May Contain Nuts

No doubt someone will try to claim that his signing has spurred Barkhuizen on to better performances so he's already proving his worth.

Charlton fans said he was half arsed defensively but maybe we'll drill a bit more effort into him. It was also noted that he didn't cope well (/was easily nullified) when being doubled up on (but tbf not many wingers do)

They also said that he'd improved his fitness record / levels and was now able to play 90 mins game in game out... so of course he misses a couple of games injured before we sign him and his debut performances are marred by an apparent fitness issue.

He needs space to run into but the one through-ball we played in front of him he couldn't reach, but if he gets his pace and  fitness back from wherever it's disappeared to he should be a good rotation option with Barkhuizen for the rest of this season's away games.

34 minutes ago, ram59 said:

I find it really sad that a 'Derby fan' sits down and watches a match noting every slight chance, none of which really troubled our goalie, that the opposition had and in fact makes a note on 10 different occasions.

It is a bit odd, but I've always had Ap4 down as a bit of a parody account, intentionally presenting this info in a way which makes the position of those who the dismiss and ridicule the use of stats stronger. I can definitely picture one or two posters being sad enough to create a second account & use a VPN just to do that, tbh.

Even so it does still tell you something - all those opportunities and they didn't test our keeper? That doesn't point to us defending well (although we did a lot of good)  it points to the opposition being bloody rubbish whenever it actually mattered  - If the boot was on the other foot we'd be frustrated and saying how poor we were.

38 minutes ago, On the Ram Page said:

And what about his time at Derby. What were the other factors there.

Most of the positives listed above. He was still scoring goals in the 2021/22 season at Premier League level so had clearly developed as a player rather a lot since his last spell in League one in 2012/13.  When it came to facing League One defences for us he took the piss out of them with his ability to find space, hold onto the ball and see things one or two steps ahead of his opponents and some of his passing deserved more assists than it ended up producing.

There is some credit for Warne there, in that he didn't waste his talents by asking him to do a job that didn't suit him (unlike, say, Pearson with Martin - but Pearson did that because he wanted him out of the club and to justify bringing his own playes in) , but to not take advantage would have been criminal. He also scored a few free kicks, the manager doesn't affect a player's ability to strike a dead ball past a wall from 25-30 yards.

There were people last season claiming that we were too reliant on McGoldrick , to the detriment of the team as a whole because meant that the opportunities weren't shared around. I don't subscribe to that view though.

You only have to look at Jordan Rhodes' & Chris Martin's scoring records this season vs their last 4 or 5 in the Championship, or even look at Waghorn's start here before injury to see that a step down to League One after a few fallow years in the Championship can seemingly turn them into world-beaters. The managers play a part, but sometimes it really is as simple as the level of opposition faced being the biggest contributory factor.

It may also give people cause to think that perhaps the step back up to The Championship isn't as small as they're making it out to be.

45 minutes ago, Caerphilly Ram said:

Posters on both sides of the fence can be just as irritating.
It’s probably a given that if you are Pro Warne you’d get irritated by those most anti-Warne, and if you’re anti-Warne you’d get irritated by those most pro-Warne….and for everyone who’s somewhere in between…. it’s all quite irritating. 

There's not really that much that gets posted which is really "Pro-Warne" as such, you still rarely see any well constructed posts that actually explain why they think he's the right man for the long term etc, or give evidence that actually proves people's concrns unfounded. You do get the odd PR statement full of ifs, buts and maybes designed to make people doubt what they've seen with their own eyes, of course.

Perhaps that's because the evidence doesn't or can't really exist yet (until we are in the Champiuonship with him), or perhaps it's just easier to shout people down and be part of the 'in crowd' because you get less hassle that way, and rarely have to actually explain yourself?

I'd much rather be on their side of things, or on your fence, truth be told. Except I can't be, because I'm true to myself and I feel what I sfeel / see what I see.

No, rather than pro-Warne it's mainly "Anti-Anti-Warne"  which is fine I guess, but it gets annoying when it becomes  "Ridicule and round on anyone who's Anti-Warne" "Accuse people who are Anti-Warne of ruining the forum", when people try to throw a fire blanket over the slightest spark of doubt that Warne's doing a tremendous job and act as if his management is beyond reproach etc.

It reminds me of when Keogh was here and there was almost like a 'wall' of posters ready to jump in ahead of any criticism they perceived was about to come his way, whether it came or not, and whether whatever had caused this pre-emptive strike actually was down to Keogh or not - he became made of Teflon, anyone criticising him was accused of being unable to let Wembley go and that was that.

1 hour ago, On the Ram Page said:

So what’s your take on McGoldrick this season - 12 goals in a lower league (should be much easier to score. So must be playing alongside a greedy player or ones lacking quality, as the fans adore him and his personal circumstances haven’t changed or are better.

what were the other factors in the Derby season which made it so successful- quality of players were obviously not better, 

Playing alongside a more greedy player was just one example, using it as an example doesn't mean I'm stating it as a fact that he is.

Without watching Notts County play any 'take' would have to involve some guesswork, but a quick look at transfermarkt shows that he's been used more as an attacking midfielder & even on the wing this season. They're the 2nd highest scorers in their league, with Macaulay Langstaff their top scorer (22 goals in 31 appearances) so you'd have to assume they see McGoldrick's role as more of a support player than the main striker.

It seems to work for them, they're happ[y with it. It doesn't mean that their manager is getting less out of him than Warne did, or he's having a 'worse' season. It's about the team.

vs

He's hardly played as a CF. He's also a year older, which when talking about 36 year olds can be a massive difference - see the difference in Curtis Davies over 2 seasons - although I don't think that's actually the case here.

1 hour ago, On the Ram Page said:

The other factors being that you don’t like Warne?

Wrong.

Other factors like the experience they've gained from careers played at higher levels, the current quality of opposition they're up against and the standing of their current team within it, the quality (and type) of teammate too because one season you could be playing alongside a greedy b****** who gives you no supply, the next a selfless player.  You can throw in popularity with fans as well, and personal circumstances away from football make a difference too.

1 hour ago, Archied said:

Yep it’s interesting that the poster minimise mcg under warne and perhaps nml by saying his goals per game was better than his best career season under warne when mcg dropped down before yet we have heard consistently how warne beasts his players and causes time out injured , well he got a tune out of mc g and is doing the same with nml , 

I just wish certain posters would give warne a fair crack of the whip , everything bad is because of him , everything good in spite of him is the default of some 🤷🏻‍♂️

It's not a fair crack at the whip you want him to be given though, it's for him to be given all the credit for his grandmother's ability to suck eggs.

Nowhere did I say that Warne isn't a contributing factor, but attributing the reason for them having their best directly to Warne is just daft.

Nothing I've posted is unfair on Warne, it's just an assessment based on what I see while holding him to the standards set by his billing, his comments and our aims and objectives.

1 hour ago, Archied said:

Didn’t playing under warne do the same for mc g last season too

They've had their 'best' seasons (although McGoldrick had a better goals per game ratio the previous time he dropped down to L1, I believe) but attributing it to them playing under Warne ignores a number of other factors.

NML was a player I was desperate for us to sign when we were trying to survive under Rooney, he only ended up at League One level due to personal problems, not footballing ability.

8 minutes ago, Eddie said:

OK, so I came across as a bit of a dick a couple of hours ago - sorry about the dickishness, but I think that's because I'm from a generation of Derby fans who supported the club through thick and thin - and I still do.

I really wish that we could re-generate the 'Siege Mentality' of the Rooney era.

A siege mentality comes from being underdogs and having something (real or imagined) to fight against. You're asking for the impossible if you're after that in our current situation.

We just need to find a way to play all of our games away from Pride Park.

2 minutes ago, ariotofmyown said:

Come on! Must be some very confused posters tonight who can't understand how such a poor team can be winning 3-0 to the new Barcelona.

Not really, it's entirely obvious how we're winning 3-0.

Can we sign Bird back from Bristol in the summer please?

6 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

I can’t believe some of the comments on this thread OK, it’s not best quality of football but some folk are way over the top. Some people also seem to be forgetting that Exeter are one of the form teams with some big results recently. 

You can only comment on the performance they put out on the day.

They may be the form team but nothing they did in the first half showed that, and it wasn't because we didn't let them.

10 minutes ago, Bris Vegas said:

Exeter are the better side here. They play some nice stuff.

Not sure they're better, we've given them plenty of space in the middle (despite Adams' good work) but being better would indicate they have the quality to make use of that space, and so far they've fluffed their lines every time.

It's the difference between being a team with a couple of Championship quality midfields and a team with League One quality midfielders.

2 minutes ago, oodledoodle said:

Did Exeter get the measurements wrong when designing that stand?

Think RD said it couldn't be any bigger because of a railway line running alongside it.

Good shot, terrrrrrible keeping.

Championship class showing through.

19 minutes ago, Crewton said:

Now do the same analysis taking into account injuries. 

Below is a table showing how many players each team had used up to matchday 31. You can see DCFC are in the lower quartile.

At the end of last year, Wildsmith, Nyambe, Nelson, Cashin, Fozzy, Bird, Hourihane, NML and Collins had played in pretty much every league game for which they'd been fit and available. That's what they mean by a consistent starting XI. 

If you really expected Warne to pick the same starting XI every game in this league I think you're being wildly unrealistic.

Strike up another example of people being so quick to dispel any potential criticism of Warne that they jump in to defend him when there isn't even a criticism being made!

You're applying motives to my post that simply weren't there.

If anything I was going to say, that perhaps this shows why our performances still look so disjointed most of the time.

However, if you absolutely insist that we've had a consistent starting eleven it removes that as an excuse and makes our lack of cohesion worse.

10 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

We've had 8 players start at least 75% of our league games - Wildsmith, Nelson, Cashin, Forsyth, Bird, Hourihane, Collins, NML.  I reckon that's a much better indicator than the number of unique XIs we've put out.  

Aye that makes sense.

Now I'm not sure if was an interesting thing to look into or not 😅

The thing that does annoy me, is that I thought we'd (somehow) be clever enough to be running two different versions of the accounts - one with our amortisation method applied and one with the 'standard' method so we knew exactly what we could ensure we did just enough to be keeping within the limits whilst fully understanding just how far we could push things, if that makes any sort of sense at all.

2 hours ago, Crewton said:

Another myth that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Thought I'd look into that seeing as Whoscored don't seem to put any figures on what it really means.

We've put out 24 unique starting XIs across 31 League games. 19 of these are one-offs.

We've had 2 of those unique XI's repeated 3x each (games 1,2 & 3 / 22, 23 & 24)

  &

..and 3 unique XI's represented 2x each (games 4 & 5 / 9 & 11 / 19 & 20)

& &

Each of our last 7 Starting XI's has been unique, and presumably that will be 8 in a row later tonight, although it's yet to be seen if tonight's lineup is a repeat of one from earlier in the season or something new again.

Between games 6 and 18 (13 games) we used 11 diferent XI's which have yet to be repeated.

I'd hardly describe this as having a consistent starting XI, however we look at it.

1 hour ago, David said:

With football though, it’s not like snooker where you can line the balls up and have 2 players take the same shot.

xG fails to take into account the ability of the opposition defenders and keeper. It fails to take into account weather conditions.It fails to take into account the current situation in so many way, home, away, comfortable lead, behind, fitness level, carrying knocks.

If it was a game played between robots in an indoor arena I could see the value.

Comparing it to shots as a metric is nonsensical, shots and shots on target are facts. Indisputable facts.

Shots and shots on target also fail to take into account any of the above.

It's Key Passes I really hate. RB gives ball to RW 70 yards from goal. RW runs forward 30 yards and balloons a ball 20 foot higher than the bar, closer to the corner flag than the goal. RB adds a key pass to their figures. Yes, this is based on two players with the initials CC and TI!.

Provide context for why other teams may not be as strong as or may struggle to improve much from last seasom.

Get bashed on the head with the giant NOPE sign wielded by Warne's fiercest defenders.

43 minutes ago, Van der MoodHoover said:

I didn't know this.....who is the brains?

https://www.dcfc.co.uk/news/2022/09/interview-paul-warnes-first-interview-as-derby-county-head-coach

A collective braintrust of Richie, Hammy, Andy & um, Paulie, of course!

3 hours ago, jono said:

 

That final sentence. Well yes of course. There’s a handful of Fergie’s sitting on the pavement outside Aldi in Chad with gizza job badges and we just drove past. 

I think you're better than making out my post asked for us to be looking for the next Alex Ferguson. 🙄 That's on a par with accusing people not happy with our performances of thinking we should be playing like prime Barcelona.

I wouldn't expect a manager to do all of those things all of the time, but to do at least some of those things more than once in a blue moon would be quite useful, and will be needed if we are to progress.

There's a long, long, long distance between Alex Ferguson and a manager better equipped than Warne who, by his own admission, isn't even the brains of the operation.

I'm always open to the idea that Warne could improve, but I'm not gong to hang my hat on it happening without solid evidence like some seem willing to do. That might mean that when we go up he needs to do a bit of a rejig of his backroom staff, but like Nigel Clough before him there's potential that his loyalty to certain people may hold him back.

Love all the spurious, near-unanswerable questions which depict a future based on a blind-faith-lead, theoretical idea that Warne has what it takes to manage in the Championship and would see us matching the likes of Ipswich, Sunderland & Plymouth rather than Sheffield Weds, who are the club we're most comparable to out of last season's promoted teams. 

Ipswich & Plymouth have had success due to appointing progressive young managers, Sunderland got up through Neil (not great) but made a very shrewd appointment in Mowbray after he left.  Coventry & Robins I don't know a great deal about but he appears to be one of those managers who's just clicked at a certain club and feels like the right fit. Sheff Weds may yet stand a chance of staying up because Danny Röhl looks a good appointment, he also seems to be well regarded as another of progressive types.

The whole "competitive league" thing is the same argument Forest fans were roundly laughed at for coming out with with last season to make it sound like they were beating all the odds to stay up, despite it mainly being because of the way other teams imploded after years of poor management caught up with them and Forest's own £150m+ splurge producing  just enough s*** to stick to the wall.

A league can be both more competive but also far weaker, and that probably fits in with what we're seeing - we do get results because we put in the graft, there's plenty of industry and  'busywork' (and it has always been to Warne's credit that he recognises how important that is) which covers the competitiveness, but we also have individuals with more quality (and just as importaintly experience) than pretty much anyone else, which covers the general lowering of quality.

That will (probaby) be enough to get us out of League One this season, but to stay in the Championship you can't just rely on the hard work, and I think it unlikely that, whatever our budget, we'll be able to bring in enough (/good enough) players to provide that individual quality to the degree we'll be able to play poorly collectively but still scrape enough points for survival.

That means needing a manager who can do those (cliched) "producing a team better than the sum of its parts", "performing above budget" and "out-thinking the opposition" things.

51 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

He didn’t look keen when he played - even though he’s not played for us yet?

He was straight into the team for the home game against Cheltenham, played 64 minutes.

I can't blame you form forgetting he was on the pitch though, his teammates didn't seem to realise either.

He didn't get involved, hovered around the halfway line for most of the match waiting for balls that never came his way. On the rare occasion he did see the ball he looked OK, but didn't / couldn't use his pace (perhaps due to the injury) and there was one noticeably poor pice of control where he kicked the ball too far ahead of him, although it's possible that's something he'd normally make up for with his pace.