Tamworthram

1 hour ago, G STAR RAM said:

The Hourihane free kick was an absolute joke, their player was nowhere near him. How are officials falling for this so easily?!

I know. It happens all the time. We seemed to "win" and concede even more than the normal number of these ridiculously soft free kicks.

26 minutes ago, Millenniumram said:

Of course not, but that doesn’t mean that fans aren’t allowed to be annoyed at him for it. Every player who does something like that should accept it - Tom Lawrence did many times, for example.

He should’ve apologised, and moved on today. The fans were behind the whole game, there was no need to give any reaction to the south stand. Quite frankly, for the vast majority of this season, Sonny Bradley has been awful - making numerous mistakes and displaying a lack of leadership. One game yesterday doesn’t change that. He doesn’t seem willing to own up to his mistakes.

Personally, I think he was awful and error prone in his early games but since he has forced his way back into the squad, has been OK and certainly not awful. Since his return he hasn't made numerous mistakes (probably no more than most other players) and only showed a lack of leadership/maturity at the Northampton game. I don't know how you've come to the conclusion that he's not willing to own up to his mistakes. It could be argued that, whilst not coming out and admitting his mistakes in public (which players ever do?) I'd say that the way he has buckled down earned his place back in the squad is evidence that he at least accepts his early failings.

I can't help but feel that he has become the new scapegoat.

13 minutes ago, Ellafella said:

To be fair, very few Derby fans could see goals in that line up and they were correct. Not to be churlish about a 3-0 win but we didn’t score from open play although we could’ve had 3 had chances gone in. But credit to the management team who saw the weakness in Orient’s back line. 

Technically they were right but only because, for one reason or another, proven goal scorers were presented with very good goal scoring opportunities which they failed to take yesterday. Any fans that may have said they couldn’t see any goals in that line up kind of implies they couldn’t see us creating such chances for those players.

7 hours ago, Millenniumram said:

That celebration irks me. You had a good game today Sonny and the fans were right behind you. Doesn’t change the fact you got yourself stupidly sent of 3 games ago, potentially jeopardising our promotion push. Fans had every right to be annoyed.

So he’s the only player in Derby’s recent history to have got himself stupidly sent off? He let the side down at Northampton with his reaction but let’s not try to pretend he’s the first (or will be the last to do such a thing). 
 

21 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

Personally I prefer to judge the team after a performance rather than before it.

Don't tend to know the lineup until I get to my seat which is usually a couple of minutes before kick off.

Totally agree.

I tend to hear the starting 11 as soon as it’s announced (really just to see if there are any injuries) but will never comment (not that I remember) on it before the game. I’m quite capable of making a fool of myself in other respects (and comments) without prejudging a team selection only to end up with egg on my face. 

10 hours ago, InstaRam said:

Ratings:

Raggett 7.11

Shaughnessy 7.3

Santos 7.24

Cash 7.5

Nelson 7.1

Edwards 7.1

Knight 7.2 

Bradley 6.7

Curtis Davies 6.9

But you are off course right in your conclusion that if you disregard a few games when he played poorly then it looks better. Might as well take away his games against Northampton and Reading when we are at it. That is however true for all other players as well so forgive me for having a bit of a hard time taking that argument  seriously.

 

I thought Bradley would be an upgrade on Curtis but for me he really is not. Money wasted so far from the club but that is my opinion. I thought he was great today and hope to see a lot more of that which was my intention to write in my post when I also labelled him Super Sonny. 

(And also I really like Keogh before the incident).

Firstly, the ratings you have provided do not suggest he is significantly weaker or prone to mistakes than the others. For example, most of us think Nelson is a contender for player of the season and yet his rating is only 0.4 above Bradley’s.

Secondly, if you read my original post you’ll see why I’ve excluded his first few games. I said, once he’d got over those early jitters and fought his way back into the team he had been OK and played well most of the time (or words to that effect). Whereas to label him as Calamity Bradley kind of suggests he has an ongoing problem. He may not be an upgrade on Davies and I don’t take exception with you holding that view. What I did take exception to though was the label you have attached to Bradley.

I wasn’t aiming the comment about Keough specifically at you but I think it’s undeniable that some folk continued to use the phrase “there’s always a mistake in Keough” simply because of that Wembley incident whereas, in reality, he probably didn’t make any more mistakes than most.

P.s. Regarding the Reading game, although it is only a tiny sample size, it seems pretty much everyone that rated the players for that game on this forum gave him a 6.5 or thereabouts.

1 minute ago, Gabby'sThighs said:

That's Peterborough out of contention then. All eyes on Bolton's midweek game, but they should beat Shrewsbury. 

Win at Cambridge, who are pretty much safe, and we could go up. 

Carlisle are down, so will Simmo give us an easy ride on the final day?

Probably but not mathematically yet. 

16 minutes ago, angieram said:

Of course, as was the comment about his looks. 

Indeed but no doubt some will latch on to the comments in order to have a go at him. 

12 minutes ago, InstaRam said:

Agree to disagree. Was perhaps a bit unnecessary today, but no ill will. Means I hope to see what I think is the real Bradley from now on. Statistically, however, I stand by the fact that he has so far been a disappointment on field with significantly more catastrophic errors than the average centre back in a top team in L1. However, he has every opportunity to come back, but if he had been a young centre back from his own ranks who had a season like this, he would never have had that chance.

What are your figures to back up that statistical conclusion apart from his first few games that I have agreed weren’t great?

I thought the label you had attached to him was just a poor, annd unnecessary, attempt at a bit of humour.

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.

1 hour ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

He also threw in a warne-ism about handing back his car keys if he hadn't, which i took to be tounge in cheek.

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

2 minutes ago, InstaRam said:

Calamity Bradley was not around today and hopefully we may see Super Sonny from now on!  

Would be interesting to see our running stats and compare to other games. It felt like we ran a lot more than usual both up and down.

Good game all around!

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.

6 minutes ago, Bob The Badger said:

I'm up from Cornwall, and @Eatonram got me a ticket, not knowing a mate had a spare one.

It's in South East corner.

£12.

But we won't pay you a penny more.

Welcome to call me on 07761 143 477

BTW, I thought there was a ticket thread but couldn't see it, so apologies if I'm breaking some rules and feel free to delete.

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. 😀

28 minutes ago, ap04 said:

Not sure how you define "good football", I define it as creating plenty and allowing little at the back. I repeat, first half was roughly +2.5 aggregate chances away to a mid-table side or better. Over 90 minutes that would be +5. Away effect say +6.5. To give you an idea last 10 years the best PL side averages about +5.5, in our league it's probably much less as it's closer. So we weren't just good, we were off the scale good.

Yet we gave away a goal, an open goal, a 1v1 saved by Wildsmith's legs, and should have given away a pen, in 55 minutes (so defended relatively poorly) at the same time creating very little (so couldn't have attacked any worse). Again adjusting for home advantage and opponent that's almost relegation material.

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.

1 hour ago, IlsonDerby said:

Not necessarily but it can’t be overlooked that Warne was brought in to bring promotion. If Clowes wanted to give time then you might as well have stopped with Rosenior. 
 

I don’t particularly want him sacked either I just want to be excited by some of the football played by us. 
 

Im not one of those misers that haven’t been able to enjoy this season - I’ve loved every goal and every win this season and will keep backing them to get us over the line. 

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.

9 hours ago, DiggerB said:

Really not looking forward to this one tomorrow. Sister-in-law, her boyfriend and her son will be in the away end. I’ve never met her bloke. They’re coming back to ours for the evening afterwards.
 

Please don’t lose!

Please don’t lose!

Please don’t lose!

Please don’t lose!

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

8 hours ago, ram59 said:

Although statistics suggest otherwise, 3rd place wins the play offs more than any other.

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.

12 minutes ago, Nuwtfly said:

Aside from the occasional one or two, I don’t think anyone on here actually thinks the football club should sack their manager with three games (maybe a few more) to go.

I do think however that there’s a good chunk who don’t want to see another season of his football, even if that season is spent in the division above. 

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..

1 hour ago, IlsonDerby said:

I think that the language he used didn’t have to include ‘failure’. 
He could have said we gave ourselves a real chance but in the end we couldn’t quite get over the line. 
 

I don’t suspect he’ll be gone this summer regardless of what happens. I think he’ll be given a summer unhindered by restrictions and Clowes will reassess during the season. 
 

it may not have been with 11* games to go then but ultimately we were in a position last season where it would have taken an awful run of form to drop out. That’s what happened.
 

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. 

1 hour ago, LeedsCityRam said:

There seems to be an increasing narrative on here that Warne's last stint in the Championship was a success & somehow negates the 3 relegations he'd previously suffered at that level.

Below is the Championship table as at 17th September 2022 - 5 days before he left Rotherham for Derby. Rotherham were in 8th place & had won 3 out of 9 games - all at home. A decent start sure but reality is they were still only 4 points above the bottom 3 & very far from demonstrating they would have been able to survive that full season under Warne.

To show just how this table is misleading in predicting performance over a full season, Wigan were only one point behind Rotherham at that stage but were ultimately comfortably relegated (even if they hadn't been deducted 6 points). Same situation with Reading who sit in 3rd at this stage with 18 points but only accrued another 32 points on the pitch from the last 36 games. On the flip side, Coventry sit bottom here but ended up in the playoff final.

I would also ponder the question that if Rotherham had looked so strong at that point, why would he have considered dropping a division & not wait for an offer from a bigger fellow Championship club? That's what Steven Schumacher did this year swapping another small yo/yo club in Plymouth for a better resourced gig at Stoke.

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.

1 minute ago, IlsonDerby said:

And yet Warne himself labelled it a failure? 
If we didn’t go on the run that we did I’d agree with you but ultimately we were hugely secured in the play offs with about 11 to play. 

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.

Just now, IlsonDerby said:

I think that due to having one of the highest wage bills in the league last season needed us finishing in the play offs. I think losing in the play offs would have been acceptable. It’s the nature of the drop off that concerned me last year. 

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.

5 minutes ago, IlsonDerby said:

Im hoping that Clowes has his business head on because it’s clear he’s a huge personal admirer of Warne. 

 
Promotion = job done and par for our wage bill. Warne (whatever you think of him and I’m very critical) deserves to try and hit par next season too. 
 

No promotion = a second season below par. Would you keep someone in your business that wasn’t maximising the resources at their disposal? 

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.

40 minutes ago, Key clubber said:

Abysmal was probably a tad unfair, but if we’re going to criticise CBT, Washington has to be questioned as well, for an international player to put a ball in like that which should be a straight forward pass should be addressed. 

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. 

1 hour ago, Key clubber said:

I expected  Derby to win, we didn’t , doesn’t always turn out how you want it. 
I was simply saying if you want to give someone the best chance play a ball along the ground. 
I’ve lost count of the times a fullback gets a ball neck height from a keeper or a centre passed passed a ball at his face from 3 yards out. 
A Famous Derby player always use to say “if you can’t pass you can’t play” this was pretty apt last night , a simple ball was all that was needed. 
Plenty of better players than CBT have missed easy chances than that over the years.

  
 

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.