Fla Ram

I love centre midfield players that have the ability to be ‘there’ and he has it in an abundance. It’s a great trait and transferable at every level. 
It’s a different kettle of fish to Gorgeous George who had limitless ability and could do things I’ve never seen a Derby player do, but at the level we are at Ebou is a great alternate. Fantastic from the recruitment staff who deserve their credit on this one.

Adams is the real deal, Gayle is pure class and the 3-4-3 formation finally seems to be making sense (especially to Sibs who looks like a new player). The ref was having a great game until he suddenly wasn't, but it's about time we got some decisions going our way.
Just 8 more cup finals to go, but we're hitting our stride at just the right time. I reckon we'll do it.

That could have been a real banana skin game, but Derby navigated that brilliantly. Two great halves of football, lots of chances created and on another day that could have been comfortable. Still we did enough and deserved to win.
Props to Barkhuizen, I have criticised him in the past but he worked himself into the ground. My man of the match.
Gayle is such a clever striker. Great addition. 
Finally, Adams' calm in midfield was huge for us at key moments, another top performance from him. 

Only one team tried to play any football tonight. Reading had just the one shot on goal which tells its own story really. I think we need to consider how different that game was to the fixture at the Madjeski. Night and day for me and while we could have been more clinical, the best side won. Reading came to spoil and disrupt and in the past that has worked. Tonight, we stayed calm, played our game not theirs and got our just deserts. There's an air of confidence about this side and I like it. A lot.
COYR

Got a couple of decisions go our way for once but on the whole we definitely deserved the 3 points 

Rams 2 Reading 1 frgs Gayle

A really enjoyable half of football. Deserve a goal really. 

Derby County vs Reading
Tuesday 12th March
Pride Park   KO 1945
 
Opposition Bio: Reading have made more headlines off the field than on it in recent times as they find themselves in financial strife as a result of incompetency by their owner. Sound familiar? 
The EFL have seemingly cut them more slack than they did with ourselves but their patience must be wearing thin as deadlines to deposit sufficient funds regularly pass. The latest failure to pony up saw them docked further points and their season deduction now stands at six points in total. 
There was a further deduction of three points doled out, albeit suspended, after their understandably fed up supporters invaded the pitch and caused the early abandonment of their home match with Port Vale, the latters best result in recent months.
Where we had Mel Morris, Reading have Dai Yongge. This proves the old adage of being wary of baldies or fake Welshmen baring gifts.
Any sympathy we have for them should be tempered though by the thought that they are probably still laughing at us paying £3m for Nick Blackman.
Reading FC are known as the Royals, a distinctly naff nickname acquired after a young Prince Albert played a dozen games for the club before marrying Queen Victoria. Plus they hail from the royal county of Berkshire. They are also known as the Biscuitmen due to the town's association with the biscuit makers Huntley & Palmers. 
They are managed by Spaniard Ruben Selles and, having been relegated last season, will be looking to secure League 1 survival this season and kick on in 2024/25 under different ownership and without points deductions.
Reading are the proud holders of two notable records. In the 1985/86 season they recorded 13 straight victories at the start of the season in what is now this division and they also hold the record for the highest points total for their whopping 106 points in their 2005/06 Championship campaign. 
Opposition Form: Not too shabby in fairness. In the ten matches played since they beat us 1-0 at their place they have won a further four games with three draws and three defeats.
They arrive at Pride Park on the back of a 2-1 home defeat to Wycombe and in 18th place with a record of W12-D9-L16. It should be noted, however, that without their points deduction they would be in 14th position. 
Their away record is perhaps misleading as the bare stats of W3-D5-L10 needs to be looked at in the knowledge that they contrived to lose their first eight matches on the road. They all count obviously but their more recent form away since then reads W3-D5-L2. 
Their away wins have been at Wycombe (2-1), Stevenage (1-0) and Carlisle (3-1). They have also managed decent draws at Oxford and Peterborough.
In those 18 away games they have only failed to score on four occasions. Promisingly from a Rams perspective, they have only kept the one clean sheet on their travels.
Opposition Players: Going purely off the stats it would appear their chief dangermen are top marksman Harvey Knibbs (10 goals, 6 assists), Sam Smith (9 goals, 10 assists) and possibly Femi Azeez and Lewis Wing. They also have Robbie's son Charlie Savage, the experienced Harlee Dean and the wonderfully named youngster Jacob Hammond-Chambers-Borgnis who I hope gets a runout as I'd love to see if they put his triple-barrelled name on his shirt.
Rams vs Reading History: This will be the 48th league clash between Derby and Reading and the 54th in all competitions. The clubs' first meeting was a League Cup clash in October 1965 (1-1) but it wasn't until 22nd September 1984 that the Rams and the Royals met in a league fixture for the first time and the long wait proved barely worthwhile as we played out a goalless draw at their previous home, Elm Park. The return fixture would prove to be more memorable, for us at least, as Reading's first ever league visit to Derby in April 1985 saw the Rams win 4-1 with goals from Bobby Davison, Steve Buckley, Trevor Christie and Gary Micklewhite in front of a bumper crowd of 7,945 (really?).
That was not a taste of things to come in this fixture though as Reading have had by far the better of it. Our record on their turf is especially poor with just four wins in 24 visits. On Derby soil, though better as you'd expect, it is still deeply unimpressive. Our last victory at home to them was a 1-0 success in September 2021 but our overall home league record against Reading is W10-D3-L10. 
Expected Team: Same again one might think. Possibly a change in the middle to give more legs with Smith or Thompson in for Hourihane. 
Other Fixtures of Note: Something similar to Saturday would be nice. A Derby win and at least one of our rivals for automatic dropping points please. Their games midweek are:
Portsmouth vs Burton
Bolton vs Oxford
Carlisle vs Barnsley
Peterborough vs Stevenage (Weds)
COYR
 

I don’t want to get ahead of myself or allow myself to be excited, but.. I feel like something has finally clicked.
Best performance we’ve ever had under Warne, in my opinion. We’ve fell on to a workable system, the main reason was the recruitment staff doing their job and finding a gem in Ebou Adams and very recently I think it’s not in any small part to having to change the dynamic with Gayle upfront. I believe these two signings in particular have changed our fortunes, similarly to how Nyambe did earlier in the season.
Sibley and Ward are excelling. The defence are well balanced, the cohesion between the midfield and defence is significantly better, gaps aren’t as freely available for the other team and we are now working well going forward. I think we actually look like a team now, which for the majority of the season has definitely been missing something. The last two performances, the dynamic of the team, I’m finally hopeful. 

Biggest pleasing thing for me today compared to the Barnsley and Charlton game and one or two others is when we got the second goal we didn't do the usual sit back and try and defend it. This performance if we take into the last 9 games i think we go up. Win on Tuesday and Portsmouth mess up suddenly they get dragged in it with them playing Peterborough at the weekend. 

3 goals, some nice passages of play, a clean sheet, two wins on the bounce, equalled our away record(?), results going our way elsewhere, what’s not to love?! 
 

Our goal difference is now quite superior to the teams around us. With such a tight race for second, this could make all the difference. It's been a great day for us, we've played some really nice football in stretches. 

Poor formation for an away day breakfast plate imho; sausage should be between the defensive beans and rotated to prevent the midfield scrambled egg being encumbered with defensive duties. Egg should be deployed further forward and ahead of the hash-browns, with the mushrooms out wide but given license to cut in and play as a number 10. Really don’t believe the combination of fried & scrambled eggs ever works; they’re just too similar. At least one of the slices of toast should’ve been given a starting position to give added structure to the team, supporting the bacon which appears somewhat isolated and awkwardly placed in the way of the hashbrowns. Bizarrely part of the beans seem to currently be deployed as a wing-back…I can’t see that working at all. I’m liking the look of the fresh orange on the bench but not sure it’s got enough in the tank to last the whole 90 minutes. Just don’t think that line-up is going to cut the mustard today. Really need the lad Brown on there too, just to spice it up a bit. 

Job done, 3 goals, 3 points, 3 cbs with a clean sheet. 
Hopefully a turning point in the recent run, I know Port Vale didn’t offer much of a challenge but it’s important to win and we did so in a deserved manner. 

3-0, Sibley double! Ward crosses and Sibley controls it, sets himself, and drills a shot across the keeper.

Didn’t Warne say we would be unrecognisable this season after a full pre season? Nothing has changed from this time last year when we played the likes of Fleetwood and Shrewsbury at home, after signing players to suit his style of play for the last two windows..
 
 
 

Sacking Rosenior is looking more ridiculous as days go by isn’t it 😢

I think it’s evident Warne isn’t a good coach. He may be a decent manager, but a coach he is not.
His motto will be to work harder than the opposition, and then let your natural talent win games.
But that only works when the opposition aren’t set up well.
The moment we play higher calibre coached teams we get found out.
Warne would be a disaster in the Championship with us as we might be able to work as hard as the rest, but we won’t have more talented players and we won’t be well coached. 

What are these players being told to do in training? Surely it’s not get it out wide and hope NML can pull something out his backside for hours a day? Cos if it’s not that then we’re either praying for a set piece or a bit of magic from somewhere. We’ve created absolutely nothing against a team that haven’t won since November.
We turn every game into a scrap as if we’re the underdogs which of course suits 90% of this torrid division down to the ground. Why play around them when we can try and out-battle teams that haven’t got half as much talent as us? Baffling. 

I thought Gayle looked good tonight get another striker up top with him Waggy maybe and let’s have a go ….CBT looks poor so far I’m afraid 

Undone by Warne talking pre-match that we are much the same as any team in the league, picking a ultra-defensive side to start in a home game against a long time winless outfit, and then (it seems) allowing Charlton to come at us second half because we can’t hold the ball for more than 3 passes. His game management skills are non existent.

Just don’t get going 1-0 up against a team without a win for so long and then not going for the kill, s**** 

1-0 frgs Sibley

Anyone got any ketchup?