Ghost of Clough

I can't be bothered to look further back, but here is my own post after only 1 month of Warne being manager, highlighting the concerns.

Those goal posts have never moved since day 1. The concerns since the day he was appointed were: style of play, use of academy players, retaining academy graduates, risk to the 'feel good factor' around the club. The pattern (in particular this season) has been for one or two of those concerns to appear addressed, only for us to take a backwards step in the next game. Whilst results are ultimately all that matter, all those other little bits buy the manager more time when results aren't going too well. Warne's performance as manager can be described as "bare minimum" to stay in the job, and he his given himself no safety net to rely on when we do have a bad run.

The hope should be that everyone contracted beyond this summer should at least be a sqaud player next season, and not surplus to requirements. Some who would be starters in L1 would be backup in the Championship. There's still time for a number of new signings to adjust to playing for our club and prove they're good signings. I think it's also reasonable to assume we'll change to 3412 next season. Assuming promotion: GK: ???, Vickers, ??? RCB: Nelson, Rooney CB: ???, Bradley LCB: ???, ??? RWB: Ward, Wilson LWB: ???, Elder RCM: ???, Fornah LCM: ???, ??? AM: ???, ??? RCF: ???, ??? LCF: ???, Washington That means we're currently short 14 players, 9 of which would need to be starters. A massive turnover of players, but that can be minimised by extending a number of contracts, and giving opportunities to the academy players to see if they are capable of filling those gaps. Personally, I would try to extend the contracts for the following players to form my Championship squad: Wildsmith, Cashin, Forsyth, Bird, Thompson and Sibley. That leaves the following gaps: 6 starters (CB, LWB, CM, AM, CF, CF) and 2 backups (GK, CF) This is where your concern kicks in - Warne is doing very little to aid transition. We need to give more minutes to those who are contracted beyond this season to see where they will fit in (as starters or backup), and test the best of our academy players to see if they can make that step up - either as squad players or even leap first team players and become regualr starters. In particular, Fornah and Thompson (when fit) should be starting ahead of Smith and/or Hourihane, eith the likes of Cox, DRobinson, Weston and Brown getting the odd opportunity too.

The point I was making was him only winning promotion with 1 team, with an already established style of play, and all the players used to playing that way.

Is Paul even a 'League One expert'? He's only proven as an expert in getting Rotherham (a club he spent 19 out of 23 years at prior to joining us) promoted from the division.

Like being 3-0 up, 75 minutes on the clock, and having used only 1 sub, with Robinson and Weston both on the bench. By the end of the game, we use only 3 out of 5 subs and leave both Robinson and Weston on the bench. Just like that?

"Every manager since Cocu" is only Rooney and Warne. Rooney wanted battlers in midfield - even Bird struggled to get in ahead of Knight and Shinnie. Bird managed to get back in the side with Knight playing on the wing, but when Shinnie was sold Rooney brought another battler into the midfield (Thompson). Under Warne, Sibley can't have a quiet game because he isn't even allowed to have a quiet half. He scores/assists in 1 game, then if he doesn't do anything in the first half of the following game, he'll be brought off and put on the bench for the next game. Goal against Morcambe, the moved to LWB/LB. Moved back to AM, 2 goals against Oxford, then off at half time in the next game. The same pattern is continuing this season.

In general, 20% of crosses find a teammate and 10% of shots go in. That's 1 goal every 50 crosses. This season, we have averaged 25.0 crosses a game, scoring a total of 3 goals.

No, but those extra crosses did help them to score the 8th most goals in the league and 13th most from open play.

Players who have a worse minutes per card ratio than Sibley in the league this season: Thompson, Collins, Cashin, Forsyth, Hourihane. Sibley is judged harsher than anyone else in our squad - be that bad performances, fouls or just about anything. The best thing for his career is to move away from his boyhood club for the exact same reasons as Wildsmith stated when he joined us.

If you based every play on that single game, you'd also conclude Rowe was the best forward on the pitch. However, Collins has scored more goals in the last 8 days than Rowe has in his entire career.

White would not be an upgrade 😂 Bird is criticised for end product, yet White has only 1 goal and 1 assist in the league below. Statistically speaking, Bird has the 2nd highest attacking contribution (shots & chances created) out of all CMs/AMs in the league this season.

"would have brought [Weston on vs Barnsley] if all subs weren't used". We only used 3 subs, with the last one at 84 minutes. Was he suggesting he would have only brought Weston on in injury time when he wouldn't be a 'risk' and throw away a 3-0 lead?

FYI, Rotherham attempted 25% more crosses than the 2nd highest in League 1 in the 21/22 season.

An attacking change would have been Weston on, going to '2 at the back', and pushing the 'fullbacks' further forward. The change he actually made encouraged us to cross it more often as the balance to create through the middle was lost

The use of squad was a question I posed to Warne at the last Fans Forum. His response was "they aren't ready". His response was flawed for many reasons: there's a difference between being ready for the occasional 10 minutes at the end of games and being a regular full 90 minutes player; a limited number of times he had watched the youngsters; not knowing their names, including Weston who scored a hattrick for the U21s earlier in the day; a lack of experience in bringing youngsters through an academy; involvement in Category 1 academies. Arguably the biggest flaw is him having a different view to the majority of managers in the game - you don't know if a player is ready for first team football until they're thrown in at the deep end. In the one game they did get, Fapetu and Weston excelled, yet not used again in the two games since. Whilst Warne admitted (to some degree) that burnout was an issue last season, he refused to admit that the academy could have helped. In low risk scenarios, such as the cup competitions, or being 3-0 up vs Burton and Barnsley, 2-0 vs Carlisle, 4-0 vs Northampton, this is the perfect opportunity to bring first team regulars off with 20-30 minutes to go and give the youngsters a shot to impress. To not even use all our subs and leave youngsters on the pitch is diabolical. Further to resting first teamers, it also puts the player in the shop window. By playing at League level, they display their ability to earn a loan move as high up the pyramid as their ability deserves. Without that game time, potential clubs are only going off academy level football. Bogle is an obvious example, where we couldn't get him a decent loan because he never had first team football before. Minutes to academy players is also a selling point to recruit the best possible academy youngsters, AND improves our ability to retain them.

Still safe. However, Warne is very close to the red danger lines (the minimum expectation for Derby being Top 6). Below red for overall PPG and the two rolling average charts = new manager. That means a minimum of 2 points from the next 2 games which should be easily achieved against 2 mid-table opponents.

We could do worse, but we could also do a lot better. They may have a combined 10 goals and 3 assists this season, but 31% of those goal contributions were from playing us. Neither are anywhere near the standard required for us to win promotion from L1

The bigger problem is Warne's signings AREN'T playing. Last season's squad wasn't good enough to finish top 6 playing the way Warne wanted. From that most used 11, we've lost McGoldrick, Knight and Roberts, replacing them with Nelson and Nyambe being regualrs, whislt Bradley, Wilson, Fornah and Barkhuizen are close together for that final 11th spot. We started the summer wanting to recruit for 5 at the back. We got our defensive players in early, but repeatedly missed out on a number of midfield and attacking players. 523, 532, 5212, etc, we kept changing on our number 1 formation based on who we moved on to next. We stopped going for mobile forwards suited to Warne's pressing game, and started to target the older but clinical forwards. They still chose to go elsewhere. By the end of the transfer window, we had missed out on so many targets, that the squad we had left were mostly suited to 4 at the back, resulting in playing 4231 most weeks. Since we went through the entire summer not planning to play with wingers, we were then put in an awkward position of needing wingers. Our last throw of the dice was trying to tempt Blackett-Taylor away from Charlton on deadline day. It means that we now have : Some defenders who were signed to play in a different system. Failed to improve on the best 11 from last season Inadequate depth in key positions Signed injury prone players That may go some way towards explaining the inconsistency of play. The other key reason is player selection, as I explained I an earlier post today - a lack of players in the team who can create from open play without resorting to crosses.

Time to wheel this one out again...

@YorkshireRam did when he said:

Over the past 5 weeks, he has 2 goals and 2 assists from the 5 games he started. See my post from last night. He started 4 games in a row (2 goals and an assist), yet HE'S the problem (!!!) so needs to be brought off at half time shortly after assisting our equaliser - we failed to score in the 2nd half. Dropped to the bench in the following game and not even used. 2 more assists in the following 75 minutes on the pitch (spread over 3 games), but he'll no doubt be back on the bench against Bristol. Sibley has to play well every game, or he is subbed off and dropped the first time he 'plays badly'. Thompson can play well every game but still won't start unless we have an injury crisis. Hourihane and Smith can be poor in several consecutive games but still start next week.

Worn the armband at every club he's been at for at least 1 game, including an extended run when at Oxford - may have been vice captain? He also became Plymouth's youngest captain in 50 years (when 19).