Birdyabroad

Hadn’t thought of this, but I think you’ve nailed it. As soon as I read these words, it summed him up perfectly.
I hope he does well, obviously because I love the club, but it’s a bit David Brent-ish with added ‘Quality Improvement Plan’ ?

Hadn’t thought of this, but I think you’ve nailed it. As soon as I read these words, it summed him up perfectly.
I hope he does well, obviously because I love the club, but it’s a bit David Brent-ish with added ‘Quality Improvement Plan’ ?

Hadn’t thought of this, but I think you’ve nailed it. As soon as I read these words, it summed him up perfectly.
I hope he does well, obviously because I love the club, but it’s a bit David Brent-ish with added ‘Quality Improvement Plan’ ?

Question is will he play both of the Dobbin brothers? ??

He's actually relegated Rotherham 3 times. First season in 2016/17, he took over at end of November & they went down with 23 points - one of the worst ever points totals in the second tier. They had been in the Championship the preceding 2 seasons.
Whilst they were 'closer' to safety in 18/19 & 20/21, their points totals of 40 & 42 points were very low by the usual threshold to escape safety...for example Leicester & Peterborough have been relegated with 50 points. In 20/21, their relegation fight was probably flattered by just how bad Derby were in 4th bottom (1 point in last 7 games under Rooney) but they managed to finish below Wycombe even, a team playing their first ever season in the second tier.
His record whilst managing Rotherham across those 3 seasons in the Championship reads P120 W23 D29 L68. Win rate of 19% & 3 separate seasons to adapt. I'd say he's been very fortunate to have Rotherham's chairman stick by him.

Wildsmith 6.5 solid enough game
Knight 7 his agression, running and tenacity were missing from our midfield
Forsyth 6 steady
 Cashin 6.5 would have been more but mainly responsible for 2 of their goals
Stearman 7 steady
Dobbin 6 apart from the boots I didn’t notice him
McGoldrick 7.5 class while he was on but needed to come off
Sibley 6 disappointing 
Hourihane 5 anonymous 
Mendez-Laing 8.5 great goal, beast.
Bird ? 6 too quiet, needs to impose himself
Collins 7 scored, worked hard.
Barkhuizen 6.5 disappointing after good recent performances
Thompson 4 needs time out, confidence looks to have gone
Osula 6 unlucky with referee’s decision soon after coming on, looked promising 
Not sure why we looked shattered after 10 minutes of the 2nd half. We looked short of energy and aggression in midfield, subs  didn’t seem to help. Knight in centre midfield please Liam.

I was at the game yesterday on a rare trip to Pride Park for me.

I find some of these ratings bizarre. I'm not sure how anyone could give McGoldrick a 6/6.5??? I thought he was outstanding, you could see that he was a level above most others and came off to a standing ovation. We were still actually winning when he came off, so how he gets below an 8 staggers me.
The other rating that confuses me is Cashin at around a 6. I had a perfect view of the error that led to the final goal and, therefore, can see why his grade has tumbled, but I thought he was as solid as a rock in defence and seemed to win everything, I also thought that he was very confident on the ball when playing-out from the back. If we had won or drawn I personally would have given him an 8/8.5, but now I'm typing this, maybe a 6/6.5 is reflective of the bad error.
I agree that Bird and Hourihane should be low, apart from a great pass in from Bird for the second goal, thought they were chasing shadows for a lot of the game and the 2nd half especially.
The other player that I am low on is Thompson, he looked so behind the game, I have absolutely no idea what he was trying to do?? I thought that he was brought on to man-mark their number 7 (Someone called Butcher who, unfortunately, ran the game) but, alas, he just seemed to run about - How someone could give him a 5, a point/point-and-a-half lower than McG is baffling ?‍♂️

It is transfer deadline today and I, like many on here, would like to see a couple of signings as I think that the squad is thin in places.
The reality is that we may only see us linked with other teams academy prospects, which we will (hopefully) take on loan.
There seems to be some debate as to whether this is a good or bad thing and I think that arguments on both sides make sense, I.e., loaning a young starlet from Liverpool/Chelsea who wants some first team football may make us stronger (I.e., Wilson and Tomori). On the other hand, if they do well, then we are only increasing their value to Chelsea as they are unlikely to sign for us and will go to a higher bidder (I.e., Wilson and Tomori).
However, what the latter argument does not take into account is how the world around us seems to be changing; we are moving from a nation of 'owners' to a nation of 'renters'. I have some examples:
We no longer own music/CD's/Vinyl like we used to. Going out and physically buying records has been replaced by a subscription model, such as Spotify/Apple Music, where we 'rent' millions of songs at our finger tips for a monthly fee. A similar thing is happening with films and DVD's, where instead of physically owning DVD's, we pay monthly subscriptions to SKY/Netflix, etc, and use these as our film library. Anyone who has wandered into a HMV recently will notice how they as a business have had to adapt to this cultural shift, they are reducing the amount of space where they stock DVD's and CD's and are replacing these with t-shirts, toys, books, novelty items and even Japanese drinks and chocolates.
I teach in a local FE College and train students how to use the Adobe suite (Photoshop, After Effects, etc). One upon a time you had to buy these programmes outright and they could cost anywhere between £800-£1,200 per programme, which was far too expensive for students or people starting out. Now Adobe have changed their ownership model and, instead, you can pay anything between £25 to £55 per months to use all of the programmes - Renting instead of owning.
This model of ownership is not just specific to media and computing. For example, many motorists are heading down the HP route nowadays, my wife recently paid a small deposit for her car and now pays monthly, in 4 years she will have a few options, one of which will be to hand the car back and start the process again with a brand new car. Again, we as a nation are increasingly less owning our cars and, in effect, 'renting' them.
Therefore, back on topic, I cannot help thinking that this 'rental' model might be the way that things are going, especially for clubs in Div 1. Don't get me wrong, I love to see a youngster, like Sibley and Cashin, come through our academy ranks and commit their future to the club. 

However, I am also willing to accept that, similar to other businesses, we may all have to adapt to the fact that we may be an attractive proposition for youngsters in Premier League/High-end Championship academies, given our facilities and stature in the game. Yes, this will mean that we may have some 'mercenary' players with no links to the club and we may only see them for one year, but it also means that we are not saddled with an average player on a long team contract (See many of our signings over the last 10 years) and, just maybe, there could be some long term potential if the loan works out well for both parties. 
Going back to someone such as Tomori, I would argue that Tennyson got it right when he said 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all', and no, this does not mean that I was in love with Tomori, just that I was glad to see him in a Derby shirt for one season.
So whoever comes in on loan today, if any, let's not worry about if they are taking another players shirt or stopping our own academy products, if they are good enough then they'll be in the first team and if they do go back to their parent club and make them a tidy profit, at least we will have benefit from the good football they would have played here.

I own my house outright
I own my car outright 
I would like to rent the wife out though 
 

Unless you have stacks of cash, you simply can’t buy quality these days.
Whether it’s in football, the property industry or digital world, loaning is the way forward.

Makes a lot more sense that he’s for the Under-21s. He’s an attacking midfielder and we don’t really need any more of them in the first team - we’ve already got Knight and Sibley (provided they both stay, of course).
For those saying that makes the signing pointless - note that he’s out of contract at the end of the season. This loan will effectively act as a “trial” to assess his potential, before signing him permanently on a free next summer. 
He won’t take up any of our 5 “first team squad” loans (believe we’re allowed another 3 on top who aren’t involved on match days), so I don’t see the issue. Our academy has been decimated during administration (Mels legacy), leaving our U21 squad extremely thin (only 16 players currently), and totally devoid of quality, as evidenced by results so far this year. We’ve gone from having one of the best academies in the country to one of the worst. We’re crying out for reinforcements, and good quality ones at that, as we look to rebuild. We have to look externally - as we already have with Rooney and Nunn - so this seems a good move to me,

I took the description of a “senior” striker to mean one for the 1st team not an u21/23 loan or 1000 years old ?

I see what you did there, very good ?

Also note PPS is a cashless stadium now, so only card & mobile payments accepted.
(when it was announced we were going cashless the website didn't actually mention the ticket office, just  'Concourse Refreshment Kiosks, Betting Stations, and Hospitality facilities', but I'd assume it must also include ticket purchases)
Are you going along tonight, or will it be a kashless stadium too?

Anyone else miss the admin thread? The imminent threat of liquidation was more positive than many of the comments I've read today. Give your heads a wobble if you're calling for the managers head. 

I’m not sure what to say after that, the tactics and set up were good. We had a 20 minute spell in the 2nd half where we just kept going long which lost our momentum and then we went back to our normal game in the last 15 minutes and started creating chances. The players have to take responsibility for not getting it in the net today, I can’t see how you can criticise the manager or coaching staff.

Theres a fair bit of rubbish being spoken at the moment. Lots of tactical geniuses around. 
I wonder if any of them had considered that 6 weeks on from being rescued by David Clowes and only 4 games in, we're actually doing quite well.
We were never going to hit the ground running and rip teams apart. We need a a foundation first, a very clear default position before we can even think about anything else.
This is very clearly being instilled at the moment. We can then expand our game as the 13 (THIRTEEN) new players get used to the system that LR wants to employ.
I would quite happily settle for 15 pts from the first 10 games and said so before a ball had been kicked. That's a decent base to build from. 
There are 126 points to play for. I expect we'll win more of those points than we'll miss out on. 
Common sense is needed whilst the system is being implemented.

What a disappointing post. 
We're 7th after 4 games. Won 2, drawn 1, lost 1 with 13/14 new players. Thats a decent start. We're through in the Cup.
Sorry he's not nailed the team selection and tactics spot on after 4 league games. 
I despair at fan comments like this. 
How about judging after 20 games have passed, not after 4 games.

So we’ve just witnessed young Eiran age 21 months in a matter of hours. I reckon he can easily surpass 6 foot in the next 20-30 mins.

One of the weirdest match threads ever and that's some achievement....
According to you lot, this is what happened:
We started well and scored tap in at the back-post by Knight or Dobbin or it might have been an own goal. Goalscorer might be a mystery, but it was certainly assisted by Sibley. Or Fozzie. Anyway, the origo of assist was A4 and it was sinked in G1. 
After the half-time Mansfield came out stronger thanks to difference of managers teamtalks. They got the deserved equaliser, which led us to losing the game at the time. Some forum members got they daily dose of meltdown, so I guess they are happy clappers now? 
After losing the game 1-1, we brought on the big guns and they managed to create a goal and funnily, when the goals were counted, we won the game 1-2.
Sounds like Rooney had impressive debut, so congrats to him. Also worth noting, that obviously Collins has scored, just not on the pitch.
Carry on.

Maybe we just have an owner who thinks transfers should be paid for with money we actually have rather than speculating by sending us into debt?
We haven't sold anyone yet so how would we have fees to buy anyone? Clowes has already stumped up a bunch of money to pay our debts (probably over time) and we all know that with modern football wages season ticket money barely leaves anything left over - So I would imagine the manager has been given a simple instruction that he can spend whatever he generates in player sales

Prioritising chants about the misfortune of others, over ones that support to revival of the club just doesn’t sit right for me.
Chants at Bradford about Birmingham City’s struggles that we’ve literally just come out of , & Collimore. Boring.
Chants today about German Bombers, Collimore and turning what should’ve been a friendly atmosphere into all but that. Boring.
Just a mini rant I guess, but every single time these chants occur I can’t help but cringe inside. I get we want to create hostile environments but can we focus on doing that by supporting our own team with incredible volume before we sing these pointless songs that aren’t going to motivate anyone.
On a positive note, we’re looking good already.

I don't think that it's going to happen today, as it's a bank holiday in DR Congo for their independence Day.?

You could argue there's more important things than literally everything apart from the most important thing in the world.
Therefore, should we only talk about the single most important thing? and if so what is it?
Or, here's a crazy idea, perhaps we could have different pages for different topics and if you aren't interested in any given topic, just don't comment.
I'm with @SparxTheRam !
Talking about something as trivial as what our kit might look like is a nice little escape from the endless torment that the takeover has been for what seems like forever
 

I think having played nearly 400 league games (the vast majority at Championship level and above) might just give him an edge as an expert over the armchair fan.