May Contain Nuts

The Alan Wake 2 soundtrack. Obviously it helps to have played the game to understand quite why the main song from it is a 4-part, 9 minute rock opera by Finnish band Poets of The Fall masquerading as Old Gods of Asgard, with accompanying dance routine, but hey... (the end of chapter songs are also good, dark little modern pop things which might have brought a couple of tears to my eyes)

I suppose that's a question for another thread really, but... Wildsmith - Yes. Forsyth - Yes if we stay down, but there's only so much mileage left in him and i don't think he can do it at Championship level anymore. Thompson - Yes. Plenty to prove still. Mendez-Laing - Yes. Cashin - Would offer but he'll leave unless we're promoted, might not even be here in February. Bird - Same as Cashin. Nyambe - See Cashin & Bird. Sibley - Would offer, and he'd probably accept, but I think it's in his best interests to move on tbh because there's clearly a bit of a stigma attached to him here. Loach - No. There doesn't seem any point when we could give that 3rd GK position to one of our highly regarded academy keepers. Smith - No. The most 'nothing' player I think I've ever seen, although I suppose at that's 'something. Hourihane - No. Legs have gone, needs a team who can carry him and who'll play him a bit further forward, where he can create without having to worry about anything else. Barkhuizen - No. Ineffectual. We can get better value elsewhere. Waghorn - No. His impact has waned massively already with him struggling to stay fit. Another season would one one too far. Collins - Maybe but probably not. Can be useful, but I'd look to would replace with more of a traditional target man to fit with Warne's style.

You would hope so, but that doesn't necessarily make it true. A good coaching team will of course have a variety of specialties covered and work together, lean into each others' experience and knowledge but is it always the case that this is what you get? Of course it isn't. Not all football managers / coaches are interested in or knowledgeable about the same aspects of the job. Their coaching styles and their priorities differ wildly. Often a manager will surround himself with people he likes and trusts, but this can come at the expense of having a more rounded team around him so you can end up with a collective of like-minded individuals who may complement each other well but who don't challenge each others' thought processes. If a manager nor his chosen coaches are really knowledgeable about, experienced with or interested in bringing through youth players then there's every chance that, even if someone else at the club does have this knowledge and reports to them what they know, that person will pretty much be ignored. Not being involved in the game on a day by day basis also doesn't preclude fans from gaining knowledge on a certain subject by studying, listening to those who are specialists in the field, reading in-depth interviews and analysis, looking at how other clubs have handled the transition etc, even if it's only a theory they'll never be able to put into practice. The difference is they have the advantage of not having to deal with all the other stuff that comes with being a football coach/manager on a day to day basis so don't have to deal with that balance, but it doesn't automatically make the fan wrong and the coach right.

Warning: May Contain the longest post in the history of the forum. Read it all if you're feeling masochistic, if not quit whenever you like or maybe don't even start it. In fact I'd ask that certain posters (who probably know who they are tbh) ignore it altogether. I probably won't respond to arguments against it anyway because I simply can't be arsed to get into a to and fro, My enthusiasm for posting has gone right down the pan recently tbh and I'm, sick of having the same discussions and making the same points. One last time though 🤣 Surely whether the glass is half full or half empty depends on whether you had a full glass or an empty glass in the first place? I guess others may be viewing our current situation through the same lens they wore during the period of administration, in which case their starting position is likely that of having an empty glass, and anything else is a bonus? For me it's the opposite. I was full of optimism when we came out of administration. The chance for a big reset and to grow the club in the 'right' way, to employ a forward thinking manager to help build a new identity with a clear way of playing that we could develop and improve over time, including proper integration of the academy with their transition to the first team eased by there being a thread running from the top of the club to the bottom, no massive disconnects in intent (or 'vision') or style. Everyone on the same page. I was expecting and accepting that it might take a few years of slow and steady but sustainable growth. I thought it was going to be a tough and ugly league full of seasoned pros and wizened old managers, and that while they'd probably have the upper hand on us for a spell we'd learn as we went. And that was OK, we would be building toward something better, everyone understood that patience was required. Then we started playing, and the league was nothing like I'd feared. Besides, even if it had been we'd now appointed a League One promotion specialist to help even out any disadvantage, someone who'd use his talents to get the better of other managers. Or so I thought. Even our hurriedly assembled squad quickly showed the division up for what it really is, there was and is (this season, especially) nothing to fear from anybody. With better squad rotation to help reduce the late season burnout we could easily have found ourselves finishing in the playoffs - ultimately it came down to a single goal, one narrow defeat turned to a draw, one draw turned to a win and we'd have been in, and then who knows? The season ended in mildly disappointing fashion. Rather unexpectedly so, as if you'd have asked a before a ball was kicked you'd have taken a top 10 finish, but the appointment of Warne coupled with seeing how poor the league really is did raise expectations of what we should be achieving and when. How could it not have done? You don't appoint 'promotion experts' only to be eternally patient while they make mistakes they probably shouldn't be making. My optimism was dampened at various points by the performance of the manager, his lack of of tactical nous leading to him being out-thought multiple times by opposition managers, his poor squad management and lack of adequate rotation, some deep flaws in his playing philosophy (surely this isn't what we thought we were getting, or is it?) but toward the very end of the season I'd convinced myself he was showing some progress. ----- And so we roll onto this season, there's some fanfare about the restrictions being eased, a big interview where the chairman of the club states that our budget is good enough, in his opinion, for promotion. This sounds like an ideal opportunity - a second opportunity after somewhat blowing the first one - now we've had time to plan it, to really get to grips with the 'project' we had in mind before Warne was employed which when coupled with his past record of getting the most out of his squad as a collective should have seen us taking advantage of the best of both worlds. It didn't happen last season but fair's fair, it wasn't his squad and realistically we could not have done anything in that January window to really change or even adequately supplement what we had. Our initial signings on paper sounded altogether quite promising, the aim was to build a squad which includes a number of players who either still have something to offer at Championship level (justifying their likely higher-than-average wage demands) or could improve to reach that level. An admirable target. The manager and the players talk of a promotion season, with the aim set for automatics, it's very convincing. My glass isn't quite full at that stage, but at about 85/90% The other 10/15% depends on the manager having learned lessons from the season just past. However, the progress seen (whether it was actually there or not) last season went out of the window when it became clear that the manager had his heart set on 3 at the back with wingbacks but more importantly playing the same style of football he deployed at Rotherham (but without the necessary type of players), rather than building on what worked the previous season, meaning certain positions that otherwise would only need a starter or a covering player are completely unfilled and require both. Another 'reset' then, but maybe it wouldn't matter? We have plenty of scope now to build the team Warne wants, and in the end we bring in 10 permanent signings. Unfortunately some of those signings get injured, but some look so badly researched that they look disastrously unsuited to what's asked of them and can't get in the team, some are simply not being used very much for one reason or another. Even without the injuries it's difficult to see where everyone really fits in with the style of play so it's a transfer window effectively wasted - one which we're not looking to 'correct the mistakes of' (as is typically the manager's view of business done in January) in a couple of months. The recruitment that once looked promising now looks haphazard, and we're back to our good performances taking the shape of something the manager has been forced to implement (through both poor performances when attempting to play his preferred style and injuries) rather than what he actually planned for. Meanwhile teams who have brought in more players than us and with many of them likely to be on lower wages show us that one of the key excuses for our performance - the team needing to gel - is somewhat negligible, as we'd also shown ourselves the previous season. The matches we watch often come with the most predictable and telegraphed tactical approach imaginable yet somehow the messages coming from the sidelines are still muddled and the players rarely seem to know when the manager actually wants. One week it's criticism for not moving the ball quick enough the next it's for trying to be too quick and not taking care of the ball enough, one minute they're told to bypass the middle but the next they've played it wide too often. Players are still being given roles that don't suit them, or played in multiple roles in a single game and across games and often don't seem to know if they're coming or going. Substitutions are still largely random, or done so with an attempt to shoehorn in 3 at the back. The manager still doesn't know what to do when his main gameplan isn't working and he gets tetchy AF whenever challenged on the details. Throw into that the poor implementation of academy players and the attitude toward them on which has been discussed at length recently, and there's neither a real identity or any clear future planning on display. People say that the academy players will come in when they're ready, but if they only ever get put on the pitch when there's absolutely nothing on the line then not one of them will ever be ready. There's no reason to think that we can take what we're doing this season and 'step it up' should we get promoted, beyond the idea that we can simply chuck more money at it than Rotherham could. ----- I feel very much like there are certain posters who see our potential promotion under Warne as the only criteria on which he should be judged and are willing to close their eyes to everything else. All the reasons for my glass being (mostly) full at the start of the past 2 seasons are the very things that the manager has failed to deliver any progress toward, and shows no real signs of being interested in going forward - he doesn't appear to be doing anything other than looking after his own skin. I see him working far more in the interests of Paul Warne than of Derby County. While a manager shouldn't sacrifice everything that they want for the sake of the club and should obviously be able to stamp their own identity on it (otherwise you end up with Cocu Season 2), there needs to be a better balance than that which is currently offered up. This alone makes it difficult to 'back' Warne or for me to believe he's the right manager for where we are as a club right now, or where we want to be. Whether people who are being dismissive of those with long term concerns are doing so because they just think that the 'now' is more important, believe that the rest will sort itself out once we're promoted, whether they're just trying to win an argument online, whether they just want to appear to be a 'better supporter' than those who aren't happy, or whatever else their motivation for ignoring the issues presented by Warne's ongoing tenure, I'm not (except in one or two instances) really sure. We might, and I stress might, be able to achieve promotion this season. But quite frankly so what if we do? What is that supposed to prove? Promotion is the bare minimum outcome for Warne to even come close to being considered a success as Derby manager. It's no great achievement if it comes at the cost of an almost total neglect of any other aspects of the club's progression, and pretty worthless if we find ourselves back down here in 2 years time. History tells us that's the most likely outcome, especially if Warne's methods haven't developed beyond what they were when he was at Rotherham. The longer he is here the more I feel we're wasting time, and the further away I feel from us being able to take advantage of the opportunity we had to build properly. The more we become a Warne team the more we seem to become a League One team, but not a more modern, forward thinking one, an old fashioned horrible one. However, if he gets us up and keeps us up while giving or academy graduates at least some meaningful game time (something he is currently averse to doing) then he'll have proved me exceedingly wrong. I still hope for that, but I don't believe for a second that he is capable of the improvement necessary to make it happen. Time will tell - the owner of the club clearly has a lot more faith in him than I do, I just hope he's right and I'm wrong.

I'll suggest that a anybody going tonight stand up after 38 minutes and applaud B4 as a preclude to our next home game where it's.mkre official

He was always the best of us, but never , ever, ever the worst. We should ways aspire to be more B4

Oh f****** hell. Love the lad and I hope he knew we collectively loved him too.

Wilson makes Ward redundant imo

He always stood out , to me, as our best bit of business of the summer. Potential off the scale and bought at his lowest value following 'failure' elsewhere.

There's only one word that sums that up for me tonight - astonishing. Meant in the positive sense (us) and the negative (them) in equal measure

and their defenders similarly don't bother

...but no Ward (in the squad) or Wilson or Fornah (starting) so we may struggle to create or defend against any breakaways.

Let's hope that today's performance isn't a case of 'after the Lord Mayor's Show' (even though it quite literally will be!)

Kevin's always been a bit of a fantasist and loves a spot of projecting, if anyone cares to remember the administration thread that was always a 'fun' part of it. There are plenty of things to fault Warne on without making stuff up.

I'm already the s*** for not listening to the Mrs and being too absorbed by this place so I'm not going hunting for you tonight, sorry. 😃 However, if you don't think that there's a toxic vibe on here perpetuated by BOTH sides and it's only the people who don't think Warne is our future who are causing an issue then I don't know what to tell you. Again I come on here after games like this fully intending to espouse the positives but always end up getting dragged into this s*** - it simply wouldn't happen if I was making the whole thing up.

Yes they bloody are 🤣, or else I'd not have anything to reply to.

It becomes necessary because someone always has to use results / performance against such opposition as an excuse to slag off other fans. It leads to people feeling the need to remind them of the opposition, which gets turned back on them with accusations that they're, as you say, not just enjoying the win! You mentioned just enjoying it in moderation but considering the quality of opposition is surely doing just that, more so than those acting like beating Wolves U21s or Northampton has proven everyone who's 'anti-Warne' a fool?

I mean, it does kind of check out. Where would you place this Wolves U21 team in the grand scheme of opponents we've faced at Pride Park in a competitive fixture? FGR, Morecambe, Accrington Stanley, Northampton? Obviously not every team can successively be the worst team we've ever faced but it's literally a fact that some of the opposition we've faced this past couple of seasons are amongst the worst ever seen at Pride Park. How could you possibly argue any different? You don't need to be a 'Warne hater' to understand this.

Is it just my imagination or Is Cox f****** massive?

Obligatory "just check your line" comment from Barker

That's a good point actually. Imagine if we somehow lose this tonight, but then our our U21s go and beat Wolves U21s when they play them in March, without the assistance of our senior players.

Something that seems to affect all of our strikers, but is only picked up on when Collins does it. I reckon our strikers often find themselves out wide because if they weren't there we'd see the ball go out of play an extraordinary amount or our wingers doubled / ganged up on and struggling to get the cross over. There's no use Collins being in the box to get on the end of crosses if Collins being in the box means the crosses don't get into the box in the first place. He needs to be playing as part of a 2 up top where the other striker can ho help out the winger. While they're obviously players who will be on good wages, we were still able to bring in 10 permanent signings nearly all of who will be on comparative levels of pay, IMO, so 'a fair chunk' perhaps, but the majority of our budget will still be going toward Warne's signings.

3 Classy finishes too Just outside the centre circle Nearpost backheel 'Running' onto a through ball and lifting it over an onrushing goalkeeper