StaffsRam

I think the more likely scenario is that they start with a strong team but make plenty of subs at HT if it's not looking good for the autos. If we ended up losing 2-0 and Bolton ended up fielding an under-strength team against Posh Reserves and end up winning 1-0 they'd be kicking themselves well into the playoffs. Either way, we should put all of this beyond doubt by going 3-0 up inside the first 10 minutes. F*** what Peterboro and Bolton do.

Think he's expecting Barnsley to limp into 5th and he'd rather have them then either Oxford or Lincoln who might be in better form. Resting players could go either way, and surrendering momentum, especially going into the playoffs, is never a clever idea really.

Apparently not. Either they don't think we'll drop points, or they deemed themselves incapable of slotting 4 or 5 past Bolton, but either way, the waving of this white flag is practically Italian/French in its epic-ness.

Probably the same guy who valued our ground the same as Morecambe's - did he base the estimate on Mbappe's value?

Literally a racing snake...

F*** me, it feels like I've aged 20 years during that second half! Huge result. Not necessarily for the opposition or the performance, but the situation being what it is it's all about the results now and a win, and a clean sheet, in this game, is huge. Well done lads! 😎

Agree. I get the fixture congestion line that's always trotted out with this kind of thing, but there are far better solutions than this. Why not increase the Premier League squad lists from 25 to say, 30, and make them actually play some of the vast amounts of talent that the Premier League clubs hoover up from the lower leagues? As a point of reference, re fixtures - Man City played 61 games in total last year. Winning the treble. In 71-72 we won the league, and neither the FA Cup, or League Cup, and had no European impediments, and we played 60 games.

Always found it really annoying that in the 88/89 season review video they missed his goal against Wimbledon 😡

It wouldn't be half as bad if it wasn't so utterly predictable. Open up a 7-point gap to 3rd? f*** that, let's phone it in and keep things interesting instead. Every f****** time. Mentally weak, and tactically clueless is not a great combination.

We've had some fantastic sides that contrived not to get promoted over the years, but the best is a toss-up between the Johnson/Gabbiadini/Kitson side and the Mac I side. A crying shame that neither was tested in the top flight. As far as J/G/K go, I've followed Derby since around '87 and it's probably in my top 3 most-exciting forward lines during that time, along with Saunders/Goddard and Wanchope/Baiano/Sturridge. J/G/K seemed to complement each over quite nicely.

"And Wanchope treated the Manchester United defense with absolute contempt" is mine I think 😎

Having only just discovered the saga of this thread I can only say welcome back Ed, and FFS, I think I'd prefer hearing Ed on commentary than reading some of the sh** we post here sometimes. Also, good luck to Sally, hadn't realized she'd left RD. Always thought she was one of the better presenters on RD tbh. Re matchday commentary, I think those of us who grew up with Graham Richards have been spoiled somewhat.

They probably don't want to draw Smoggy's ire. No doubt if Boro fail to make the playoffs then he'd complain to the EFL that Gayle would have gone to a Championship club and scored a boat-load of goals against their championship rivals....

Had to look that up in our dictionary. Says "C**t"?

If it is blocked by the clowns at the EFL then I'd be demanding a full rationale as to why. - We have whatever we got in the Bird deal - They were happy enough for us to sign a striker on deadline day - Presumably Collins' injury is covered by insurance So, WHAT exactly is the EFL's problem with this? Other than to blatantly screw us over one last time while they can?

Tbf, it wouldn’t be like the EFL to pass up any chance to be a bunch of c***s. Especially when it comes to us. Not vindictive at all the EFL….🙄

Well one of them will be Port Vale so we can pretty much rule them out.... 🙂

At least it's been educational. Who else knew it took paint 45 minutes to dry....?

Probably for the best, Ol' Steve is off giving Chunk a hand getting to the Pirate ship today anyway....

Give Steve Cooper a shout, he helped get Frodo and Sam in...

Agree. This goes all the way back to the philosophy in appointing Warne, and our competing priorities at the time - Going up at the earliest opportunity vs Rebuilding the club for the future. Those goals aren't necessarily compatible in the short term and in appointing Warne we effectively gave him free rein to get us up at all costs. If it works, great. If it doesn't then we're effectively wasted two years.

I think DC was caught between a rock and a hard place, and that manifests itself in our general approach - Warne was appointed with a singular goal - get us out of this league and back into the Champ. Warne has a track record of being able to do that within narrow confines. I think DC has given Warne enough rope on the assumption that he'd know what to do with it. The problem is that the goal of getting out of the league at the earliest opportunity is at odds with rebuilding the club organically. DC pitched his tent and chose his poison when he appointed Warne. Now, we just have to hope it was the right way. There's definite benefit in getting us up, but if he doesn't then we're no further forward than we were two years ago.

Going to take a while to fix that. If we're not recruiting players to profit from at some point then it puts even more onus on the Academy working and feeding talent through. There's some great prospects in the youth ranks at the moment but we're still rebuilding, even at that level, so it'll be a while before we see a constant line of players coming through. Even then, we need to work them into the squad, and then the team, to start ramping up their value. Players like Brown, Fapetu, Weston etc are the furthest forward but they're not ready yet. The club was saved but in many ways we're still having to start again from somewhere just north of "scratch".

I think if we went up this season then we'd have a rebuild job on our hands over the summer either way. Hearing that the recruitment team are focused on the summer window - hope they're covering both eventualities when identifying their targets. Knowing our luck, we'll get promoted and then spend half the summer having to re-assess when it becomes clear that we'd planned for another season in League One...

If we were aware of Bristol's interest before yesterday, which we obviously were, then we should probably have laid down the law - "You have until midnight on the 30th to get this done or it isn't happening, we'll take our chances at tribunal in the summer". That being said, even if the monies were transferred at 2259, we could have just done the same with any club we'd agreed a deal for a striker with. I think the issue is that the deal happening on the last day mean't that most if not all of our targets had already moved elsewhere. Then we were left scrambling around and because we'd made it public knowledge that we were desperate for a striker certain other club(s) tried to take advantage. I think the only things we could really have done much differently would have been to prioritize a striker over the other two roles and used whatever £££ we did have in the pot to secure one. And, we definitely shouldn't have let Brown go out on loan until we'd got someone else signed and sealed. Brown might not be ready for regular first team action, but in the event of Collins being unavailable and neither Waggy or Wash being back then he'd have been a better prospect than playing someone out of position.