emjem

Why do you even bother if that's all you can come up with 

You really do have a strange habit of making even innocuous comments seem like you're trying to sneak an underhanded jibe in 😂

Deal pretty much agreed between the clubs...
https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/breaking-derby-county-closing-cardiff-9069289

Ebou Adams set to sign for us, great midfielder at this level. The type we need a strong powerhouse to let players like Bird Hourihane and Tommo play more ball.

Not really sure why everyone is getting so worked up about it. The club knew what they were working with and doing. We have opted to gamble on keeping Cashin and this is our outcome. We took gambles on two injury prone players we didn't need to. I can't imagine we are even close to justifiyng the wages spent on Bradley yet.
PW was in part hired because he is used to working under a budget. Did his Rotherham sides have a greater budget than we do?
I think DC had/has every confidence that PW could deliver promotion in these conditions. 
The last thing we need to do now is make a panic signing. We may have to accept that it is up to PW to get the best out of the resources he already has at the club. We will only really get a true idea of what DC is willing to put in once restrictions are lifted and my feeling is it won't be a huge amount different. But I'd rather we stay sensible.

I agree, think most fans feel similar, and this is where any perceived 'panic' is starting to come from. We all saw how lack of squad depth last season cost us. We're all desperate not to see the same happen again. 
Warne's not innocent in building expectation either as he's mentioned repeatedly recently wanting to get bodies through the door. However I've always got the impression from little things said here and there that he's actually finding it tough to get the players he wants, simply due to the restrictions placed upon him and the club.
It'd be fascinating to see how different our squad would look, and who Warne would have signed, if we didn't have any financial issues; as I suspect this is limiting our transfer dealings far more than many realise. 

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.
 

In the summer we had one left back on the books in Forsyth and not a single right back or right wing back?
And you're sat there saying Ward and Elder weren't needed? Of course they were.
Elder has been unfortunate with injuries but I'm convinced there's a player there, just needs a run of games.
It's only in hindsight now we have Nyambe and Wilson in that Ward isn't needed.

Please mods can we have the roll eyes imogi back,,,,,,,
you just come on to slate warne over anything and everything , real , made up or opinion it matters not ,when you’ve got to that stage your posts have no value , it’s just an unhinged series of semi insults to a bloke trying to manage a football club and not just that , it’s a club the he is right in the promotion race with 🤷🏻‍♂️

I don’t know how other clubs injury profile looks at the moment but you can’t help feeling we have had our share of bad luck with Wash, Waggy and JJ all at once, but according to some that will be Warne’s fault too…. Buys glass, wrong training methods, should have, could have .. it’s tedious sometimes

Our approach since the takeover has been incredibly short-term from a first team point of view. Clowes hired Warne on his ability to get teams out of league one, nothing more, and got rid of a very promising coach to facilitate that move. 
I understand that some of the transfers have needed to be short-term, but if we aren’t promoted this season then I would endeavour him reconsider his own approach. 
I’m in no doubt we would be in a much better shape, in almost every single aspect, had we gone with Rosenior - who was already well respected within the building, recruited really well despite strict budgets and had shown a lot of promise. The move isn’t unsurprising for a new owner of a club, who went for the CV of a manager who had ‘been there and done it’ over a guy who had a lot of promise.
For the record, I don’t blame him and I (with a lot of people) could see the logic but in hindsight I don’t think it was right. We don’t get to see what happens behind the scenes but I think this Mark Thomas has also been a big waste of money, or at least isn’t having an impact, because the recruitment has been poor. We’ve probably made Sonny Bradley the highest paid player in the division and dropped him after a couple of games - a long list of them with injury records have unsurprisingly spent the season injured. It’s a massive mess, whether that’s down to Thomas or Warne, I’m not sure, but certainly no creative approach has been taken. We almost exclusively signed players with Championship experience in the summer, deciding on paying out bigger wages for players on the downswing of their careers, over properly researching and scouting players on the upswing of their career. 
You also have a coaching staff who aren’t really recognised with coaching players, so maybe the short-term, experienced professional approach we take is because we can’t trust these guys to coach up players in the first place? I don’t know. Either way you look at it, I don’t think it’s a setup for a successful football club. 

Boro's Rogers was actually a £1.5m signing in the summer. Similar situation as Whittaker signing for Plymouth and now being linked with £10m+ moves. There's a common theme with the clubs selling young players for a lot of money - they have 'modern coaches' who have faith in playing youngsters. 
The market for Championship players used to be only PL clubs, but that market initially slowed down around Covid. However, clubs from Europe (Germany and Italy in particular) are now starting to take greater interest, in the hope of churning a massive profit to PL clubs in the future.
Young players prefer signing for clubs with modern coaches, and the club trust them more with their players. Carrick is a great example. This season alone he's signed Rogers, van den Berg, Azaz, Greenwood and Thomas. Rosenior has signed Philogene, Connolly, Carvalho, Delap, Twine and Morton

Lee Gregory would be fine if there is nothing else we can get in. He's experienced, will be a handful and I'd fancy him to chip in with a few goals.
What annoys me is I am reading some fans on twitter using this as a stick to beat Warne with. "I'm worried about Warne and our transfer policy if this is what we're doing"
Do you think if we sat Paul Warne in a room he'd say that Lee Gregory was his number one target and one he has always wanted?
No he wouldn't. Ideally he'd want a 24-27 year old proven league one striker who's ready to go and good enough to step up to the championship but if there are any available then 1. They aren't going to be sold and 2. If they were, we can't afford them. At all.
It's like our fans have seen that we have next to nothing, had to dip into a loan pot for CBT and are just ignoring that. 
If Gregory comes in he'll get my support, he's a stop gap for the season. Gives us an option. Is he what I want? No. He's not. But he might be the best we can get given our budget.
I've seen people say they'll be livid if we sign Gregory and we should have kept Brown. Livid? If be more livid if we didn't bring someone in.
Brown is nowhere near ready yet. Thrusting a young player in early can ruin them. 
I remember when we got linked with Jordan Rhodes and people were kicking off then. He's second top goalscorer now.
But alas, it's all Warnes fault. Warnes fault we've got no money, Warnes fault our midfield is poor when half of them are out injured. 

Not sure beggars can be choosers at this stage, we need back up for Collins at least and Warne knows that. Gregory knows the fanbase and expectations and all that jazz Warne thinks is important, moreso than a young loanee.
Yes it would be nice to have a Pesch type player that offers a big man little man combo with complimenting skills, but we do have players who can play off Collins if needs be. What we don't have in our squad or if Collins is missing (that suspension can't be far off) is more of a target man. 
I want Smith and I think because he has history with Warne he'd be a better fit for hitting the ground running.
Reckon we'll find a way to get Smith in on a permanent tomorrow. That would stop the wages proportion and loan fee issue. Taking over his contract for 18 months would suit all parties I'd expect.
Guess we'll see. 

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.  

If he’s fit he will:
Always give 100%
Score goals
Be a viable sub
Not upset existing players 
 
Okay, it’s not exciting, but if it’s that or no signing, we need back-up.
 

Not sure why this is being mocked. I thought he did a pretty good job for us when we were struggling in the Championship. 
Anyone seen him play recently? Just hoping his legs haven't gone.

Not stricly about January signings, but I thought an profile comparison with our 3 main promotion rivals would highlight where we were need to focus our attention on.



 
A few points of note:
1. I would say Warne's intended age profile is close to what Bolton currently have - the majority between 22 and 29, with more regular starters being in the upper end of that range. However, Bolton are known for having a more patient passing style. More game time over the rest of the season to the likes of Blackett-Taylor, Nyambe, Fornah and Ward would go some way to addressing the imbalance.
2. Those 3 clubs combined have given players aged 30+ 10538 minutes. We've given almost double the minutes to players over 30, with overr 12000 minutes to those aged 32 and over. Peterborough have almsot no players over the age of 24!
3. Both Portsmouth and Peterborough have given more minutes to those 21 and under. This is where we should have included Thompson and DRobinson much more than we have done. Occasional game time to the likes of Brown also would have helped. Rooney's injury is a mitigating factor.

While I'm not a huge fan of the link with Gregory - he made a decent contribution to Wednesday's push last season. 10 goals and 4 assist in 25 starts and 13 sub appearances.

What do you mean “if DCFC are restricted differently”?
We are still subject to an approved business plan following admin aren’t we? Did I imagine all of that? I don’t get why people are expecting us to trade in the same way as other sides when the permanent signings we made in the summer were all reported either as free agent signings (Bradley, Ward, Elder, Vickers, Nelson, Nyambe, Waghorn - with the associated signing on fees and wages), or buy now pay later under various terms (Wilson, Fornah, Washington). Even the one “fee” we have spent on Jan, the first fee we’ve spent since 2020 or something like that, is a £300k loan on the promise of some future transfer in the summer.
We are restricted differently to other clubs at present. Someone please confirm I’ve not lost my marbles 

It’s a difficult one, so Clowes gave that interview saying he “thinks” it’s a competitive budget, which no doubt it is, I’m no accountant but there are a couple on here who seem to know their figures so based on their posts I guess the agreed EFL plan will be relative to our size and income as a club. With that taken into account it probably means we’ve been able to pay very healthy wages for the level we’re at, the likes of Ward, Bradley, Elder and Washington will all be on a good whack.
The discussion from some in the summer and in hindsight for sure, is were some of the players we did sign the right choice? For some you can see an argument against it, as an example (and I don’t mind the bloke or his contribution to the side despite early errors) would the wage and whatever signing fees we spent on Bradley,  who has turned out to be third choice cb, have been better invested in a younger third choice cb option (Pennington who went to Blackpool was one discussed in the summer) and then could it have gone further and paid for another wage to add depth to another position? We’ll never know now.
But what is clear, when we’re doing deals dependent on future fees, and loan pots being used to pay for permanent deals etc is that we are very clearly still restricted in how we use what money we do have. Anyone looking at the spending of other league one teams as a stick to beat Clowes or Warne with (beyond comparing the effectiveness of the spend) is ignoring the club’s ongoing post admin situation in my opinion. 

I suspect it’s probably got something to do with them not having recently come out of administration and being subject to an EFL approved business plan for a two year period….
You can be sick of hearing about it, but that doesn’t change the reality of our situation. Regardless of our size and revenues, we did go into administration with large debts, we came out of administration and had to settle some debts, and we were required to submit a business plan to the EFL for approval which we then have to adhere to.
I’m all for the conversations about misuse of what funds we do have given the hit and miss success so far of our summer recruitment, we seemingly could and should have gone for other free agents as an example, perhaps those with a better age profile and more resale value. Though I still standby the fact the age profile isn’t as a bad as some make it out to be it’s a realistic argument to say we could have tried signing Knibbs or Smith (went to Reading) instead of Waghorn and Washington for example.
BUT regardless of the conversation around how we’ve used the restricted funding available to the club, I have accepted that those funds do remain restricted due to recent events that simply cannot be denied. 

I'm not too stressed about us bringing anyone in, honestly. It seems like we're struggling to highlight players who can make then team better and that's a concern. I'd love to see what Mark Thomas has been doing for the past 12 months - there is clearly a disconnect between him and Warne that needs addressing. 
If we're waiting around to see what Michael Smith is going to do, like he's the only striker in the world who can improve us, then the whole recruitment strategy needs binning. 

We'll be fine! 😄😉 
 
 

That’s true, although I do think that the signings at the likes of Bolton and Pompey are being looked at more enviously because of the lack of our activity.
With Bradley at Bolton and Holmes at Pompey, they may be good players but I wouldn’t start them ahead of our current options so it would be a waste of a limited budget.
I’d rather CBT over Callum Lang so I’m not particularly worried about that one either.
I think we need to worry more about ourselves rather than what others are doing, if we end the window with a couple of round pegs in the round holes we need then I’d still back us to finish in the top 2. I don’t think we will get those round holes, but missing out on promotion would be more to our failure to recruit rather than how well other clubs have done with their signings.