StaffsRam

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.

Unfortunately for Derby we're in a "Switzerland" situation. Nottingham to the north. Leicester to the south. Stoke to the west. It's like living in the nicest house in 1945 Hiroshima...

Or they may have thought that there'd be more competition for him in the summer. Probably clear to them yesterday that no one else was in for him so they saw a chance to get their man, signed, sealed and delivered now rather than face the cr*pshoot in the summer.

Given the number of players out of contract in the summer we're going to have another rebuild job on our hands. With that comes the "they need time to gel" thing - If we don't go up this season there's probably a sub-conscious admission that we won't challenge next season either way.

Not really sure how long folks expect Max to hang around. He's a decent young player who needs to start making his mark at a higher level sooner rather than later otherwise he's going to find a good chunk of his career done and he's in the third tier. This season was a real opportunity to get ourselves out of this sh** league while it's relatively weaker. Next season will be harder re competition, and with so many players out of contract in the summer we're looking at another near-full team rebuild, which will bring the obligatory "the new players need time to gel" factor. So from Max's perspective you can probably write off next season as well. For those comparing Derby and Bristol, I'm sorry, but the foreseeable there is no comparison, they're a much better prospect. Yes, eventually they'll re-find their level, and so will we, but for the immediate future if you're a young player looking to push on it's like chalk and cheese.

Yeah but none of them are our first card on the Rolodex.... 😆

At least we've moved on from Rotherham. One day we might even escape the Yorkshire bubble completely....

Urgh, Billy Davies trauma flashback abounds! 😧

Does feel like we spent far too long playing footsie with Sheff Wed. Should have speed-dated our way onto other options much earlier.

For one transfer deadline I just wanted to go to bed relatively hate-free. Was that too much to ask for.....? 🥹

Barnsley away towards the end of the month. If I were them I'd kick Collins off the park.

Yeah but that's the point. If we're reliant on other players going out first and we only get a bid within the last 24 hours then it doesn't really leave us with many options, as we're now seeing. Players we were interested in aren't going to hang around on the off-chance that we might find a spare fiver down the back of the sofa. In hindsight we should probably have prioritized a striker over another winger, and used the creative payment method there if we could.

True, but we couldn't really do anything until £££'s changed hands. In the meantime our targets have seemingly all gone elsewhere.

Victims of the business plan in this window. We clearly had targets but couldn't pursue them, or got outbid until we had outgoings. Just our luck that an offer comes in at the 11th hour and we seemingly have no time to do anything with the £££ and most, if not all, of our identified targets have already moved somewhere. I'm guessing, had Bristol's offer for Bird come in earlier in the window things would have looked considerably different/rosier. Do we ever get any ****ing luck in transfer windows? 🙄

You joke but that's probably our Plan Z for a new striker....

We're not so much shopping from the middle aisle as checking what's fallen down between the shelves in the middle aisle....

I just look forward to the day when we DON'T have a disappointing January transfer window. I can't really remember the last one that generated even a modicum of excitement tbh 😞

I’d rather us save the £££ and take our chances than give Sheff Wed a penny.

That Bobby Robson chap wasn't too bad either....