S8TY

A mention for two players one was brilliant in Korey Smith and one was immense in Ebou Adams just gets nicks on the ball when players think he’s not around and is a warrior please please sign him up 

Dissapointed to draw as I thought there goal was offside and second goal was handball …but everyone played very well  well done DCFC and Warne 

Korey Smith is right to berate CBT he stood and watched 

Sibley MUST look after the ball better 

4 minutes ago, HorsforthRam said:

Not seen NML successfully deployed in the middle yet

Do agree to be fair ..I’m hoping he swaps and drifts out wide because he’s better from there 

25 minutes ago, Mckram said:

Trouble with that is if we go for it and get hammered 4-0, we potentially sit third by Saturday evening.

Then it’s out of our hands and winning 3 games out of the 4 last games might not even be enough.

I kind of hope both teams sit back tomorrow until the last 10 minutes and then see if we can nick one. Anything worse than a 1 goal loss tomorrow would be really disappointing.

We won’t lose by 3 or 4 

46 minutes ago, Rammy03 said:

Paul Warne has said we'll be going for the win as we intend to in every single game. The man doesn't do draws

We shall see I hope we don’t sit back as I think we’re better on the front foot …I don’t think we’re a great side but nor are Pompy …there is absolutely no reason to be too fearful …be brave and have a go …they will be wary of us and we need to start well and see where it takes us but please don’t sit back ….and no I don’t mean go gun ho but we are as good as them imo 

5 hours ago, ramit said:

Playing it safe could turn out to be the most risky in a game against a strong side like Portsmouth.  Being apprehensive of making mistakes sometimes ensures mistakes.  If we set out with the mentality of wanting to win the game, it increases the likelihood of every player being up for it and at their best.  This game is a chance to make a possible bid for first place, so that is how it should be approached IMO.  Second place is ok, first is better.

I honestly think 3 wins will be enough so that’s 90 points meaning this game is a free hit and that’s how I’d approach it

Id actually go for it and try and win it …no cautious approach and take the game to pompy if we lose trying to win I won’t mind as 3 wins which  I think we will get will mean Bolton have to win virtually all of there games as would Peterborough and that’s not going to happen so let’s go for it and if we win it we have one foot in the championship 👍🏻

Thought we deserved to win well done everyone including Warne 👏

3 minutes ago, S8TY said:

Barkhuizen?

Sky have just changed it lol 

Barkhuizen?

57 minutes ago, Crewton said:

With a much bigger club, pulling in more than twice the number of fans every home game, having been allowed to reinvest the proceeds of significant player sales. 

I'm not arguing that Robins' team don't play more attractive football than Warne's, or that Robins' isn't currently outperforming a number of better funded managers. But he's been allowed to build a squad and regularly upgrade it for 7 years, even after being relegated in his first season. Before that, his best attribute was helping teams avoid relegation. His record wasn't bad, just unremarkable. It'll be interesting to see how he gets on if he ever leaves Coventry.

I said this only last week to someone that Robins will be looked at by bigger clubs maybe even prem clubs but he won't be given the time he needs to build , he reminds me of Nigel Clough in some ways , there is no doubting both managers abilities but it doesn't happen quickly as they both need time to build there own style

Clough for me signed some excellent players ( not all of them but who gets 100 per cent right ) Brayford,Barker,Coutts,Martin,Buxton,Bryson to name a few and Mac definitely made us perform better but only because of mainly Cloughs players who could pass and control with ease , Buxton really shocked me how effective he became but both need time , I don't see PW unfortunately building much here so far but if he gets us out of L1 then I'll take whatever...but never long term for us IMO even though I really like Warne as person 

17 minutes ago, Crewton said:

Robins is 4 years older than Warne and, until his current stint with Coventry, was the archetypal journeyman lower league manager without a single promotion to his name. He's undoubtedly doing a fantastic job with Coventry, but still has a lower career win % than Warne. 

I think Robins is quite adaptable and seen his side a few times , definitely doing a great job in the Championship 

1 hour ago, IlsonDerby said:

Id suggest that post covid the market is completely different. Most transfers in league 1 happen with no money changing hands at all. The odd transfer fee paid by traditional championship clubs but we’d have our hands snapped off for NML, TB, CN, CE, KW, EA, JC at this level. 

Agree with you all of the players you mention maybe bargain bargain basement if signed by a   Championship club but they are not for L1 we have one of if not the best squad in our division I don't think any smaller clubs would have attracted them players to L1 

When Jagielka and CKR came in under Rooney in the Championship  i did think we were scraping the barrel with there age etc but both turned out to be really good signings and such a shame we didn't keep hold of Jagielka 

21 hours ago, Tamworthram said:

I’m still in the PW in camp (just about) but sadly the good 3:0 wins are far outweighed by the poor defeats and the less than convincing wins. I also think the point you’ve made about new signings in the summer suiting Warne’s style is what is worrying a lot of people. Like I said, I think many of us are prepared the stomach the often less than entertaining football in order to get us out of this league but maybe don’t relish the prospect of the same next season. I also enjoy (most of the time) being at the top end of the league regardless of some (many I would suggest) bad performances but let’s be realistic, if we get promoted, we’re unlikely to have the luxury of being in the top six or so next season to compensate for the quality of football.

I think the higher number of posts when we lose compared to when we win is reflective of the above rather than people not wanting us to get promoted.

For me, I obviously want us to get promoted. Playing great football in the process would be ideal but not essential now that we’ve got so few games to go.

If we fall short, I’ll just accept it and we go again next season with PW in charge.(I’ll still be renewing my season ticket next season). If we go up I’ll be hopeful of surviving comfortably (again with PW in charge) and seeing some decent football. I’m certainly not assuming the football will be c**p and we’ll struggle.

 

Ipswich have been brilliant this season after promotion from this league and yes have had time to build a better team and squad I think the worry is with some fans including myself is, even if PW did have the time I don't think his style/methods would be successful in the championship 

This sounds harsh but football can be , If PW got us promoted I would say thankyou for your efforts and come to an agreement to let him go as I think we need someone different in a higher league

It would be a mistake IMO if we let PW spend our tight budget in the championship on players who may well not suit a different manager and i don't see why we couldn't be a good side challenging for play offs if we were to use our academy and bring in some good young players with a couple of loanees and few old heads 

 Robins and Mckenna are good young forward thinking examples of good managers  who have come from lower down the leagues and I still think we'd be an attractive option for a good young coach/manager

1 hour ago, WestKentRam said:

Cheers, 

I agree that our home record, until recently, has not been great for a variety of possible reasons.

Of course we can't win every match, especially away from home, but I've been pondering what happened after Saturday as it isn't an isolated occurrence.

It feels like we need tactics to overcome the so called 'dark arts', as at present it we just seem to play the same way the next time the opposition play like that and the game is very much stop-start.

Another thing that came to me was someone close by on Saturday commented that rain would be welcome as the pitch was dry as a bone. I can't recall seeing sprinklers so they must have deliberately not watered the pitch to stop us playing passing football, if we felt so inclined. Perfectly legitimate, but do we prepare for such eventualities?

It was a windy day, the stadium was very blowy due to the open corners and low stands, something their players must be used to. A bit like Barnsley away when they made us play into the sun in the second half, making it very hard for our players to see the ball. They used home advantage to the fullest extent. Can we prepare for this to minimize it?

It appears we can't just expect Derby to turn up, hopefully play the better football, then win more times than not.

We have to overcome a possible dry pitch, players going down injured to waste time and break up play, not being given the advantage of quickly taken free kicks, the opposition working to rile the players then congratulating each other when you get sent off, a mascot time wasting and winding up the players, a scoreboard that stops showing how long is left in the match etc etc.

These are things that I think we have to consciously work on psychologically and tactically overcoming, as otherwise we will repeatedly come unstuck in such games.

Great opening post but I think we too easily slip into percentage football and Saturday was a prime example ....I still say a good football side have different ways of winning but most of the gripes seem to come when we resort to non football just get it forward and or cross it into the box....we had a collective off day on Saturday but I still think when we try and zip the ball about quicker we look a much more dangerous side and on Saturday some of the passing was woeful (and not just because of the pitch because PP is hardly great )but a lot of our passes were bobbly slow passes behind the intended player and we are better than that ..

When I've watched coaching sessions or poor surfaces being played on this can be nullified more by passing into someones feet with purpose and rely on a players first touch more not trundle a slow ball to someone so it bobbles and eventually reaches its intended target, it was all far too slow and predictable and we must be better in the last 6 games ...we hope

.I commented on Saturday that the football from both sides was absolutely terrible and I stand by that 

I've seen much better non league games this season , the most disappointing thing from my perspective is, we can't say it won't happen again this season. Going to be a tough last 6 games if we play like that again 

4 minutes ago, sage said:

10 minutes was added on. It's not so much time wasting as interrupting the momentum.

 

Exactly this and its blatantly obvious, the amount of times one of there players went down was really frustrating and the refs seem to pander to it, also it should not take minutes and minutes  to make a sub ...we didn't play well but every time we looked like we maybe getting up a head of steam the game was stopped....and as i said blatant we could all see it 

8 hours ago, WestKentRam said:

It’s taken me almost two seasons of us being in League One, and ruminating over the last couple of days on what happened in the Northampton game and others we have lost, to finally twig what being in L1 means. Before this I was baffled when people spoke of different types of football being played in different leagues, thinking it shouldn’t matter what style of football you play, whatever league you’re in, as the ‘better’ team will mostly win. Just play your own game and good will conquer evil, as such, but this doesn't seem to always be the case.

In ‘The Numbers Game’ book by Anderson and Sally, a passage about Tony Pullis stuck with me, concerning his tactics as manager of Stoke. In the PL in 10/11 the ball was in play an average of 62.39 minutes. For Stoke, this figure was 58.52 minutes. For Man U, it was 66.58 minutes. So, Stoke had the ball in play for 8 fewer minutes per match than Man U.

Pullis knew Stoke only really had possession when the opposition put the ball out of play, so he maximised this time and worked on set pieces.

Long throws by one Rory Delap were an extension of this, with the time taken to retrieve the ball, gather it in his hands, dry it with a towel, then throw it long, the clock ticking down the whole time.

Of course there are new laws of the game to try to limit such time wasting, with multiball use, the ban on towels, 30 secs off the pitch if a physio used for treatment, more added time used etc.

However, what we have seen in L1 is an attempt to circumnavigate this, with players going down as if seriously injured, the ref stops play, the clock ticks away. As the laws have changed, the feigning of injury seems to be the new time wasting tactic. I recall that in the first 3 minutes of the second half on Saturday, they had players down requiring a stoppage 3 times, and this set the tone for the half.

Then the mascot fiasco at Northampton. Using a mascot to delay giving the ball to our player, then to try and wind them up, just shows what their tactics were. They weren’t to play football, but to waste time and aggravate our players, that worked a treat and culminated with the sending off on Bradley. Job done.

The mascot activity was reported by the media as being hilarious, but I do wonder if in a key game for us at home Rammie kept the ball from being retrieved by the opposition whether the referee and EFL would find it so funny. Should L1 really be such a pantomime?

These things didn’t happen spontaneously or by accident, they were a concerted effort to stop us playing football and to use anti-football to win, and they worked.

Not that I necessarily consider us to be the Man City of L1, but it feels like the cliché of when teams try to play football against MC they come unstuck, however deploying other tactics rather than playing MC at their own game can work.

So… the point of all these ramblings… how can we beat teams who know they can’t beat us playing football, but can beat us by employing the ‘dark arts’?

My suggestions are:

1) There should be a DCFC member of staff specifically tasked during a game with timing how long during a half has been lost to time wasting tactics such as players going down either requiring treatment or not, that seems to be the de facto new method of running the clock down as is employed in particular in the second half of games. This info should be relayed to PW, who, if we are chasing a game, could then put pressure on the 4th official to liaise with the referee so at least a semblance of this decent amount of time is added on before the board is put up.

2) The players need desensitising to being aggravated by opposition wind up and time wasting activities, and leave it to the management staff to deal with this as above. The more they argue with the referee, the more the clock ticks down and they aren’t playing football.

Unless we learn how to deal with such tactics by the ‘lesser’ teams in L1, I feel we are always going to struggle against them as it causes our play to become disjointed and haphazard. It feels like the marginal gains scenario often quoted in sport, and is an aspect we don’t obviously seem to be addressing.

Hopefully this isn’t news to PW and some consideration is being given how to handle these games that aren’t necessarily being won on pure footballing terms.

Also there 4-5 subs they made all in one go seemed to take forever with each player being told and then walking off before the next number was shown , it seemed to take an eternity but we did get 10 mins extra at the end , but we still never looked like scoring so it was still a crap performance despite the time wasting you correctly mention

Warne stumbled across a system due to having Gayle up top and we seemed to have started to play more freely and passed it better and mixed our game up more ..yesterday all I saw from any forwards was looking to run in behind hence encouraging a long ball which invariably found a Northampton shirt a lot of the time 

without Gayle who to me is a class above any strikers we have I fear more of what we saw yesterday 

we are now hoping that Collo will make a difference….i saw yesterday as a massive game for us and reading pre match posts I know a lot of others did too….but when it matters we didn’t turn up and the football ( if you can it that ) was truly horrible …let’s get it right …whether pitch was too narrow too small too bobbly etc etc …Northampton are a poor side …the amount of missed passes and general hoofs out of play from them was of a poor standard …a massive opportunity missed and not for the first time ….this is what makes me fear the play offs ….we have to go up in autos and we now have 6 massive games. 
can we do it? Of course you never know in football but what I do know is…anymore performances like yesterday and I think we can kiss the autos goodbye and then might have to look forward to another season in this s**** division where I think the standard will be better next season …so 6 games !!

let’s hope Warne can look at it like a 6 game season now and get us over the line ….but we shall see….COYR 

1 hour ago, kevinhectoring said:

I think the (narrow) pitch was quite cleverly prepared to play into their hands. It was bobbly and seemed very slow, so it was difficult for us to find weight of pass. That led us to resort to route A and that’s a leveller despite that we had more quality on the pitch

Yeah let’s blame the pitch for the fact we were absolute s**** lol 

6 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

You're ignoring the one's he wasted? Oh and the fact he nearly made a great tackle at the edge of our box, again?

There's worse problems than Ward, but why did we need all three of Ward, CBT and Wilson when it's obvious there's no-one in the box. You can go on about someone should have anticipated Ward's cross - who then? 

I would have put Washington on to play up top with Waggy but to be honest Roy Waggy looks rusty and no doubt Wash is too ….but Waggy should’ve scored as should Adams but I’d never take Adams off as he’s a proper grafter …Wilson did ok but I still think he’s an impact sub much the same as Ward one gets 60 one gets 30 imo but not on together that I agree with 

2 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

No there were their defenders who he found, and their keeper! 😄

He whipped in two terrific crosses …end of …no one got on the end of them …that’s it ..you’re talking nonsense 

1 minute ago, RoyMac5 said:

How many of his balls into the box reached a Derby player? Who was he aiming for btw?

He played two fantastic crosses that you expect someone to be on the end of it wasn’t like the box was empty 

Absolute load of crap one of the worst games of football I’ve seen 

Northampton are crap so that says it all 

why take off Adams ? and NML ? Unless they’re injured it’s a strange decision 

if anyone thought this league wasn’t of a poor standard this season that game sums it up a team in the top 2 and a team going nowhere in L1 …it was such a poor standard of football …any really good side would piss this league