duncanjwitham

The way I see it, we knew the position going into the season. We knew we were going to probably have a small, hastily assembled squad.  We should be using that to guide what we’re doing, not doing the complete opposite and then saying we can’t help it when things go wrong.  It’s only an excuse because we’re making it one.  
 
If we have a small squad, full of older players, instead of running them into the ground and saying “nothing we can do about it, went into admin”, maybe you just don’t play ultra-aggressive pressing for 90 minutes every week.  If you don’t have any target men, don’t lump the ball forward, lose it and say “sorry, admin, no players”, you just don’t lump it forwards all the time.  And so on and so on.

Warne is on the record that he wants his midfielders to forget what’s happening behind them and just go and close down the guy with the ball, and if they get caught out doing that it’s Warne’s fault, not the players.  It was the post-match interview after Knights first start for him, if I remember correctly.
Personally, I think that’s an insane way to set up a football team, but 🤷‍♂️

Out of interest, when does the “you should be happy we still have a club” excuse run out? If we’re still in League One in 5 years time, should we still be using that to excuse managers making the same, obvious mistakes every week?

for those saying it's nothing to do with fitness amongst the older players and that its a lazy excuse, i can tell you for certain it is true from my own experience. I played football at a good semi pro level when i was younger, as soon as i hit 31 recovery times would get longer and longer.
 
by the time i was 34 my body was in bits and recovering from games took an age. you could spend all week recovering from games & because you aren't training properly you naturally lose match fitness, so it makes every game harder to complete. that is how fitness affects older players, you could be as fit as you want but the issue is recovery times. sometimes you can hardly walk after games. 
 
i know what i see, and i am seeing the same things amongst some of our players that i saw when i played football

In my opinion, we need to start asking questions about Warne. Lets look at his record against the teams in the top 14.
Warne against the Top 14 teams:
2 wins, 6 losses and 6 draws.
Rosenior against Top 14 teams:
3 wins, 3 losses and 2 draws.
His in game management has been shocking, especially lately and he seems to have no plan B. Teams either adapt to how we play or just play on the front foot and we can't win. Any teams that do that, will get a result against us.
I know he needs time and a few transfer windows but my god it's been poor recently. Even in our unbeaten run, we weren't winning against difficult oppositions. I have serious doubts about his management unfortunately. 

This squad should be challenging top two. We won’t even get top six. All the manager talks about is running round - no clue tactically, and constantly out thought by his opposite number. All too predictable. 

Got to be fitness, after his injury.

Got to be fitness, after his injury.

It could be as simple as, given the restrictions, there's just no major rush to get money in early.  In a normal season, we'd want to get the money in early, so we can budget and spend it on players, and we'd have to live with setting prices when we don't know what league we're in.  If we *know* we won't be spending on transfers, we can wait until we do know and price them accordingly.

Are we trying to move the money into the new tax year, or something like that?  Can't see why though - I don't think it would make any difference for FFP/EFL-business-plan purposes, since I assume our accounting period is still up to the end of June.

A lot of the youngsters aren't used to the pace of senior football though - it's a big step up from the U21s to playing 2 games a week in the first team, especially in a rough and tumble league like this one.  Bird and Knight should be used to it, but Cashin hadn't played a single senior game until January last year and Sibley's probably played more games this season than he has in any other.  And I'm not sure any of Dobbin, Roberts, Rooney etc had any kind of regular first team exposure before coming here.

Think he is different to what I and probably many expected but I think it’s a big call to say someone with 16 goals / assists doesn’t warrant a starting position. Highest contributing central midfielder in the league, with Adam Phillips and Barry Bannan next with 13. He would basically have to be a complete and utter liability defensively to not justify a starting spot, which he isn’t. 
Goals and assists not everything I know but the other of our more advanced regular starting central midfielders has 5 which is one behind one of Burton Albion’s centre backs. I like Knight a lot but you leave a lot of productivity behind if you start thinking about taking out Hourihane.

Some slating Hourihane is laughable IMO
If we wanted players who will run through brick walls and have constant energy like Knight for example we would not have signed Hourihane at all
He has scored some good goals and assisted quite a few as well so guess what ? if you take him out I don't think it would help.... He has never been a marauding CM and has value on the pitch for me as long as the other mids balance it out
To say he is one of the worst signings ever is a joke quite frankly....Mikkel Beck , Bob Malcolm , Derek Hales , Claude Davis , there's plenty of players deserved of that title and Hourihane is not one of them 
 

It’s not so much about being representative of recent performances, but as the culmination of a downward trend.  I think we’ve been getting slowly worse, pretty much since the Cheltenham away game.  We’ve stopped keeping clean sheets and started conceding sloppy goals. We’ve stopped playing through midfield and started hitting aimless long balls all game. We’ve started giving the ball away cheaply.  We’ve stopped pressing as aggressively and so on and so on. That hasn’t always translated into poor results, in part because we have good players that can bail us out (Dobbin away at Port Vale, for example).  But we can’t keep playing below par and winning, and it’s starting to catch up to us IMO.

It’s not so much about being representative of recent performances, but as the culmination of a downward trend.  I think we’ve been getting slowly worse, pretty much since the Cheltenham away game.  We’ve stopped keeping clean sheets and started conceding sloppy goals. We’ve stopped playing through midfield and started hitting aimless long balls all game. We’ve started giving the ball away cheaply.  We’ve stopped pressing as aggressively and so on and so on. That hasn’t always translated into poor results, in part because we have good players that can bail us out (Dobbin away at Port Vale, for example).  But we can’t keep playing below par and winning, and it’s starting to catch up to us IMO.

And those limits include things like employers National Insurance Contributions, performance bonuses and anything else that the club might be paying to players. Which suggests the figures on the site above are probably wrong, or we'd be well over £8m.

It’s not so much about being representative of recent performances, but as the culmination of a downward trend.  I think we’ve been getting slowly worse, pretty much since the Cheltenham away game.  We’ve stopped keeping clean sheets and started conceding sloppy goals. We’ve stopped playing through midfield and started hitting aimless long balls all game. We’ve started giving the ball away cheaply.  We’ve stopped pressing as aggressively and so on and so on. That hasn’t always translated into poor results, in part because we have good players that can bail us out (Dobbin away at Port Vale, for example).  But we can’t keep playing below par and winning, and it’s starting to catch up to us IMO.

It’s not so much about being representative of recent performances, but as the culmination of a downward trend.  I think we’ve been getting slowly worse, pretty much since the Cheltenham away game.  We’ve stopped keeping clean sheets and started conceding sloppy goals. We’ve stopped playing through midfield and started hitting aimless long balls all game. We’ve started giving the ball away cheaply.  We’ve stopped pressing as aggressively and so on and so on. That hasn’t always translated into poor results, in part because we have good players that can bail us out (Dobbin away at Port Vale, for example).  But we can’t keep playing below par and winning, and it’s starting to catch up to us IMO.

It’s not so much about being representative of recent performances, but as the culmination of a downward trend.  I think we’ve been getting slowly worse, pretty much since the Cheltenham away game.  We’ve stopped keeping clean sheets and started conceding sloppy goals. We’ve stopped playing through midfield and started hitting aimless long balls all game. We’ve started giving the ball away cheaply.  We’ve stopped pressing as aggressively and so on and so on. That hasn’t always translated into poor results, in part because we have good players that can bail us out (Dobbin away at Port Vale, for example).  But we can’t keep playing below par and winning, and it’s starting to catch up to us IMO.

It’s not so much about being representative of recent performances, but as the culmination of a downward trend.  I think we’ve been getting slowly worse, pretty much since the Cheltenham away game.  We’ve stopped keeping clean sheets and started conceding sloppy goals. We’ve stopped playing through midfield and started hitting aimless long balls all game. We’ve started giving the ball away cheaply.  We’ve stopped pressing as aggressively and so on and so on. That hasn’t always translated into poor results, in part because we have good players that can bail us out (Dobbin away at Port Vale, for example).  But we can’t keep playing below par and winning, and it’s starting to catch up to us IMO.

It’s not so much about being representative of recent performances, but as the culmination of a downward trend.  I think we’ve been getting slowly worse, pretty much since the Cheltenham away game.  We’ve stopped keeping clean sheets and started conceding sloppy goals. We’ve stopped playing through midfield and started hitting aimless long balls all game. We’ve started giving the ball away cheaply.  We’ve stopped pressing as aggressively and so on and so on. That hasn’t always translated into poor results, in part because we have good players that can bail us out (Dobbin away at Port Vale, for example).  But we can’t keep playing below par and winning, and it’s starting to catch up to us IMO.

It’s not so much about being representative of recent performances, but as the culmination of a downward trend.  I think we’ve been getting slowly worse, pretty much since the Cheltenham away game.  We’ve stopped keeping clean sheets and started conceding sloppy goals. We’ve stopped playing through midfield and started hitting aimless long balls all game. We’ve started giving the ball away cheaply.  We’ve stopped pressing as aggressively and so on and so on. That hasn’t always translated into poor results, in part because we have good players that can bail us out (Dobbin away at Port Vale, for example).  But we can’t keep playing below par and winning, and it’s starting to catch up to us IMO.

It’s not so much about being representative of recent performances, but as the culmination of a downward trend.  I think we’ve been getting slowly worse, pretty much since the Cheltenham away game.  We’ve stopped keeping clean sheets and started conceding sloppy goals. We’ve stopped playing through midfield and started hitting aimless long balls all game. We’ve started giving the ball away cheaply.  We’ve stopped pressing as aggressively and so on and so on. That hasn’t always translated into poor results, in part because we have good players that can bail us out (Dobbin away at Port Vale, for example).  But we can’t keep playing below par and winning, and it’s starting to catch up to us IMO.

It’s not so much about being representative of recent performances, but as the culmination of a downward trend.  I think we’ve been getting slowly worse, pretty much since the Cheltenham away game.  We’ve stopped keeping clean sheets and started conceding sloppy goals. We’ve stopped playing through midfield and started hitting aimless long balls all game. We’ve started giving the ball away cheaply.  We’ve stopped pressing as aggressively and so on and so on. That hasn’t always translated into poor results, in part because we have good players that can bail us out (Dobbin away at Port Vale, for example).  But we can’t keep playing below par and winning, and it’s starting to catch up to us IMO.

It’s not so much about being representative of recent performances, but as the culmination of a downward trend.  I think we’ve been getting slowly worse, pretty much since the Cheltenham away game.  We’ve stopped keeping clean sheets and started conceding sloppy goals. We’ve stopped playing through midfield and started hitting aimless long balls all game. We’ve started giving the ball away cheaply.  We’ve stopped pressing as aggressively and so on and so on. That hasn’t always translated into poor results, in part because we have good players that can bail us out (Dobbin away at Port Vale, for example).  But we can’t keep playing below par and winning, and it’s starting to catch up to us IMO.