, then they should be here playing (semi-regularly at least) for us.  If we don't think they're good enough for that level, then it's hard to see them ever making at the level we want to be playing at, so we should be looking to move them on.
I'd keep both of them here personally, especially Rooney (given how versatile he is).

I only have second hand news, I'm afraid.