nottingram

I like Collins and he’s having a good season but we’re in a position where our only striker could not get in our team who finished 7th last year with any regularity.

Whoever is responsible for this has made a right ricket. 

He’ll keep working hard as he does but do wonder how much it will play on his mind - he really can’t afford to get knocks or bookings which are both a big risk with the way he plays. 

Really wish I was in a position to believe the club only found out there was a possibility they’d be getting a 7 figure windfall mid afternoon today. 

4 minutes ago, May Contain Nuts said:

The ever cheerful false and forced  positivity is a bit too much tonight, tbh. Read the f****** room.

Get used to it. It’s another 6 months of excuses.

Just now, G STAR RAM said:

It was said last week when we signed CBT, that the reason he was signed on loan is because there was not enough left in the permanent signings pot unless we sold someone. 

Ok?

It was also said we put in a very good offer for a striker (a loan offer I assume) which didn’t transpire. So presumably they couldn’t identify a single other striker to direct said resources too.

We also did sell someone. Presumably for a very good fee.

3 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

Not to be different, just because I respect that a local businessman has rescued us from the mire and, despite losing millions in the first 9 months, on top of his £50m + original outlay, already has some fans screaming for more.

Yes, the same fans that in hindsight lambasted MM for his reckless spending.

Yes, the same fans that have spent most of the season saying how great our squad is and are being held back by our poor manager.

So, yes, if going against is standing up against these spoilt brats who want everything I'm happy to do that. 

If we can't afford someone within our business plan, then we don't buy, it’s a simple as that. 

Thats fine but at no point since the summer has that been the message from the club so people are going to be disappointed.

If they’re at the limit of the business plan then just say that? Don’t tell everyone two weeks ago you’ve put in a very good offer for Michael Smith. If he is the only player they could identify with this very good offer then what on earth is going on. 

The optics of selling Bird are bad too. I’m sure it makes sense and the club shouldn’t be run on how things look externally, I admit, but it isn’t great. 

The thing is, we’ll have been in talks with Bristol City over Bird for weeks, it won’t have just happened.

Literally the only way it makes sense for us to have agreed to sell is if there was an incoming.

But the lack of any rumour is weird even if it is a really tight ship these days

Not getting my knickers in a twist just yet but if we bring in a couple of million in and fail to get a striker it is really poor stuff.

4 minutes ago, Curtains said:

https://www.dcfc.co.uk/teams/player/adebayo-fapetu

Doubt he’d play if every single one of our other midfielders broke their leg so I wouldn’t worry

7 minutes ago, Curtains said:

I do wish him well but I don’t want him back on loan as he’s taking others game time up.

Who’s?

No issue with this at the moment. That will change if we use the cash to bend over to Sheffield Wednesday.

This money should be going on a young forward with upside. 

Announcing Adams today means there’s almost definitely a forward, otherwise I reckon they’d have saved it to try and quell the disappointment tomorrow.

How quickly this came out the blue means it’s hopefully someone not mentioned yet as the names don’t really inspire so far. 

Presumably Fornah on his way?

Glad the midfield is being addressed, albeit I do think Fornah has been decent in his limited minutes. 

I think autos is 2 from 4. Us, Portsmouth, Bolton and Peterborough. Probably Peterborough and Bolton I think. Despite that I think we could easily drop away but we’d have to be really bad not to finish top 6.

Huge pressure to win the play offs then. Not getting promoted this season would be a huge failure in my opinion. Teams coming down will be in much better shape next year and Wrexham coming up will throw money at it. Expect Warne would stay but there really will be no excuses by then. 

10 minutes ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

I think we’re in a bit of a bind with short-term vs long-term strategy. 

A smart, patient League One club with a long-term strategy doesn’t pay £300k to release a 26 year old League One winger from his contract a few months early. But it sounds like we really need to get promoted sooner rather than later. And if the CBT signing and other short-term moves get us promoted, it may all be worth it.

The question is, if we were to get promoted, I have no idea if we would be more strategic or we’d just carry on with the scattergun approach.  

I don’t think there is any bind, to be truthful.

Almost everything that happens football-wise is incredibly short term.

This is just another signing we make that anyone on this forum could think of within 5 minutes of being asked. Maybe he’s still alright, maybe he’s not but I find it incredibly uninspiring either way. 

Signing Gregory would be a relief. Was just starting to worry we were getting close to the squad’s average age dropping below 30.

10 minutes ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

I think Ward is the best crosser of a ball at the club.  Doesn't need to beat a player to put it in with accuracy.  Remember Curtis Davies saying he was a fantastic signing at the start of the season for this reason. He should be tailor made for Warneball.  He can't defend though.  

Very good crosser but like you say can’t defend so can’t play right back in a back 4 and doesn’t score goals to play on the wing in a front 3.

So 3-5-2 or 4-4-2. Not a bad signing if we persisted with 3 at the back for more than 5 minutes but at this point simply doesn’t have a place. 

16 minutes ago, Jourdan said:

@LeedsCityRam 

The quality of football is not high but we are also in League 1 with a squad of League 1 footballers, so quality and consistency are naturally difficult to maintain. If you are realistic about where we are, then perhaps it’s not so disappointing that we struggle in that department.

Some people believe we have the best squad in the league and should be a cert for top two. For me, we are a competitive top six side with an outside chance of top two. That always seemed likely to me as Bolton, Barnsley and Peterborough were better than us last season and have also looked to improve.

I am not really frustrated about people’s gripes over the style of play or generally not fazed by people not appreciating the job Warne is doing. I have too at times commented that it can be frustrating and also at times commented that Warne needs to step things up. 

I was all over the thread on Tuesday saying that it wasn’t good enough v Reading. I was all over the Stevenage thread saying Warne’s position was in trouble. The difference is that it seems that some people don’t seem willing to praise and criticise in equal measure and be balanced in their views. The praise was begrudging even when we won 8 games out of 9 recently. It feels like nothing will ever be enough for some.

In terms of meeting expectation, I would say that Warne is around par. Missing out on the playoffs last season was disappointing and being in the top six now is expected. Some of the opposition teams have good squads and equally good individual talent and experienced managers at this level (see Bolton and Peterborough with Evatt and Ferguson) that are proving just as canny. I don’t see that we can be dismissive of that.

The difficulty is that the wins do not necessarily quell the concerns so any praise is then forced, or would be from me anyway.

I personally have no real concerns Warne will get us out of this league. It really should be this year but if not then there’s a few contracts expiring in the summer and he’ll have some wiggle room (but would absolutely need to be recruit better this summer than last).

Where I do have concerns is how we still look against the better teams in the league. Peterborough looked a level above us at PP, we couldn’t string two passes together v Bolton even at 11 v 11. Did play well v Barnsley however.

So beating up some bad teams at this level doesn’t really move the needle for me. The crux of my issue is he has a 4 year deal and so the expectation must be that he will lead us at some point in the Championship, however hard I try I just cannot imagine that working out and I can’t simply tell myself “well let’s just get promoted first” because I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. 

59 minutes ago, Jourdan said:

In fairness, we did have some promising moments under Cocu.

Didn’t we beat Stoke 4-0 on a Friday night and it looked like it had all suddenly clicked but then as the end of the season got nearer we ran out of steam?

It was potentially a massive egg on my face moment as I remember being hugely against Cocu from about December 2019 onwards.

But yes, it wasn’t the best of times. I did find that first half-season under Rooney much worse though. How we stayed up, I’ll never know.

Covid hit just as we were hitting a head of steam. We beat Blackburn 3-0 with Sibley scoring a worldie on his full debut which was near enough the last game in this country before everything stopped. We then weren’t quite the same when things resumed coinciding with tough fixtures as well.

The next season was awful and he had to go, although he didn’t have the luxury of using Bielik or CKR before he went.

Do wonder where Sibley and Bird would be if he’d been allowed to ride it out. Sibley certainly was not handled well by Rooney in my opinion. And it’s not like we got much better.

Depends on context clearly but based on ones since I started going regularly:

1. McClaren

2. Lampard

3. Wassall

4. Rosenior 

5. Rowett

6. Cocu

7. Rooney

8. Warne

9. Clough

10. Jewell

11. Pearson 

Forgot Clement and can’t be bothered to change the numbers so he can go between Warne and Clough. Mostly highlights what a grim time it’s been.

6 minutes ago, May Contain Nuts said:

Completely the opposite IMO.

Warne came in after the majority of the hard work was done, he was handed what was already a top 8 (potentially top 6) squad and has since been allowed to bring in a good number of players, albeit limited on transfer fees, on wages higher than the majority of our competition can pay.

Added to that, his first full season in charge is one in which the quality of the opposition we face is below standard in an already low quality league, owing to 2 of the relegated teams having points deductions with Reading particularly in a mess.

I can't think of any manager in living memory other than perhaps Lampard with an easier brief. (Should have got us promoted with the standard of loan player we had, but he was also up against teams with even greater spending power)

That's not to say that it's dead simple, that there aren't still challenges we face, but he's not a rookie manager, getting out of League One is his speciality and he should fully be expected to achieve that with the resources he's been given 

 

The only mitigation I think he has at this stage is the best number 9’s at this level have cost their clubs fees - Charles, Bishop, Clarke-Harris, May etc. and he does deserve credit for the tune he is getting out of Collins. 

That said not many clubs at this level could sell players for £3m-4m tomorrow if they wanted to which could (presumably) fund the filling of the big gaps in the squad. That’s making an assumption we are allowed to reinvest fees in that manner which I obviously don’t know for sure before anyone asks for Harvard references on that.  

56 minutes ago, MACKWORTHRAM said:

I'm not happy with the first half performance no. But I wasn't massively enthusiastic about the football under Billy Davies either but as long as we win it doesn't really matter.

We've won 11, drew 2 and lost 2 out of the last 15 games.

If we do that in the next 15 we'll win the league.

Blackett Taylor has trained twice and played about 80 minutes in total. He's at a new club, new surroundings, won't know his teammates well and you're calling him uninspiring? It's mental. 

And didn’t promotion without worrying about performances work out brilliantly then

First half today I had absolutely no idea what was going on. On paper I assumed a 4-2-3-1/4-4-2 but Bird was so high up almost level with Barkhuizen and Hourihane was holding the CB’s hands. Near enough a 5-5.

Wilson gave the ball away 3 or 4 times as he had no options and there was 30-40 yards of space in the middle of the pitch with no Derby player in it. 

As with the other night I think when everyone in an area of the pitch looks crap it is hard to point it down to individual performances. Let’s hope the coaching staff have learned they cannot set the team up like whatever that was today again.

Bird, Thompson and one more please. I’d like Sibley to get a proper run in there in a functioning midfield but I don’t think that will happen. 

Thought it was surprising how both Bird and the team looked 1000000x better when he was played in his proper position as a deep midfielder allowed to control the game. 

I don’t mind Hourihane but I’ve no idea why he was expected to play in midfield on his own in the first half. 

2 minutes ago, Crewton said:

Not you specifically, but by the tenor of the harshest critics on the forum generally - Warne inherited some of our best performers but also some that are at the top end of our wage structure who divide opinion at best eg : Hourihane, Barkhuizen, Smith, Collins, Bird and Sibley.

Yep don’t disagree with that at all but guess my point is even though they divide opinion (personally I like most of them as players) but we have failed to improve on them despite making a fair few signings who are presumably on pretty hefty wages themselves.

That makes it pretty difficult for me to swallow an argument that he’s particularly hamstrung by the conditions he’s working in, is all. Which was my original point. 

I can accept it’s probably tough to improve up front without being able to spend money on a forward - as in players like Bishop, Charles, Adeboyejo have cost their clubs fees. But any other issues in the squad I can’t really accept as an excuse at this stage personally. 

1 hour ago, Crewton said:

Hang on a sec - if his transfer record is worse than crap, isn't he doing rather well to get a pile of crap to within 3 points of the top with the rubbish he's signed? I mean, given the comments about some of Rosenior's signings and the lads that have come through the academy, hasn't he been saddled with allot of underperforming drek (using your logic)?

I agree that this is a pointless discussion, but it's hard to let some of this stuff pass unchallenged......

I don’t remember making any comment about Rosenior’s signings or the academy players in truth. So not really sure how that is my logic to be honest.

The issue I think is two and a half windows in and Nyambe, Nelson (both very good signings to his credit) and maybe one of Wilson and CBT would be Warne signings who get in our best 11, in my opinion. Maybe one of the forwards he’s signed if any of them could stay fit for more than 5 minutes.