Carl Sagan

4 hours ago, chadlad said:

Having watched the highlights it looks like we had a lot of half chances to score but nothing really clear cut. Even the Knight header was quite a difficult opportunity.

The best chance was McGoldrick’s near the end from a few yards out which he really should have buried.

 

2 hours ago, Ellafella said:

It’s not the quality of the shooter; more about the quality of the scoring opportunity. We are getting shots in but they are not very obvious chances ie we aren’t obtaining control in the opposing third. 

Agree with both of these. When you watch the highlights across the division other teams are making obvious scoring opportunities (and scoring) whereas we're making half chances (and not). Clearly this performance was better than and much more forward-thinking than Shrewsbury (though Fleetwood are probably a worse team). So that's a positive. Yet again, Sibley appears our most forward-thinking, dangerous, creative player using his skill and football brain to try to unpick a packed defence, yet LR only uses him for a few minutes each match. And it's much harder to impact a game coming on than playing from the beginning.

28 minutes ago, Steve How Hard? said:

Haven't managed to read the whole thread so don't know if this has been mentioned but did anyone else notice Youl Mawene doing the warm up for their players before the game and for the subs at half time? 

May have been difficult to spot from the away end. Quite easy to spot from behind enemy lines. 

Good spot! Joined in September as Head of Sports Science. Was at Salford before as Strength and Conditioning Coach. Unless he lies on LinkedIn, heaven forbid! https://uk.linkedin.com/in/youl-mawene-7133b049

1 hour ago, 86 Hair Islands said:

Give it a rest mate. The set up was fine as the 20+++ shots on goal indicate. How many times did we create as many chances in a game last season, or the season before? Against Shrewsbury we did look toothless, whereas today we created enough chances to have wrapped up the game inside 30 minutes. There's a clear and material difference and pretending otherwise does you few favours.

My response was to someone posting as if Rosenior has just arrived at the club, when the general talk is he was in charge of the training and setup last year as well as this. A time when keeping the ball was also the priority over scoring goals. So there's a worrying, long-term pattern. I'm glad if you think it looked better today. Time will tell, and let's hope it all works out, but surely you must have some concerns when only Morecambe and Shrewsbury have scored fewer goals than us in Division Three? 

1 hour ago, alram said:

we havent scored goals for a long time now it isnt just the way LR is setting us up

LR has been setting us up for a long time now. Both last season and this. And then part of the coaching setup the season before.

2 hours ago, EulogyForEvolution said:

I don't know what Sibley has to do to get rewarded with a string of starts.

If he's on for the 90, playing in his best position, we create enough chances to win that for me. He created an absolute hat full and he frees up other players with his runs and excellent touches and movement in the final third. 

If Sibley doesn't start the next game Liam can put himself in the bin.

 

1 hour ago, HorsforthRam said:

LR after match interview re. Sibley. Says he’s got a big part to play. Feels he’s effective being used against a tiring team (after 60 mins) when the game gets stretched. 

When I saw the starting line up I didn't expect us to score. Dobbin has one good performance as sub and is brought straight into the team. Sibley has been outstanding in every performance this season and Rosenior refuses to start him. What's that about? Seriously?We have only scored all season when Louie has been on the pitch. Zero goals without him playing. It is unfathomable. Of course Rosenior will start him in a second string midweek in the League Cup, but this team which has not scored a single away league goal so far, needs him there from the off in every league game. 

If Rosenior really thinks Sibley's more effective coming on off the bench, then Rosenior doesn't know what he's talking about. Which is worrying. While it sounds as if we were a little better today, the frustration for so many of us is it's clear we could be so much better but the manager is beginning to appear too stubborn to see what's so obviously staring him in the face. 

What's "Derby" short for? "Derby nil" at the moment.

58 minutes ago, DavesaRam said:

............... and no way on God's earth can we play Sibley in his best position - ever.

It's just the strangest thing. And when it's so obvious he's what we need.

35 minutes ago, David said:

I feel for Oduroh, a RB that can’t get a game when we have no RB, preferring to play a CM there whilst trying to sign one.

What hope does he have for any kind of game time? If he’s not ready, why even stick him on the bench, let him get some game time with the U21’s. I would be a bit pissed off if I was him.

Totally agree. He's seemed a bit nervous when at the start of games when he has played, but that's only going to get worse if the management show a lack of faith in him. Given his upbringing at Man City I can't see how we could have got anyone more suited to how Rosenior wants to play. And he must have thought it made sense to drop to the third tier as then he would get get time, which I applaud for a young player. I think so far it's appeared Rosenior feels duty bound to put all his big name players on the pitch based on their reputation, whether or not it's the best combination. So when Smith, Hourihane and McGoldrick are fit they will likely all play regardless, which means there's no room for the players I think we clearly need in the starting lineup.

Following your lead, it won't happen but for me a much better team than what we will play would be:

Wildsmith

Stearman     Cashin

Oduroh                      Bird                    Roberts

Knight       Sibley        Hourihane

Collins        Barkhuizen

Subs: Anang   Forsyth   Smith   Thompson     McGoldrick    Dobbin   Mendez-Laing

It's likely you would want to bring McGoldrick, Dobbin and Mendez-Laing on at some point to maintain attacking energy throughout and how you did that would depend on how the players were looking before.

Edit: writing this reply I missed @nottingramasking where I'd fit people in, so here it is.

2 hours ago, sage said:

We are trying to sign a right back. What would you have us do in the meantime? 

Play Smith, Oduroh or Roberts there so Knight can bring his box-to-box energy into central midfield?

For those saying it's just our strikers not firing yet or us not being able to afford good ones, we're 17th out of 24 in the third division in terms of the number/quality of chances we've created and joint 18th in terms of the number of goals we've actually scored. In Division Three. This amply demonstrates we're scoring what you'd expect from the number of chances the team is creating through RoseyBall.

The glaringly obvious problem remains we're hardly creating any chances. Very much like last season. If we want to exit this league in the right direction we have to score a lot more goals. To match the current top teams we need to double the average number of good chances we're making, which is a massive change. 

Rosenior isn't stupid but he appears to have a blindspot over this. He bangs on about the chances we are creating and the goals will surely come because of this, but these chances are an illusion, a figment of his imagination. No one wants him sacked but we do need him to wake up and smell the coffee. To see his midfield picks and method of play aren't working.

It only needs small tweaks. Starting Sibley for the next several games and moving Knight alongside him in midfield would change everything. We have other options for makeshift right backs. We don't have other options for dangerous attacking midfielders who will carry the ball at pace, shoot when the opportunity arises, and take risks around the opponent's box to score goals. 

30 minutes ago, nottingram said:

Is this the case?

Created plenty at Charlton but missed many chances, last night I did not watch but certainly looked like Stearman should have scored and probably Sibley too.

I don’t think style of play really comes into it. Chances are being created certainly in our first 3 games of the season but are largely being missed. Collins is the prime suspect of that but I have belief that at this stage of the season the main thing is he is getting in the spots to miss them.

Despite our dominance we created hardly any chances against Charlton (I would say three decent ones all game) and seemingly three again last night. Stearman's was a bad miss but he's a fourth-choice centre half. Sibley could not have hit his shot any better, but it was an excellent save. There was one more when Hourihane should have shot but played a poor pass to Barkhuizen instead. Three half chances a match is not enough. It might seem like it is because we've become used to such slim pickings over the last few seasons, but the reality is we need *a lot* more chances if we're to climb out of League One. It is not about strikers. Kevin Hector would not score in our team. It's about style of play and team selection.

In the eight halves of league football we've played this season, Louie Sibley has completed only one, at home to Barnsley. We scored two goals in that single half of a match, before Sibbo was hauled off almost immediately after half-time. In all the other seven halves that he hasn't had much if any game time in, we've scored one goal in total. It ain't rocket science, Liam.

Without our most forward thinking, positive, dynamic midfielder, we simply do not create enough chances. Instead we play the ball ponderously in front of opposition defences, before eventually going back to our keeper, or we run into cul de sacs. 

Sadly, the best we can hope for is @Ghost of Clough's starting 11. If I were picking the team Knight and Sibley would both be at the heart of a more adventurous, energetic midfield.

My concern is we have dropped a division but despite that are only creating a tiny number of chances each game. But that LR is deluding himself into believing we're creating loads of chances and just not taking them. And, because of this, LR claims he is extremely happy with how we're playing. I said before the season that if we were to think about promotion we had to completely change our mindset as a promotion-winning team must score goals. Instead we've stuck with the ultra defensive setup, with two holding midfielders and no midfield support for the striker. It is same old, same old, where we look a little better because the standard of our opponents is worse. 

Only watching the RamsTV highlights for Shrewsbury (so it may be wrong) we had 3 OK chances for our 80% match possession. The first and best fell to Stearman who headed wide but this was from a set piece not creative open play and, unfortunately, central defenders are not renowned as finishers or they'd be strikers. Then I would say Hourihane had a very good opportunity, but took the coward's way out and instead of shooting over hit a pass to Barkhuizen meaning the keeper was pretty much on the winger before he could shoot. Finally a ball to the far post reached substitute Sibley who brought it down and hit an absolutely blistering shot which their keeper somehow saved. 

In the post match RamsTV interview LR says it was 99% a good performance but he was cross we went long at the end and this was wrong. And we need to keep playing out from the back (the implication being we shouldn't vary this). 

It's frustrating because we seem to have assembled a squad capable of being right up there but we're not using the players properly and our tactics are wrong. Only 4 teams in League One have scored fewer goals than us. Everyone else from 15th place up has scored more than us. This is because we are not creating anything like enough chances, which is all down to poor team selection and tactics. 

Had a read of their match thread to see how they viewed the game and extracted these comments (in timeline order) relevant to us:

 

Derby very much ahead on possession.

 

83% to our 17% currently.
Its what you do with it that counts though.

 

most of that was passing the ball backwards and forwards on the edge of the box , and then eventually they hoof it like we do

 

Town defending really well, only the one real chance for Derby.
Interesting to note that we won the ball in really dangerous areas on the two occasions that we pressed as a team.

 

Good half from town. Derby are good on the ball but our hard work, aggression and organisation has nullified their threat on the whole. We have also looked useful going forward.

 

Loads of possession, but they’ve had 1 chance, (which was brilliant goalkeeping by marosi!)
They’re a bit ponderous at the back, and for some reason their keeper is playing centre half when they have the ball, if we nick it we should shoot on sight..
if Pyke had a bit more belief he’d of had a tap in after a slack pass from them.

 

We were the better team 2nd half

 

Poor from Town first half, pretty much just allowed Derby to dominate. Better second half. 

 

If it wasn't for some poor finishing by udoh we would have got the 3 points.
I was surprised by how poor Derby were. They lacked pace and had little physical presence. They will need more than tidy passing to do well in this league.

 

A slightly challenging watch, with a toothless County side cancelled out by our excellent defending, but offering little going forward ourselves bar the odd moment.

 

We gave Derby too much respect first half, solid enough though albeit they missed a point blank header and Marosi made 1 excellent save
Much better 2nd half, where we saw a bit more of the ball, and created a few good chances ourselves.

 

In fairness, Derby's attempt to con the referee was just as s**t. 0-0 on convincing penalty claims too.

 

Very lucky not to give Derby a penalty at the end, most refs would give that.

 

quite an entertaining game, perhaps seemed better with a full away following than it actually was, lots of corners but not many chances, Marosi as usual kept us in it with Derbys only 2 real chances, and Udoh could have won it in the 95th

 

Derby had the bulk of the possession in the first half, they looked good on the ball two good saves from our kepper, i expected them to have more of a threat in the final third. ironically town had the best chances, leahy , nurse and udoh he really should have done better with his extra time chance. Town kept there shape and stiffled Derby a much better second half by town but the midfield continue to look disjointed, our distribution was poor far to many moves broke down due to a poor pass.a plesant suprise to get a point , i lost count how many Derby subs came on

 

We could, and should, have won it in the last few minutes but it would have been another slight robbery. We defended so, so well but Derby clearly still dominated the game overall, albeit they didn’t often break down our very defensive set up.

 

That was a quality second half performance. Silenced the Derby fans and caused their manager to make four subs.
Udoh won't sleep much tonight over his late miss.

 

25% possession, no subs used and time wasting from about 60 minutes onwards is a bit cheap for me when we're the home side. It felt a bit like we were playing for a lucrative replay in the FA Cup. Derby are probably better than your average recently relegated side at this level by virtue of the fact they dropped out of the Championship on a technicality but I don't exactly expect them to set the world alight on tonight's reckoning. They could pass the hind legs of a donkey but actually when it came to the business end they looked distinctly average. The arrogance of their short-sleeved Neuer wannabe goalkeeper playing pretty much as a sweeper deserved to be punished by that long range Leahy effort.

 

Derby had 81% possession  !!!!!!!! in the first half town ran themselves ragged trying to get the ball as good as Derby are on the ball they created very little and i can only recall two saves. if they wont go back up they are going to have to improve in front of goal.

 

An enjoyable game even if there were a lot of twitchy moments with our rope-a-dope style. Derby's passing was impressive and we put together a few nice moves of our own, but we don't seem to know what to do once we are within twenty yards of goal.

 

Feels like tonight was probably more winnable than Saturday but overall you'd probably have taken 4 pts from these 3 games last Friday so can't complain too much.

 

Really good game to watch and couldn’t take your eyes off it. I think a draw on reflection was about right given Derby’s possession & our chances.
Don’t forget Derby have also had an overhaul so are finding their feet a bit too. I definitely think they’ll be thereabouts at the end of the season.

 

Yes Derby had 70+% of the game, but 30% of that was passing along the back line in their own half. Thoroughly enjoyed the match. Marosi made two excellent saves, but Leahy was man of the match for me.

 

Derby had the lion's share of possession because they spent a lot of it passing sideways and backwards. I thought if we had been more clinical instead of wildly lashing at the ball in front of goal, (get well soon, Aiden), we could have Juan it.

 

when I see people saying it was an entertaining game, I thought completely different, particularly first half where it was a non event and a glorified attack v defenders training session. I completely agree that it felt like we were playing a big Prem side in the FA Cup where we were happy to let them have the ball, they have some decent players and will certainly be up there but they are just a fellow L1 side now and it would have been nice to have got in their faces a bit more, when we showed some attacking intent in the second half we looked dangerous, we just didn't do enough of it.

 

Derby have better ball players than us so if we went head to head and tried to control the ball and out pass them then we would have lost
Cotteril got his tactics pretty much bang on by letting them pass it around their back line and then Salop trigger pressing which resulted in Derby recycling the ball. It worked a treat and nullified them.

 

As for Derby they gave off the air of a team who thought they were far too good for this league but the way they try to play the ball out of their defence in their own penalty area and the ridiculous positioning of their goalkeeper far up the field (making say Dean Henderson look like a line keeper) will cost them quite a few goals this season. However any team that bring quality like McGoldrick off the bench must surely be in the mix for promotion from League 1 at the end of the season.

 

Credit to both teams, Derby came to play football and passed the ball really well.
We defended equally well and posed an attacking threat but without much composure. You couldn't take your eye off the action for a second and we could have won it near the end but a point each was about right.

Tuesday 16th August saw Jack Stretton on the bench for Carlisle away at Grimsby, but the match was abandoned while goalless in the first half due to a waterlogged pitch.

Meanwhile, Birmingham coach John Eustace says of Bielik, "Krystian is hopefully joining back in with the group early next week".

Just in. Zero surprise to see we had a lot of possession but it ended with Derby 0 and, reading the match thread, we created very little indeed. 

For me Rosenior has used up all the goodwill. We need to see he realizes he's got team selection and tactics wrong and persisting with dreary defensive possession football in front of the opposition is not the way to win football matches in this league. So very disappointed. So very unsurprised. His midfield is totally wrong, completely negative and lacking in penetration and arracking ideas. Very, very easy for our opponents. 

41 minutes ago, Caerphilly Ram said:

Smith in for Sibley, Davies still out. Here’s hoping we can get that away win monkey off our backs in the league 

 

33 minutes ago, cosmic said:

Gutted for Sibley. Played alright at the weekend and he needs a run of games. Not sure what message dropping him sends. Although he is being replaced by “one of the best midfielders in the league” (which I’m yet to see proven). 

The management changes but the bizarre bullying of Sibley continues. Best player from the first three games despite having to come off the bench. Effectively hauled off at HT on Saturday despite being one of our better players in a team 2-0 up. Now dropped. How to break a young player who's also the most talented member of the squad...

31 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

Another way of looking at it is... Shrewsbury will park the bus and leave no space for Sibley to work in. Having Smith in the side instead would give us a better chance of picking up the second balls following their direct play up to their forwards.

I think this is nonsense. If Shrewsbury park the bus it's vital to have Sibley in the starting line up to try to unlock the defence with sharp passes or long shots, rather than all the others passing it backwards and forwards in front of a packed defence. 

I'd say Derby need to up their game here. One of the things I've always tried to stress is continual movement in set pieces, rather than static starting positions.

While these didn't come off in this particular case, they are ingenious and creative. 

Let's see some more examples.

1 minute ago, andy kent said:

Trying to buy the Shrewsbury Rams TV stream, hit the paypal button to pay the £10 and paypal payment only wants to charge a £1.

Never had any issues before when purchasing a stream. Any ideas whats wrong. Cheers for any help.

I've never bought the stream so early, instead only doing it around half an hour before. But when I do I get an alert on my phone and I have to approve the payment "in the app". When I go to it, it always says Derby are charging me £0.00 and do I approve this transaction? I approve it and the full amount of £10 ends up being paid. What I'm saying is something goes wrong with the initial taking of the fee, but it seems to work itself out.

There's an issue over the number of games. They're trying to do too much, as Quest did before them. I say they need to change the format somehow. But Colin Murray was a superstar and simply excellent in the role and it's such a shame they didn't bring him over to ITV with the show. Not really any point watching these.

Don't hate me, but I've always had a soft spot for Leicester. A little local East Midlands club we've never had any rivalry with, so I like seeing them do well. Current Mrs Sagan is a gooner so I look out for them and take her to some games. A former one was a Man Citeh fan so I used to like them, but now I think about it I'm becoming a bit bitter so beginning to turn against them. 

2 minutes ago, brady1993 said:

I think the thing that's often missed when we play it out from the back part of the point is to draw the press. 

If a team is compact in their shape they can be very hard to break down however if they press high and you can beat their press they are often left wide open. 

If we just go long in the face of a press your kinda playing into what they want i.e. a 50-50 followed frequently by a turnover in possession.

Of course their is risk but if you've set your team up right then it should be a calculated one. But it's why it's really important to have the right personnel and to have really drilled the little movements in build up play.

We shouldn't always go short of course but we should be trying to for the most part even if its just to work an angle for a long pass. Thats part of the reason why we have two fast, strong wingers who play high hugging the touch line. They keep the opposition's press honest and stretch the pitch and if the opposition do cheat a little it leads to an easy long ball for them to run onto.

If anything the problem isn't that we try to play out too much it's more getting the balance right in defence and midfield, getting a good amount of coaching and match time in players so they can be sharper with it and having the right people in the right positions.

I think we probably actually agree - it's about drawing the press in the right way and it's also about balance. And you make a really good point about midfield. We're lucky in that all our midfielders are comfortable receiving the ball, but when it comes to them from defence they should be sufficiently aware of what's around them to normally be playing on the half turn, so they can immediately move forward with the ball, instead of playing it straight back into defence without considering a forward option.

I’ve been a fierce critic of how Derby play out from the back. But I’m a massive fan of playing out from the back sensibly.

If you always go long from the back the opposition drops off, compressing the midfield making it very difficult to play through them. The rationale for playing out of defence is to draw your opponents onto you so there is space behind their players to exploit. It makes perfect sense, but the players need to understand why they are doing it.

Often Derby try to play out from the back when we are outnumbered by our attacking opponents, who are pressing us very high. They do this because they’ve seen how we play, know we don’t do things as we should and are very likely to give them goal-scoring opportunities high up the pitch. What we need to understand in this situation is that the job is already done. We have maybe four attackers pressing our two or three defenders so there is already space available upfield and risk-free we can play over the heads of these onrushing opposition forwards and start our own attacks. Instead we often see Wildsmith try to thread a pass through three opposition forwards to one defender who is already under pressure. Madness.

It's the same for our short goal kicks. When opponents are already grinning in anticipation on the edge of our penalty area waiting to charge, just go long over their heads as we already have created the space and outnumber them up the field. Don’t risk a short pass across our own six-yard area for no additional benefit, but only potential disaster.

Sometimes we see the press, for instance at goalkicks or when Wildsmith has the ball at his feet, and we decide it’s simply too risky to play through it and to go long instead. But we do this in the most infuriating way possible by announcing to our opponents that we are going to go long. So Wildsmith with gesture for our defenders to run up the field towards the halfway line before he kicks. Thereby allowing our opponents to also run back towards the halfway line and compressing the game. In this situation we should always be trying to fool the opposition by going long when they think we are going to play it short.

Ultimately, the secret to effectively playing out from the back is variety. When your opponents know you will try to play out no matter what, they will always press because it is risk-free for them.

Finally, once we break our opponent’s press, the golden rule should be to never turn back. If we have left many of our opponents behind us and have the chance to attack at pace, it must always be taken. Sometimes that means being braver with the pass we play or carrying the ball. Instead, all too often we turn around, and end up playing the ball all the way back to our defenders or keeper, only to be pressed again and try to beat the press again, when we just have but didn’t capitalize on it.

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