Carl Sagan

I'd have presumed we'd sold Bird to buy Ennis. Shame if Ennis is off the agenda, in which case I hope we're bringing in someone else to be excited about.

That's a weird thing for Bird to agree to. I'd have thought he'd have a few suitors when out of contract at the end of the season, at which point has been repeatedly said, we'd get very decent compensation for him. To do this deal now, we must be very keen on money now to bring a striker in. We've discovered that the restrictions of the business plan we're having to work to mean we cannot buy any players unless we sell, hence CBT had to be a loan until the end of the season. I suspect Bristol City will have got him on the cheap by us getting the money up front now. If we use the money on Smith, we're fools. It's just so short-termist and so short-sighted. If we use it to bring in a promising striker with the likelihood of flourishing for us in the Championship after helping us towards promotion, then it's clever business.

Not had chance to go back far through the thread, so apologies if already discussed. Seems legit we've been turned down for Liverpool's Bobby Clark

Maybe, but they know we're desperate because our recruitment is so hopeless, we can only look at old Rotherham old boys or, when that fails, go back to the same club for even older ex-players. Come tomorrow night they'll probably be laughing all the way to the bank.

Last season, par would have been the playoffs and we failed. This season par is automatic promotion. The playoffs would be failure, even if we still managed to scramble up (in which case the failure is not considered too bad). To "slide out of the playoffs" this year would be catastrophic.

Just looked and I can't start a poll either. Meanwhile... 6th place and out in the playoff semifinals.

Because across the entirety of the known football world, our only strategy is to get the Rotherham band back together. It beggars belief.

Apparently we've snuck in a new midfield signing that's gone completely under the radar: The young midfielder from Wigan must have had a very impressive debut! 🤣🤣

From the Sky highlights here's what people are talking about, the Cheltenham number 6 back-heading the ball off our goal line with 30 seconds to go after Vickers deliberately lowered his arms to leave the ball and let it drift over his head. Miss of the season. Very bad goalkeeping right at the moment we needed Vickers to be strongest. As mad as Wildsmith's rush of blood penalty against Oxford. I guess we have two League One keepers, though I feel Wildsmith exudes more confidence, which rubs off on me and the defence.

Bolton 2.11 ppg Portsmouth 2.03 ppg Peterborough 2.00 ppg RAMS 1.93 ppg Barnsley 1.86 ppg Stevenage 1.81 ppg You say we're 3 points off top, but that's a skewed view of the table without taking games played into account. To catch Bolton given this differential we probably need to win 6 or 7 games in a row, and there are only 17 games left. We will need 3 or 4 wins in a row from here to move into second place. We have never got over 2 points a game this season (even Warne talks about that) and it's clear we need to be above that to become likely for promotion. PS There's no such thing as "joint third on points" ;)

In the close season, when McGoldrick moved on, it was hard to see where the goals would come from. Collins has been immense. For his scoring, for his defending, and for his staying fit when all around him are injured. I would love it if he makes it over 200 league goals this campaign, as he should. Probably not many of them have been better than yesterday's volley which, according to Wiki, took him to 192.

What would make Fraser any better than Dajaune Brown, who I think is more prolific in PL2? And that's saying something when he's playing for us, after everything our academy has been through. Not criticizing, just am genuinely curious.

I think we're under par in the league table - not by a huge amount because there aren't top sides away over the horizon like last season, but the pre-season poll on here was an expectation of promotion and with over half the season gone we're only 4th. We should be doing better.

It's been said before Yesterday Warne said "They played the pitch better than us". If the pitch is genuinely becoming unusually bad, we should be more used t this than our opponents and taking advantage of it.

Exactly this. It's bullying. Does the manager think he's being funny? Shame on him, steadily chip chip chipping away at the players who aren't in his clique. For me the best case scenario is we scrape up, Warne gets found out (as he surely will) early next season and we move quickly to bring in another manager.

Victory. Any win will do. While I think 90% of managers would have us in a better position, we're still in the hunt. A vital win - which hopefully gives the players more confidence.

Presumably he's acting under instructions. Warne insists on getting the ball into the box as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, I'm only listening to Radio Derby, but an incident sounded weird. Sibley apparently elbowed in the face, drawing blood. No freekick given. Sibs has lengthy treatment, yet despite this being an obvious head injury, is ordered to leave the field allowing Cheltenham to attack 10 men, Barks having to deputize as left back. And, to compound this, the referee would not let Sibley back onto the field for a long time. What is going on with the officials? How can they be so very poor?

Weston must be injured. Otherwise it's surely inconceivable he wouldn't be on the bench today?

As I said earlier, Elder's injured, so Sibley was expected at left back. We look as if we're going to try and blitz them from the start, and then hold on. I might have kept one of the wingers on the bench to be able to bring on an attacker if we need to late on. Or at least had Weston on the bench. Playing 3 wingers and a centre forward from the outset is novel. As I said in his own thread, poor Dajaune Brown and the appalling timing of his loan. What must he be thinking?

When we lost to Stevenage it felt as if everything had come to a head and many (including me) were calling for Warne to go. The next game at home to Northampton felt pivotal and we rushed into a three goal lead, four just after half-time, and the manager was secure. We went on a great run and got to 3rd in the league, looking as if we might sweep all before us. Yet, the Derby "nose-bleed" system cut in and we're now down to 5th (on ppg) and falling. With only 18 games to go, if we're genuinely going to challenge for automatic promotion we need another run similar to the one we just had, and pronto. Last year's failure on the back of a 17 game unbeaten run does loom heavily over us. Draw or lose and we're likely really in trouble. I'm hoping it's a convincing win and the start of something again, as we try to haul ourselves back into contention. I'll take any win. I feel this game is again that big test of mentality we came through against Northampton with flying colours. Do we need a sports psychologist? Do we have one? Or is that Warne's job at this level?

Sure I saw somewhere that Cash and Elder are struggling. If that's the case, we'll be looking at: Vickers Wilson Bradley Nelson Sibley Bird Hourihane Thompson NML Collins CBT Subs: Wildsmith Ward Barkhuizen Robinson Bardell Weston Fapetu which is very thin on the ground. I'd much rather Wildsmith back in the sticks.

Here's the American Dept of Justice press release on Kirchner: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/jury-convicts-slync-founder

Ryan was substituted in the previous game so I'd wondered if he might have been struggling with a knock. Hope he's available to play in the Angola match and returns to us full of confidence and and pride at Namibia having done so well.

Can't recall for 28 days. Terrible timing for the lad when he might finally have had a first team chance.

That's an interesting one. I loved what Nick Cave said about AI songwriting, but also fear he might be wrong in terms of the herd's lazy acceptance of it. Will "generative AI" only ever copy and adapt, or will it actually generate something original? I ask myself the same question in science, when people tell me about the breakthroughs that are apparently coming. Could an AI have created the intellectual cathedral that is Einstein's General Theory of Relativity? And, given this is the theory we now need to replace to gain a deeper understanding of the Universe, how can AI possibly ever have the understanding of what it is doing and proposing, to move us on?