TheTinMan

Hourihane's the one who frustrates me the most. This is a player who could boss this league if he wanted like Bannan did for Wednesday. It was a nice free kick for the goal but he just seems to cruise around in open play having little impact on the game. 

We seem to have no midfield at all is my main take on that half. And we look dodgy as heck at the back. Collins has worked very hard, good set piece goal but he is rarely in the box and when he is there's no support. No idea where NML is most of the time. 

I haven't read the full thread of comments but just my two pennies worth. I don't want to speak for others but I find it hard seeing sides like Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth (obviously Forest is hard regardless) prospering in the PL with respect to those sides, certainly two of them very close to going out of business in recent history and that could easily have been us in different circumstances if we'd won either of the playoff finals. Even Luton winning the playoffs last season, a great story sure but that's bound to make fans of bigger fanbases think how and why. I don't want to detract from any of those clubs Brentford and Brighton in particular have fantastic owners. 

I don't like what I perceive to be not dishonesty but equally not entirely transparent communication from the club regarding this season. If we've got no money to spend and promotion is unlikely why not just come out and say that. They've created this mess in my opinion with Clowes comments about the budget and I've no axe to grind with Clowes in how he runs the club, again just some clarity would be appreciated. 

I don't think the average has been below 22k in any season at Pride Park to be fair so that is a reasonable worst case scenario which could happen regardless of what happens on the pitch as people are finding it harder to afford things in the current financial climate. Probably not that relevant comparing anything pre Pride Park. 

He clearly said a couple of my players so this isn't just about Max Bird. He sounded to me like a man who is fed up with what has happened in the transfer window so far and I just get the nagging feeling he a bit like some of us may have misinterpreted what Clowes meant by a 'competitive' budget. The word short used a lot, sounded like a plea to the man at the top to me, I might be wrong. 

I thought Warne was big into sports psychology? Didn't sound it with those comments in public. Only going off the highlights but I thought Waggy looked quite lively and does genuinely give us another dimension to the attack. 

1 minute ago, 8Leeds said:

It’s not the formation, it’s how it’s being applied. It seems the lessons from Saturday haven’t been learned as from what the highlights show we commit far to many players forward and create massive gaps leaving vulnerable to the counter attack. Long balls punted forward and isolated wing backs trying to whip balls in.

I like Warne but he style of football gives me concerns.

 

Its the style he wants to play with the players he has available that concerns me. Talk of working harder when most of the squad are the wrong side of 30 and have dodgy injury profiles and don't have the legs. Over-committing players forward when we have no pace in the defensive side of our team. We are a car crash waiting to happen on the break when we lose it and it doesn't even take much quality to exploit the weakness. 

Forget the concerns about what's going on in attack, having just caught those highlights and I couldn't watch the game as I was working I'd be gravely concerned about the tortoise and the slug partnership in the centre of our defence, route one easy as you like every time in behind. Doesn't matter what lack of quality there is in the opposition if we gift that option to any side in this league, you don't need quality to use it just pace and its not even really quick just comparatively quick. We cannot play a high line with the likes of Bradley and Cash. 

On 06/08/2023 at 21:04, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

Brayford, Robinson, Bryson, Davies, Freeman, Coutts and Ward for under 1.5 million.  That's pretty good.  Bueno was outstanding till Burnley away where he got absolutely battered.

thank you, was waiting for someone to spot we didn't pay much at all for Bryson. And I was talking more about the signings he made in his first season where he didn't have much money and he made us half decent considering where those players came from. But that would involve doing a bit of scouting rather than just buying players who were good 5 years ago or who played for Warne at Rotherham. 

The striker situation is seriously depressing to be honest and we just seem to keep banging the same drum of looking at veterans who have fitness issues, are past their best and will be on silly wages still and they'll just move on once the contract ends and we're back to square one with rebuilding the team. Yes it worked for a season with Didzy but he's not that long out of the PL whereas Rhodes, Waghorn etc have been lower Championship players for years now. Nigel Clough barely had a pot to pee in but still unearthed some good signings from the lower leagues and Scotland. Do we even have a scouting team? 

Bottom line is players will make mistakes and I can give Wildsmith a pass he's generally very reliable and had an excellent season last season, I'm sure he'll bounce back, early days for Bradley, but mistakes are magnified and indeed are more likely to happen because you're under more pressure in the game constantly when you don't have much of a goalscoring threat at the other end and that's not just a goalscorer its a creator from midfield. At the moment we have neither and we're desperate on numbers too. 

1 minute ago, JuanFloEvraTheCocu'sNesta said:

One of them days today. Handed points over without making it hard for the opposition.

When Warne says that he wants us to work harder than other teams and make it hard for teams to play against us then we do that it really, really annoys me.

I think this idea about working harder than other teams just isn't going to work with what we have i.e. a small squad and quite a few aging legs in the engine room. 

1 minute ago, Mr Tibbs said:

Thought we’d seen the back of Roos. 

Sucker punch. 

And every other keeper bar Carson in the past decade 

Does anyone remember the season we got relegated to what is now the Championship and were playing Reading 1st game at home who'd just been promoted from what is now League 1 and we had Ravenelli and Rob Lee and Warren Barton and some others playing and beat them by a good couple of goals 3-0 I think, songs about them only coming to see the champions play etc.... fast forward 45 games and we'd finished in the bottom half and they made the playoffs. Don't forget Ipswich were quite slow starters last season and must have been well adrift of Wednesday and Plymouth at one stage. Saying that we need attacking options asap we can't rely on Collins and Washington solely. 

bench looks desperately light as well in attacking options. Don't know much about this Robinson fella but from what I can see we've got Washington or nowt 

3 hours ago, Amberram said:

If we can get one of our strikers off to a good start, I think the goals issue will sort itself out with the rest of the team.

if we can get Washington fit it would be a start 

Half-full in that we've still got a club and we'll be a top 8 club regardless of how the season goes we're too strong not to be. Last season was a free hit as we were all delighted to have a club still. Now the reality bites that we've got significantly better resources than most in this league and I do include most of the playing squad in that bracket and the right manager to get out of the league so naturally you expect a bit more. Half-empty in that I'm not confident at all of top 2 because last season the top 4 sides all got over 80 goals and we only got 67 which was less than Charlton and marginally more than Exeter and we've lost our top goalscorer and replaced him with somebody who wasn't fit enough to feature in pre-season. Generally goals get promotion and I don't see 70 goals in this squad never mind 80. 

On the sustainable theme I've seen somebody else mention this, our transfer policy is getting in players in their 30s, past their best, no resale value and probably won't extend their contracts. I'm struggling to see what is sustainable about that and where this cycle ends if there isn't a constant production line of decent talent breaking through from the academy we can sell on and not be shafted over like we always seem to be. 

Theres bits of his story i dont buy personally 

Yeah I've got no sympathy for him either. I don't agree with the way the club treated Lawrence and Bennett seperately and sadly hes spot on about his assessment of why they weren't sacked but that doesnt change the fact they are all professional athletes getting paid a small fortune. Part of that luxury has a sacrifice that you don't do things which significantly impact on your physical health. Ironically I suspect the club would have had every justification to sack Keogh had he been the driver fleeing the scene not the passenger. The fact they didnt sack the other 2 significantly undermined their case vs Keogh. 

The whole system is broken in the Championship now and its easy for us to sit here and say this given how things are panning out and I'm well aware that we once received parachute payments ourselves but now more than ever this league is in grave danger of becoming the same clubs going up and down between the Premier League and the Championship. The parachute payments coupled with Championship clubs being too afraid to take any risks given what is happening to ourselves, to Reading (probably) etc means this league goes from being one of the most exciting ones in europe to being a closed shop. 

Just to add on parachute payments - the solution is very simple. In any other walk of life if you underperform in your job you might get sacked, you might get demoted. If you got demoted to a lesser role you would be taking on a lower salary to reflect that. Players should have a clause in their contracts that if they get relegated their wages automatically drop X% to reflect this. It might actually give a few of them an incentive not to get relegated in the first place. 

8 minutes ago, Ram Bam said:

Just a thought on the potential points deduction for next season, isn't it a thing that if you're relegated outright then any points deduction is applied to the following season?

 

Is it possible we finish in the bottom 3 or a points deduction for the amortisation sees us relegated so the 12 points for administration apply to next season?

Administration points get deducted on the current season unless you go into administration at some stage in March I believe. It was bought in to stop clubs who were already going to be relegated doing it tactically. Since we are in September its unlikely any points we get deducted next season since we are in theory in no danger of being relegated at present, presuming the FFP related ones are revealed before then I'd imagine. 

I highly doubt we'd get 15m if the entire squad and youth team was sold off in all honesty. Whatever squad we have left would be almost irrelevant anyway if worst case scenario we get the -21, frankly who honestly cares about this season if that happens? 

I think part of Kieran's axe against Morris/DCFC is we don't publish our accounts and he loves ripping other teams accounts to shreds when they do release them, usually on his social media. I think he's a very intelligent man who knows his stuff and I do like most of his shows but he comes across sometimes as a bit of a Captain Hindsight who thinks he'd do a better job as an owner/chairman. 

They've got no chance I'm sick of all this unlucky Wycombe nonsense. They were dreadful bar a handful of games at the end of the season. Never higher than 21st in the league, didn't win until the 9th game of the season. They didn't start playing until they were all bar down because their goal difference meant they were never going to overhaul us. Even if we'd lost to Sheffield Wednesday in the last game of the season they wouldn't have stayed up, there was no scenario on the last day of the season where they could survive.