duncanjwitham

I said in his own words that is a failure... which is a direct quote from his in-depth interview with sky sports news. Your whole point is basically picking up on an imprecision in my writing- I meant to say that if we don't make the top 6, which I don't think we will, then that, in his own words, is a failure.

I'm not sure what there is to be really that positive about during his tenure so far? At this level, even in our financially crippled state, you'd expect a club of our size and stature to be in the playoffs. We've generally beaten the teams in the league's bottom half, where our players and our budgets represent a massive gulf between us and the opposition, but against the top half, we've been lacking under Warne. Basically, whenever it's close to a fair fight we really struggle. His ability to affect games or react to tactical tweaks from the opposition has really been lacking and that is uncomfortable and concerning to see. 

There are mitigating circumstances for Warne. I didn't add these, as people have covered them before. This is not his squad, we do lack options in certain areas, and we don't really have players between the ages of 23-29, i.e., players coming into or at their peak. These have produced a set of circumstances where it'd be unreasonable to fire Warne besides simply the length of his contract. Warne is obviously going to be here next season, and if we improve with his batch of players, I'll be the first to be singing from the rooftops and will have no issue admitting I was wrong.
However, my gut tells me this job is simply too big for Warne. Maybe he is a Nathan Jones type of coach- very good in a small club where he can control everything and build a spirit from the tea boy upwards. This is harder to do at a bigger club, where expectations are naturally higher. His record at the championship level sucks, which was also a concern for me when we brought him in. I didn't understand the appointment then, and I don't much now. 

So by Wycombe's logic, Peterborough have a cast iron case for compensation - Reading knowingly overspent, which triggered a suspended 6 point penalty, and which would have kept Peterborough up if it had been fully applied at the time.  And we only finished 7 points behind them, so we arguably have a case too - our last game or 2 were dead rubbers, with us already down, but wouldn't have been if Reading had had -6 points.

So by Wycombe's logic, Peterborough have a cast iron case for compensation - Reading knowingly overspent, which triggered a suspended 6 point penalty, and which would have kept Peterborough up if it had been fully applied at the time.  And we only finished 7 points behind them, so we arguably have a case too - our last game or 2 were dead rubbers, with us already down, but wouldn't have been if Reading had had -6 points.

So by Wycombe's logic, Peterborough have a cast iron case for compensation - Reading knowingly overspent, which triggered a suspended 6 point penalty, and which would have kept Peterborough up if it had been fully applied at the time.  And we only finished 7 points behind them, so we arguably have a case too - our last game or 2 were dead rubbers, with us already down, but wouldn't have been if Reading had had -6 points.

So by Wycombe's logic, Peterborough have a cast iron case for compensation - Reading knowingly overspent, which triggered a suspended 6 point penalty, and which would have kept Peterborough up if it had been fully applied at the time.  And we only finished 7 points behind them, so we arguably have a case too - our last game or 2 were dead rubbers, with us already down, but wouldn't have been if Reading had had -6 points.

So by Wycombe's logic, Peterborough have a cast iron case for compensation - Reading knowingly overspent, which triggered a suspended 6 point penalty, and which would have kept Peterborough up if it had been fully applied at the time.  And we only finished 7 points behind them, so we arguably have a case too - our last game or 2 were dead rubbers, with us already down, but wouldn't have been if Reading had had -6 points.

So by Wycombe's logic, Peterborough have a cast iron case for compensation - Reading knowingly overspent, which triggered a suspended 6 point penalty, and which would have kept Peterborough up if it had been fully applied at the time.  And we only finished 7 points behind them, so we arguably have a case too - our last game or 2 were dead rubbers, with us already down, but wouldn't have been if Reading had had -6 points.

So by Wycombe's logic, Peterborough have a cast iron case for compensation - Reading knowingly overspent, which triggered a suspended 6 point penalty, and which would have kept Peterborough up if it had been fully applied at the time.  And we only finished 7 points behind them, so we arguably have a case too - our last game or 2 were dead rubbers, with us already down, but wouldn't have been if Reading had had -6 points.

So by Wycombe's logic, Peterborough have a cast iron case for compensation - Reading knowingly overspent, which triggered a suspended 6 point penalty, and which would have kept Peterborough up if it had been fully applied at the time.  And we only finished 7 points behind them, so we arguably have a case too - our last game or 2 were dead rubbers, with us already down, but wouldn't have been if Reading had had -6 points.

So by Wycombe's logic, Peterborough have a cast iron case for compensation - Reading knowingly overspent, which triggered a suspended 6 point penalty, and which would have kept Peterborough up if it had been fully applied at the time.  And we only finished 7 points behind them, so we arguably have a case too - our last game or 2 were dead rubbers, with us already down, but wouldn't have been if Reading had had -6 points.

Confidence, at least in part, comes from knowing you can trust the guys behind you to cover for a mistake.  Almost every goal we concede at the moment seems to come from us giving the ball away high up the pitch and getting broken on, so you can see why players are loathe to try risky stuff in the final third. 
And to be clear, I think tiredness is a large part of why that's happening, we just don't have the legs to get up and down the pitch in the way Warne wants us to.

Having actually looked up the stats, he completed 90 minutes in 23/30 league games he's started, and made it to 70+ minutes in 4 of the remaining 7 games.

Having actually looked up the stats, he completed 90 minutes in 23/30 league games he's started, and made it to 70+ minutes in 4 of the remaining 7 games.

Confidence, at least in part, comes from knowing you can trust the guys behind you to cover for a mistake.  Almost every goal we concede at the moment seems to come from us giving the ball away high up the pitch and getting broken on, so you can see why players are loathe to try risky stuff in the final third. 
And to be clear, I think tiredness is a large part of why that's happening, we just don't have the legs to get up and down the pitch in the way Warne wants us to.

Anybody expecting radical changes to the overall makeup of our squad over the summer is in for a rude awakening IMO. We’re almost certainly going to stay blocked from spending transfer fees, and still capped on wages too.  So even if we have a major turnover of players, we’re probably still going to end up with a relatively small squad consisting mostly of over-30s free transfers and youngsters on loan.

If anything, I suspect there’s a degree of pressure to not be seen to be swayed by the home crowd into making decisions.  So marginal decisions where the crowd goes wild are more likely to go the other way just to demonstrate “neutrality”. And at this level, we’re probably getting a lot of referees who’ve barely ever refereed a game in an atmosphere like Pride Park.

So if I’m reading that right… if one outfield player goes down with an injury, we just need to get another player to fake an injury at the same time and get a bit of treatment, and then both players can stay on the field?

If anything, I suspect there’s a degree of pressure to not be seen to be swayed by the home crowd into making decisions.  So marginal decisions where the crowd goes wild are more likely to go the other way just to demonstrate “neutrality”. And at this level, we’re probably getting a lot of referees who’ve barely ever refereed a game in an atmosphere like Pride Park.

With the post match talk about a “communication mishap”, I suspect it’s something vaguely related to that. The Ref probably asked the Lino if he blocked the keeper, and the Lino though he was asking if he was onside and said yes (or something else along those kind of lines).

If anything, I suspect there’s a degree of pressure to not be seen to be swayed by the home crowd into making decisions.  So marginal decisions where the crowd goes wild are more likely to go the other way just to demonstrate “neutrality”. And at this level, we’re probably getting a lot of referees who’ve barely ever refereed a game in an atmosphere like Pride Park.

So if I’m reading that right… if one outfield player goes down with an injury, we just need to get another player to fake an injury at the same time and get a bit of treatment, and then both players can stay on the field?

Cashin's form has dropped off a bit as soon as we started lumping it forwards, the midfield got to tired to chase it back every time and we just get endlessly counter-attacked on.  We're literally engineering the situations that Cashin struggles the most in (quick forwards running at him with no support).  Forsyth's form has dipped at exactly the same time, as has Smiths, which also suggests it's something structural in the team, rather than an individual player.  When we were controlling games a lot more, moving the ball through the thirds etc, Cashin was excellent. 
And for what it's worth, I don't even think his form has dropped enough to warrant a thread like this.  He's been fantastic all season and even with a slight dip he's more than good enough.  He was nowhere near our worst player on Saturday - I can easily think of 4 or 5 who were worse, and arguably more than that.

Cashin's form has dropped off a bit as soon as we started lumping it forwards, the midfield got to tired to chase it back every time and we just get endlessly counter-attacked on.  We're literally engineering the situations that Cashin struggles the most in (quick forwards running at him with no support).  Forsyth's form has dipped at exactly the same time, as has Smiths, which also suggests it's something structural in the team, rather than an individual player.  When we were controlling games a lot more, moving the ball through the thirds etc, Cashin was excellent. 
And for what it's worth, I don't even think his form has dropped enough to warrant a thread like this.  He's been fantastic all season and even with a slight dip he's more than good enough.  He was nowhere near our worst player on Saturday - I can easily think of 4 or 5 who were worse, and arguably more than that.

I don’t think we particularly play to his strengths. I think he’d benefit from being in a team that gets a lot of balls into the box - lots of crosses, lots of loose balls rattling around etc. We’ve tended to be a team that’s quite precise in how it approaches the box - we create a few really good chances, rather than lots of half-ones. And those good chances haven’t often fell to Collins.
And beyond that, I suspect he’s one of those players that needs to play every week.  When Warne first came in, he played every game and scored at a reasonable rate. More recently, he’s had bits and bobs, with the odd start every now and then, and looked miles off it.

You have to understand that the *only* thing the EFL (as a governing body) care about, is preserving their own cushy little existence.  They don't care about protecting football itself, or football clubs, or looking after fans interests, or doing the "right" thing.  They just want to carry on in their own little bubble, taking the path of least resistance through everything, where nobody else bothers them. 
It explains why they were happy to let Mel Morris do whatever he wanted, up until someone else moaned and they had to deal with it.  It explains why they are suddenly pretending they were onto Kirchner all along, rather than look bad for allowing an obviously dodgy guy to pass their little owners test.   It explains why they buried their heads over the 'Boro/Wycombe claims rather than make a decision that might come back to bite them down the line. And so on, and so on, and so on.