roboto

I like Richard Jolly's writing style 🙂

We need to see how he does during pre-season and make the call whether a loan or being around the first team is the best next step for his development. We still don't have the luxury of large transfer or player budgets, so having him around might be necessary with the amount of turnover expected this summer. Players develop at different rates and the path for one player won't necessarily suit another player. Yes, he's only 18, but he is showing how he can handle the physical aspects of the lower league men's game and seems a class above already. Physically he seems ready now, and mentally being with his parent club at a higher level could really help him flourish next season.

Are you Dryhorce? Are you Dryhorce? Arrrrreeee you Dryhooooorce in disguise? Arrrre you Dryhorce in disguise?

It’s more to do with the level these athletes are playing at these days and the toll it takes on the body. To get to the peak of physical fitness can often put you at a breaking point where you push your body beyond its comfort zone too often, leading to more muscle strain/tear injuries. Plus with modern physios and doctors checking in on players regularly, these problems are identified much more regularly than they used to be. Im not saying players from back in the day weren’t skilful, but the game was different physically and training wasn’t as intense as it is these days. This meant there were more rest and recovery periods for players compared to todays daily schedule for professional squads.

The press release yesterday mentioned home shirt launching in June, so at least we don’t need to spend all summer speculating on what the home kit will look like.

JLingz

The colours used in the image could be a clue to the away colours for next season. Think someone earlier in the thread mentioned a kit with our founding colours and one with the Maroon.

Puma have usually been quite good with doing bespoke kits for clubs even at our current level. Plymouth had some decent kits, Leicester (before the Adidas days) had some good Puma stuff too and recently they've done some bespoke for Stockport, Blackpool and even Boreham Wood.

They've even used the old Puma font to highlight this. Announcement on the way I'd expect. As someone who works within marketing/design in the sports industry I can say that Puma are doing good things in the football world right now and are putting a lot of their budget into this part of their business. On the flipside I read someone asking for Castore... you should probably ask fans of Villa, Newcastle, Wolves and Rangers how they rate the quality of those kits (and maybe the opinions of some of the players too). They've come from nowhere, managed to get some big investment early on, but don't really have the know how to back anything up. They don't do anything innovative, just try and copy other companies on a smaller budget. They also recently bought Umbro, which would mean with our Umbro deal ending, it's even more unlikely we'll go with Castore. Adidas, Nike etc. obviously make good stuff, but concentrate on their bigger teams. They wouldn't do anything special for us in our current position.

How did you get 10/10 when there's only 9 questions? 😉 What is the mysterious question 3?

I love that he’s owning that Mbappe celebration. Love to see the confidence growing in the lad and can’t wait for him to be celebrating like that in front of the Derby fans 20/30 times a season 🤩

That memorable the first time he was here...

Tomori has been injured recently, but we all know Gareth won't pick him to partner Stones ahead of the world-class talents of Maguire, Dunk, Guehi, Konsa or Gomez. The defence (or rather the players chosen to be our defence) are the weak point of our team. When you look at a potential attack and midlfield line up of Kane, Foden, Saka, Bellingham, Mainoo and Rice (with Bowen, Toney, Maddison etc. to back them up) we should be confident of doing well. However, that back 4 and keeper last night were a real issue.