Bald Eagle's Barmy Army

Don’t want to write the season off, why would we. 
 
Perhaps just write off the ones who aren’t too good at their job. 

It’s like saying Man City would struggle with the team they have in league one. 
 
We’re playing football not rugby. Get it on the floor, pass it around and create opportunities to score. Football is simple. 

Last season he didn't have any of his own signings.
Well yes, Id prefer to concentrate on this season where he has had his own team, albeit one ravaged by injury. But you concentrate on last season if it helps your agenda.
So are we not 5th in the form table then?

Last season is done, and whilst it’s a fair observation that our performances have been inconsistent since then, there is still an opportunity to change THIS season’s form, performances, results, and yes for those who are desperate for it…perhaps even the manager.
My thoughts both for those so keen to wallow in their perceived realism of how terrible and miserable life is as a Derby fan and those who feel less fed up with it all, there’s still room for some optimism in this season. We could still see an improvement in performances, consistency, the health of players currently at the squad etc and we could also see a change of manager if the team doesn’t look to be heading in the right direction closer to the business end of the season. 
There’s not yet enough wrong at the club or with the team to completely write this season off. 

Season is longer than 10 matches. 5th isn’t good enough irrespective.

The fact he repeatedly goes on the radio and says he wants the ball playing wide as quickly as possible, the post Cheltenham comments about not wanting the ball played in the middle because it’s too congested, and literally watching the team play for the last year.

Style absolutely is possible in league one. Results are more important.
Right now, we have neither.

More than anything, just get your players doing what they’re good at.  We’ve got arguably the best set of midfield passers in the league, and a manager that’s basically telling them not to pass it to each other. It’s no wonder they’re struggling. 

It’s like saying Man City would struggle with the team they have in league one. 
 
We’re playing football not rugby. Get it on the floor, pass it around and create opportunities to score. Football is simple. 

Erm, no - Warne doesn't care about the academy so until that changes I'll keep saying it. I'm sorry. 

Erm, no - Warne doesn't care about the academy so until that changes I'll keep saying it. I'm sorry. 

And he has been on international duty, too. Did quite well. 
Carlos Richards - Gibraltar Under-21s
Richards played 88 minutes as Gibraltar Under-21s lost out narrowly 1-0 to Netherlands Under-21s in an UEFA European Under-21 Championship qualifer before playing the full 90 in a 2-1 victory over Moldova Under-21s.
 
Cruz Allen - Wales Under-17s
Attacking midfielder Allen played 90 minutes as Wales Under-17s knocked off Belgium 1-0 in UEFA European Under-17 Championship Qualifiers before playing 82 minutes and scoring in an impressive 4-0 victory over Gibraltar Under-17s to help his side to the top of their group.

@B4’s Sister

Random is what you want if you think you’re the weaker team and need something lucky to drop to even things up a bit.  Wanting your players to have the ball at their feet, pass it around, and trusting they’ll create something is what you do if you think you’re the better team. Says it all really.
And that’s a great clip too, it’s refreshing to see a manager clearly thinking about the game, trying to figure how to make the best use of what he has, and be willing to talk about it so well too.

I do not believe that Warne is deliberately and wantonly defying the owner at all. I posted yesterday that I think that Warne is proving to be a one-tricky pony who knows only one way of playing and with those methods he achieved promotion three times with Rotherham (followed notably by two relegations from the Championship). He has not previously managed a club with a Category One academy where the EPPP programme is adopted and the first team play a style of football in line with that taught in the academy. Derby still adopt EPPP as do all PL2 academy teams. We now are the only PL2 club whose first team does not play a style which reflects EPPP; that causes a problem for academy players stepping up and we are failing those youngsters in who we have invested so much. I think simply that Warne's methods are extremely limited and he knows no other way, which makes him a poor fit for Derby County. It's not his fault, he simply knows no better. The academy coaches are good but Warne is not the right coach to further the development of the academy graduates. Other clubs have appointed younger coaches with long experience of academy coaching as head coaches and they are way ahead of Warne; Kieran McKenna has been at Ipswich less than two years and has turned them around from mid-table in Division One to a side on the brink realistically of promotion to the Premier League. There are many other similar examples of coaches outperforming Warne.
If you doubt that the rebuilding of the academy was part of David Clowes' intentions and he might not have told that to Paul Warne I simply cannot help you and you will have to take that up with the owner. I find him candid and honest about what he has said about his intentions for the club. Are you confusing him with his predecessor ? I hope not. I have not been privy to any of his conversations. I simply trust his public statements backed by the clear support and investment in the academy.
I don't get the misunderstanding about the competitive budget which David Clowes said we had. Is it not competitive? Paul Warne said he had chosen to spend not on transfer fees but on wages which allowed him to bring in more players. I don't find that confusing; it was Paul Warne's choice on he spent the competitive budget.
Yes, with what I have witnessed in the past year, I now think that Liam Rosenior would have been the logical appointment. For all I know, the owner may or may not be thinking the same thing. Hindsight is a benefit available to none of us at he time of making crucial decisions. I don't do guessing so I can't help you there.

I don't know how much academy football you watch. I have been watching it for eight years whenever the first team aren't playing. This is the first time I have been worried that we are not making the best use of the potential resources. I know that other regular academy attendees who post on here and others who follow it on Rams TV, share the same concerns.

I think you wholly misunderstand David Clowes' position in this. Of course, like all of us he wants promotion, but when he appointed Warne he clearly said that it was a part of a rebuild of the whole club and instant promotion was not an unequivocal condition of the appointment. But he was clear that the academy was vital in the rebuild and he has backed that up with the quality of staff brought in to run it at no small cost. What is being questioned here is Warne's commitment or ability to integrate the academy with the first team; 12 months down the line I think we are the only PL2 club whose first team does not reflect the style of play used in the academy. The owner is a proven businessman and a fan. I would be amazed if he does not share some of the concerns being expressed on here about how the first team can be best served by the academy. I'm sure he will be asking the question as to whether the problem can be rectified with the current management in place or not. Okay, Warne was his choice but if he comes to the conclusion it was the wrong choice I don't think he will be able to afford to let it continue. At some time he will have to decide whether or not to continue the project in its current form or to make a change. I went to Mansfield to see the Youth Cup tie and I was delighted to see the owner with the first-team coaches together watching an academy side because I had not seen that before. I wonder if it had anything to do with their discussions during the Sunday morning meeting after the Stevenage defeat?

Not picking you out particularly with this, it's more of a general comment, but the bold bits get to the root of why I'm so opposed to Warne.
The way I see it, we have everything off-field ready for the Premier League - the fanbase size, the stadium, the training ground etc are all good enough.  Obviously we have no divine right to be in any league, but in theory there's no reason why we shouldn't be in the same group of clubs as the likes of Leicester/Burnley/Fulham/Brighton/Norwich etc who have spent at least as much time in the Prem as they have out of it in recent seasons.  I'm not saying we can win it like Leicester or be top 6 like Brighton or anything, but we absolutely have the potential to get there and stay there, but the onus is on us as a club to make it happen.
Obviously, one way that happens is that a new owner comes along and throws a lot of money at the club.  But there's no guarantee this happens, there's no guarantee it works if it does, and we all know what the potential fallout can be if it goes wrong.  It's certainly not an option we should be relying on.  Another way is just genuine luck, alignment of stars type stuff - you get the right manager at the right time, a bunch of signings all work out and you hit the jackpot.  We came close with Burley+Rasiak+Idiakez... and McClaren+Martin+Bryson... but ultimately fell short.  Again, that's not something you can rely on - you need a lot of things to all hit at once, and even then it might not work.  And it gets harder and harder as the championship gets dominated by clubs with parachute payments.
So IMO we should be doing the one thing that we have some degree of control over, and that's doing our level best to get the most we can out of the academy.  But that means fully committing to it.  When academy players are hitting 17/18/19/20 (it will be different for each players), they need to start being introduced to senior football.  If they aren't they won't progress.  If we take the approach that we can't play youth players now, we need to get promoted first, then you're basically writing off the current generation of academy players.  They won't get the first team exposure they need and won't kick on. 
So if we do get promoted what happens?  We can't afford to play academy players, we need to get stabilised in this league first.  And then?  We can't afford to play academy players, we need to kick on for the top 6 now.  And then?  We can't afford to play academy players, we need to get promoted to the prem first.  If your attitude is "we can't afford to play them now", then you won't be able to play them when they're good enough later, because they won't get good enough.
You can't just have an academy sat on the sidelines and hope it produces players now and then.  If you want to be like Southampton and have a steady stream of them, you have to gear the whole club up to make it happen.  You play similar styles of football across all age groups, you gear your transfer policy to not block promising players, you commit to giving youngsters first team chances when they're ready and if they take it you let them run with it.  And from what I can see, we can't do any of that with Warne in charge.  So we're just stuck hoping a youngster pops up, fully formed, once in a blue moon.  And that's one of the big advantages we could have over similar sized clubs that we are just choosing to throw away.
I have no idea if Weston is good enough, I've never seen him play.  But by all accounts he did well when he came on, and scored a good goal.  If you give him say 20 minutes against Barnsley and he scores again, then okay, maybe we've got something here.  If he then starts against Crewe and scores, then we've got a potential first team striker for nothing.  And if he doesn't do any of that then fine, he goes back to the U21s and maybe gets another shot in a month or 2.  But right now, we've just got a guy that scored a goal once and then never played again, which is no use to anyone.
Sorry everyone for the long post, but I genuinely think appointing Warne was a catastrophic mistake for a lot of reasons.  The ridiculous short-termism of "he was brought in to achieve promotion quickly" sums it up - it's like there's no thought as to what happens when we do get promoted.  And when I see fans almost actively celebrating it ("I don't care about academy players, we won 3-0" type stuff) I just find it a bit sad really.  I want the club to be in the premier league, I want the club to play good football, and I want to see academy players getting into the first team and doing well, and I want the club to be actively trying to make all that stuff happen, not just flailing around doing stuff at random and hoping that one day it might work.
(and breathe...)

What about the thought that other academy players released by top premier league clubs (that we have managed to attract in the past to good fortune) won’t want to come to Derby because under Warne they’ve got literally no prospects of getting any first team game time? Which in turn is also stunting the growth of the Academy which Clowes is wanting to rebuild?

Weston already has experience of men's football at 5 different clubs now
19/20 - Blackpool in the FA Cup
21/22 - Rangers B against lower league first teams in a Cup competition.
21/22 - Rangers in the SPL
22/23 - 18 games across different competitions for Partick Thistle (2nd division)
22/23 - 13 games for Cove Rangers in the Scottish Championship (2nd division)

Because when we are in another game where we desperately need a different option with different attributes and we have wasted the chance to see if we have that attribute in prior games, or we get to January and we sign players we potentially don't need or aren't better than we have, we won't be thinking "well, that 3-0 against Barnsley was great, I'm glad we didn't sub on an academy player for 10 mins, what a waste of time that would've been".

Yorkshire Ram said 'We're in the weakest playing position in our club's history, coming out of the worst financial period' 
This is not true. In my opinion we were weaker playing wise in the early 1980's and the period before Maxwell got involved was just as bad financially. 
Warne inherited much better players last season than the squad Arthur Cox inherited plus a lot of very good youth players. Arthur took one season to start to reshape things, but you could see the progress being made. Then the next season it was constant, rapid progress all the way to 5th in the old first division. We made no progress last season and none so far this season either. Warne isn't good enough for Derby County       

No he didn't try to make them first team regulars, he was forced to play them because of injuries. Without the misfortune for the other players, Thompson and Rooney wouldn't have had a sniff of a game. It was the same last season when Warne oversaw a long unbeaten run, but the reality is that he was forced to change the formation, because of injuries. He had been trying to play 3 at the back, and it was proving disastrous, but was forced to go 4 or 5 at the back, and the good run resulted from that exact circumstance. But as soon as he got the chance he leapt back to 3 at the back, curiously at the same time that the good run came to an end. Funny, that!
It is no surprise that there are loads of questions being asked of Warne, because there are loads of questions that need to be asked.

If it was a one off, I would agree with you. However, it's a consistent pattern from when Warne first became manager. Opportunities to guve academy players minutes to prove themselves and to give first teamers a little rest to prevent burnout.
Warne has also repeatedly come out with comments suggesting he: doesn't trust young players; thinks it's disrespectful to the opposition to use them for a meaningful amount of time; has a blind view that you need to be a League 1 level player just to play 10 minutes in a game; and also comes out with excuses why he didn't bring them on ("ran out of subs").

Saw the bucks last night and Alex was quite impressive.