Tamworthram

This one game hasn’t changed my opinion. The errors we saw when he first started at Derby made me, and suspect many others, wonder why on earth we had signed him. But his form since getting back into the team (baring the blip at Northampton) has made me come to conclusion for some time now that he’s actually a decent player at this level and possibly in the Championship.

Surely it’s obvious to everyone that it was just his attempt at humour?

This kind of comment really annoys me. He was a fool at Northampton but once he’d overcome the errors in his early days at Derby I don’t believe he’s been that much better or worse than most players. It reminds me of the “Keogh’s always got a mistake in him” stuff we used to see.

If you want to pay me £12 I’ll take it off your hands. I’ll not use it as I have a season ticket but I’ll never turn away free money. 😀

Wow. So not creating much (interestingly, and I don’t know how accurate their reporting is, but according to the BBC there were only 4 attempts on goal after Pompey scored their second: “83 minutes - attempt missed by NML, 81 minutes - attempt missed by CBT, 81 minutes - attempt missed by Collins and 79 minutes - attempt from Adams saved”) conceding a goal, our goalie saving with his legs (last time I checked goalies are allowed to use their legs and it’s not desperately uncommon), and arguably should have given away a penalty away from home against the team sitting top of the league (that have the best home record in the league and had won their previous 5 home games) is almost relegation form? That’s nearly as laughable as saying we were amazing in the first half against Wycombe.

Depends on whether DC thought Rosenior was likely to get us promoted and if so, how much time he might have needed. Perhaps he thought PW was a much safer bet even if it did take 2 or 3 seasons. Rightly or wrongly, only time will tell, DC chose PW because of his record of getting teams promoted out of league 1 whereas LR had no such record. It’s easy to say with hindsight that LR seems to be proving himself as a very capable manager but of course he had no such track record at the start of last season. My theory is that DC appointed Warne at the start of last season with the hope that we’d get promoted straight away (although, given we’d still be under restrictions this season, perhaps it was a good thing we weren’t) but the expectation that it would be difficult given the traumatic start, the business plan restrictions and change in personnel. That would then give PW a season to establish himself. I think promotion this year was probably a genuine expectation for Clowes. If we had failed, and not even made the play offs, I reckon Warne’s position would have been very precarious. As it is, if we fail, we will have at least made the plays off. On that basis, I think Clowes will be disappointed but not sufficiently so to sack Warne.

Surely him coming back to yours for the evening is dependent on Derby winning. Haven’t you made that clear?😀

You beat me to it but then I thought, maybe it’s true but on many occasions, the team 3rd is actually better than those in 4th, 5th and 6th (as suggested by the league table). Perhaps the psychological advantage partly offsets this but more often than not not by enough. 🤷🏻. The worry is, if my random theory is right, we’re not noticeable better than Barnsley and Posh/Bolton.

I think you're right. Probably those that believe he should stay or go next season (now that we're guaranteed play offs at least) are fairly evenly split. Even most of those that don't want him around next season would probably concede he's unlikely to be sacked in the summer even if we lose in the play off semi finals..

So you think he should be sacked for wearing his heart on his sleeve and saying he failed but, if he'd been a little more measured with his response (which I believe was given immediately after we'd just lost the last game of the season) it might be a different story? I don't get that at all and he should be applauded for recognising his part in our failure to get promoted (but not necessarily sacked for saying it). With regard to our end of season form, our most comfortable position was 9 points clear of Posh but still with 39 point to play for so, I wouldn't count that as "hugely secure". We did indeed have a bad spell in March (losing 4 out of 5 between 7th March and 1st of April) which, unfortunately, coincided with Peterborough's purple patch. However, those defeats included Plymouth and Ipswich, it was immediately preceded by our own purple patch (that included only 2 defeat in 21 games) and was followed by a run of 6 games without defeat. So, if you want to take that Month in isolation, yes we fell away. But, if you look at the bigger picture (including our fantastic run immediately prior and, to an extent, our bounce back afterwards) it wasn't such a mighty decline as you may think.

It’s a relatively valid point but if you’re going to highlight how close they were to the relegation zone, in the interests of balance, you can’t ignore the fact that they were only one point off the play off places with a game in hand. As you say the reality is, same with LR, it was way too early in the season to form an opinion as to whether he/they were doing well or not.

What did you want him to say? “We didn’t get in the play offs but that’s OK, we’ll go again next year”? There aren’t many industries that are cut throat enough (and football is one of the most cut throat) to see an individual sacked for achieving an improvement (in terms of results) in year 2 from year 1 but still narrowly failing to hit a key objective. I know some people will point to what happened to Darren Moore and John Eustace but I don’t think many of us would entirely agree with their sackings. With 11 games remaining we were 4 points clear of Wycombe and 7 points clear of eventual play off achievers Posh but they both had a game in hand. I wouldn’t describe that as “hugely secure” given there were 33 points still on the table.

I don’t agree regarding last season (and presumably neither did DC) given despite our wage budget we were restricted to who we could sign.

You might do if you accept that year one was a difficult year for all concerned and if year two some element of improvement (in terms of outcome) was achieved despite some challenges still remaining. if that someone only narrowly failed to hit their key objective (if that’s how it pans out) and you had believe that, with any challenges further reduced, they may achieve their objective in year three. Now that play offs as a minimum is guaranteed, I am convinced that DC will stick with PW. Let’s hope we get promoted and DC’s faith isn’t put to the test.

It wasn’t exactly a straightforward pass. Washington had literally run half the length of the pitch and crossed the ball between the defender and the keeper to CBT. OK, in an ideal world it would have been rolling along the ground but I think Washington did pretty well. If you insist on apportioning the blame I’d say it was something like 90% CBT and 10% Washington.

And been criticised for it. Doesn’t mean CBT should be criticised as well. I’m sure he’d be the first to admit he should have done better but let’s not hang him out to dry for it. As for Washington, I thought the cross was decent (of course, they can always be better) and I wouldn't be pinning much at all of the “blame” on the missed chance on him.

I don't think the pass was "abysmal". If it was that bad CBT wouldn't have got anywhere near to it. Maybe Washington could have done a little better but he had to get it between the keeper and defender and in front of CBT at a height that CBT could strike it. In that respect, Washington did pretty much as well as he could.

So I repeat the question. Did you actually watch the games and, if so do you genuinely think the first half against Wycombe was “amazing”? There were a few corners that created challenges for their keeper but they were hardly “killer corners”. Amazing for me would have been to play good football and actually convert a chance or two (or at least force a save). I reckon, if you took a poll of every Derby fan that watched the game last night, the total that would describe our performance in the first half as amazing would amount to one. We weren’t awful against Pompey after our second goal from my recollection.

I'm not worried about players reactions to comments on social media (other than some of the stuff total muppets post which you don't generally see on this forum) - I'm sure they're well used to being criticised in such places especially after a poor performance. Maybe a few folk go a little over the top but by and large the criticisms on this site after games like last night are justified. What is important is that we keep supporting them at the games and try not to get on their backs during the actual matches even if things aren't going quite so well. I'd much rather folk let off steam (even though I often don't agree with it) on this forum than when actually at the game. So I would say, praise but only when it's due, and criticise but keep it sensible. The best policy is probably to imagine you're saying it to their face. In which case you'd probably still be saying to CBT - "you missed a sitter there and should have done better" (I'm convinced he'd agree) but you'd probably not say to Washington "it looks like you won a competition to play football" (as someone has said).

I guess a neutral, just looking at the remaining games, would expect us to win our last three whilst it's not unreasonable to think Bolton may drop a couple of points either Saturday or away at Posh. We're perhaps a little less optimistic (having suffered some dreadful performances recently).

Did you actually watch both games? If so, are you seriously suggesting we played better against Wycombe than we did against Portsmouth? You seem to be obsessed with statistics and ignoring the fact that 1) Portsmouth were a much tougher proposition than Wycombe and 2) our good chances against Wycombe came quite early on but for most of the game we were pretty awful. Against Pompey, we may not have created as many chances (but then you wouldn't really expect us to away at the team sitting top of the table) but we played better than we did against Wycombe. The first half against Wycombe certainly wasn't "amazing".

Fair enough, looking at that still he may have been able to control it with his left then side foot it with his right but I don’t think a still picture proves anything. At full speed it doesn’t look quite as simple as you are suggesting. I’m not disagreeing that it was a bad miss but I don’t think he could or should have taken a touch first and then side footed it in. I reckon 99% of professional footballers would have done the same - tried to slide the ball into an empty net rather than risk taking a touch first.

Well we’ll have to agree to disagree. In my opinion he really didn’t. Regardless of where the keeper was, if he’d tried to take a touch and then side foot it in, it would have narrowed his angle. He would probably have had to control it with his left foot and then side footed it in with his left foot. I don’t think that would have been easy and, IMO, he made the right decision (as I believe pretty much every other player would have) to try and direct it into the goal with his first touch. He got it wrong though.

He had enough time to strike the ball better but not take a touch and then side foot it in.

Here’s a drinking game that will help soften the trauma of the next few weeks. Every time someone says “bottled it” you have a drink. There, you can have that one on me.🍻