May Contain Nuts

I'm thinking guesswork may be the order of the day tbh...

Honestly cannot be arsed to get into this debate with anyone today but if that’s what you think the Derby Way was or that what Max Bird’s game is then you probably watch a different version of football to me

Who is Mike McGrath and why have I taken an immediate and impassioned dislike toward him?

I had a quick look at that earlier hoping for better results, although you've got to remember that a shot isn't necessarily a chance and I can't really remember him missing loads of good chances
https://fbref.com/en/comps/15/shooting/League-One-Stats (no. 54)

And Cash!

Who is Mike McGrath and why have I taken an immediate and impassioned dislike toward him?

Who is Mike McGrath and why have I taken an immediate and impassioned dislike toward him?

Who is Mike McGrath and why have I taken an immediate and impassioned dislike toward him?

You could look at it that way, but you could equally just wonder why we were so reluctant to give Brown minutes even when the opportunity arose, to then just do this... who's also a kid in the same situation. Would Warne even use him? He didn't Brown. All hypothetical of course, don't expect this is the guy we are even after.

Nah, just paraphrasing or conjecture I think 😂

Of course it was .
I hope he does well at Derby .
He will be a player with lots of energy by the look of it .
 

It’s been the theme since Clowes took over.
The initial summer signings post admin were quite public as it seems a number of them were lined up by Rooney/Rosenior, the signings in Jan then seemed to come out the blue (as underwhelming as they were), the signings last summer were known to Big Trav but not the media or Twitterati from what I recall(?), and the CBT info only seems to have leaked from the Charlton side. Even the links to Smith and Gregory have come from local Sheffield journos.
As anxious as it seems to make the fan base in general I think I prefer it. Warne has maintained that bids were in for players, Adams has said himself this move was lined up a while ago, 2 players in on top of keeping the ones we had (so far 🤞).
Just a striker now please Santa Clowes 🙏 

That's Mason Bennett I reckon.

George Thorne vibes. The only player never to return from a broken leg because of a random bone infection.

Perhaps, and I'd rather we didn't make such mistakes in the first place, but admitting an error and making an attempt to correct it is better than just buggering on anyway.
Not that there's any real indication Fornah is going anywhere.

I watch every single game and pay to do so. I go to pride Park when I'm in Derby just to see it even when we're not playing. I used to get the train from Cornwall to Derby at the age of 15 with my mate who was the same age, watch them and then travel home. 
I don't care about watching Any other team, England included. I don't even watch MOTD anymore because unless Derby are in the prem I'm not interested. Derby is football to me, and I never miss a game, even when in hospital with my new born, I still watched. I keep upto date every hour for anybit of news, I live and breathe this club, so don't tell me to "support the lads" because it's all I do unfortunately. So if I have an opinion or assumption, and a fair one at that, I'll definitely be inclined to share it.

Anyway, if we sign this lad (which I have no doubt we will) then it goes some way to alleviating people's concerns about how he sees the team working better as a unit, which is what most people critical of Warne do actually want from him.
Awareness, learning, improvement. It's just that we haven't seen anywhere near enough of it.

They haven't though have they. Thompson and Fornah have been right there, as well as the likes of Robinson and Fapetu. He'd bombed Fornah out entirely for a game or two.

🤣🤣 was more an assumption since he’s looked good in the championship and too good for L2

Typically if O'Rourke says something is agreed and will happen, it happens?
Thank the lord he sounds like a proper DM, although that's no guarantee he'll be used as one.

I think the big realisation from this window is that we're not as flush as first thought, either through EFL restrictions or our own frugality. The message this time has been very clearly the club cannot put much money into signings. I'm guessing the restrictions we're still under are quite harsh but for some reason we're reluctant to throw the EFL under the bus by saying this explicitly. 
Having tight restrictions that massively limit our transfer dealings is absolutely not Warne's fault.
My main issue is the complete lack of tempering expectations from the club. Why did we ever come out and make comments about having a 'good budget', when in January we'd be having to do weird dealings like doing a permanent transfer as an initial loan? If the restrictions were still tight we should have been subtly warning fans that we likely still weren't able to spend transfer fees- everyone assumed Warne was being coy when he inferred this, turns out he was closer to the truth than we thought.
 

Whichever system we play we have the same issue though - the balance of the signings was haphazard, some don't suit the role they've been given and we're paying high wages for backups, or rotation players.
With 'limited' resources , can we afford to carry a squad with enough players to play these 2 formations with everyone getting adequate game time?

More "poorly used" than "limited"

I think we’re in a bit of a bind with short-term vs long-term strategy. 
A smart, patient League One club with a long-term strategy doesn’t pay £300k to release a 26 year old League One winger from his contract a few months early. But it sounds like we really need to get promoted sooner rather than later. And if the CBT signing and other short-term moves get us promoted, it may all be worth it.
The question is, if we were to get promoted, I have no idea if we would be more strategic or we’d just carry on with the scattergun approach.  

The point isn't whether they're decent players though, it's that they were bought for a system we dropped after a few games and some of them represent round pegs in square holes (or is the other way round? I can never remember)
Ward brought as a RWB, sure but then we stopped playing a RWB and he's not a good enough defender to play RB and he's not as good as NML so won't play RW... and Wilson is preferred there anyway.
Elder bought as a LWB but he's not a LWB
Bradley is a good CB and has played in a 3 but he's clearly unsuited to the way we played it at the start of the season.
Fornah doesn't really have a position, so how is he going to develop toward and be comfortable in any particular role?
We'll wait and see if CBT offers us much more than Barkhuizen, we're not sure how Warne will be askng hm to play yet tbf, hopefully we actually bother to give him the ball in the next match to find out!
Nelson, Bradley AND Niambe brought in on top of Cashin and Forsyth as options in a 3CB system? Who's 1st choice RCB? It would be one one of Nelson or Nyambe, which means one of those players (likely two of our higher earners) missing out.
With 3 at the back NML has to play centrally, so in competition with Collins, Washington, Waghorn AND TJJ - 5 players for 2 positions?
"We can only do what we can do" but "with hardly any money" we seemed rather willing to overstack certain positions with players on high wages who may not get as many minutes as the outlay would justify.