Coconut

It also shows how important momentum is. They'd had five seasons of underperforming in League One (I wonder if their fans were as frickin' mardy as our?) before Wilder took charge, but they still had resources greater than many of their peers and in Billy Sharp they had a player who's always scored for fun in League One (20 goals in 2015/16, 30 in 2016/17). Other managers had made getting them back out of League One look harder than it should have, but fair play to Wilder he got them playing some excellent stuff and they've been riding the wave ever since. Any time we've gained a little momentum in recent years it's been scuppered by major injuries to key players (& never just one at a time) or managerial changes.

I think you'd rather somebody ducked you than thanked you tbh

You need to disregard all that baalocks and post something disrespectful and mildly racist, or at best xenophobic, about how the difficulty in articulating minor details on complex issue, using a second language, puts you to sleep. Zero respect for anyone who's used that against him. Utter Bamfords.

Classic case of a team making one reasonably capable player the star of the show and making them look better than they are, giving them the ball at every opportunity and seeing what happens. Lawrence was a star at Ipswich for similar reasons, perhaps. Waghorn was an example at, um, Ipswich perhaps. Jordan Rhodes (despite a hattrick today) has done nothing for Sheff Weds despite his stats at Blackburn. Tom Ince did nothing, and has done nothing at Huddersfield & Stoke. ..except Dowell produced less than those players in similar situations. Put them in a team not entirely focussed on them and they struggle to produce anything.

Ah yeah, I'd forgotten what 'that season' referred to tbh. I'm good at removing awful experiences from my memory!! Vidal was a Nigel Clough signing, and like many of them he was a young player who despite a good youth record wasn't physically or mentally prepared for the Championship. (and is now a 30 year old playing for Kettering Town) My initial thought when signing Dowell was that he was far more of a Clough loan than a McClaren or Lampard loan. I think that's how it has played out.

I agree, but I don't know what succeritis is, it doesn't sound like something I'd like to catch though?

Javan Vidal ? he disappeared almost Sassoon as he arrived!

He didn't transform us, we were in a false position but with some good quality on the squad still. He played on the idea that if you have keep it solid in midfield (rarely letting them leave their own half), have opposition defenders worrying about Darren Bent getting in behind so much that they track him and leave a big space for for Tom Ince to run into and shoot then that's all you needed to be a success. It wasn't good football, it worked for a few months but it wasn't sustainable and soon after an excellent run followed an awful one which saw him sacked. Maybe if he had got Martin back he'd have changed it, but play Martin & Ince and you're not creating the same space for the latter, qho had turned into his priority and become a sort of pet project. It was a continuation of the same mistake he made from Jan onwards in 2014/15. Papering over the cracks with some individual ability taking centre stage. Not signing players who were a stylistic replacement for those lost or who could continue what we were trying to do as a team, which we the basis of his entire success up until January/February.

@Ghost of Clough pointed out issues with the performance You said they were all down to the manager. I gave some reasons why those issues are occurring, which would indicate that they're not all the responsibility of the manager, more that with players available to him these issues are unavoidable. I'm not sure what's confused you?

About the players, yes.

GK.. well he could play Roos (who everyone hates and slags off every time he plays) or Carson (who everyone thinks is poo at distribution) or Hamer (who's poo at shot stopping and distribution but can punch better than the other two). He has no choice. CBs.. he could play Ke...oh, he could play Clarke (who people have also slagged off for his passing). Nope no choice. CM.. Bielik? Yes! When not injured. Evans? poo. Huddlesto.... Shinn....ducking hell. Holmes who was an inferior stand-in for Mount now and then? Dowell? R/LW.. um, Lawrence, Josefzoon, Waghorn? Holmes? (Oh, no, he's needed in the middle). But no, those issues are definitely Cocu's fault.

Yep, we have so few players in our squad with any history of scoring goals at Championship level or equivalent. I wonder (although it would be far, far, far too much work to find out) what you'd find if you tallied up the number of Championship goals scored by members of our squad against other squads, especially from midfield

Stern John was a better loan signing than Dowell

Hughton would be doing a pretty much identical job with this lot, don't kid yourselves. He had Anthony Knockaert providing creativity, we've got Tom ducking Lawrence, a truly atrocious passer who fails to do the basics right and has been the same throughout his entire career, he can't be taught.

If you named the lowest quality, least effective and most pointless Derby County loan signings of the past 40 years... ...where would Kieran Dowell stand? I haven't created this purely to poo on KD, he's just the most recent example.