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CornwallRam

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Everything posted by CornwallRam

  1. I think Adams is just as good at League 1 level as Thorne was at Championship level. His massive talent is his positional sense - nearly always in the right place. Add in athleticism, tackling ability and growing ability to pick a pass and we have our best signing of Warne's tenure by some distance. He's also very cool-headed for such an aggressive player. He looks so at home here. Always 100% effort, always in the middle of the celebrations and loves to get involved in the bounce. Get him signed.
  2. c£10m on non player wages seems very high. Especially as a lot of staff were made redundant during admin. Is there any detail on that?
  3. He was bouncing with a massive grin on his face as I left the stadium. Looks like a proper Ram. Best loanee since George Thorne.
  4. I wonder why we wouldn't invite Connor Wickham to train with us? Out of all the free agent strikers, he's got the most potential - still only 30. Obviously he might not be interested, but it looks like a good an opportunity for him to get fit and for us to potentially have cover for Collins. His injury record is terrible so we'd monitor that, but if he looked like he could contribute without damaging morale, then there wouldn’t be to much at risk with a deal until the end of the season.
  5. How many loanees do have available to play? I believe we can only have 5 in matchday squad.
  6. Collins' problem is that he gets fed up waiting for the ball and leaves the centre forward position vacant far too often. That's we he is usually average - he's playing as winger/midfielder for 30 minutes a game. When he's where he should be, he's excellent at this level. Aggressive, quick enough over 5 yards, good in the air and pretty clinical. I wonder how much of the positioning issue would disappear if we created more in midfield?
  7. Such sad news. His passion for the club made him a legend. RIP B4.
  8. Where did you hear that? If that is the case, we have changed very recently and moved away from standard industry practice.
  9. The attendance is always given as tickets sold, so all season ticket holders count as being there. I think I read that we'd sold 22k (happy to be contradicted if anyone has the actual figure), so it's unlikely that official attendances will fall below 24k as there'll always be away fans and walk ups. Clowes and Pearce will have the actual turnstile figures though, which will always be lower. Their concern will be if they are thousands lower and if walkups drop significantly.
  10. There's no way he can stay. If I owned the club and there were no fans to consider, I'd give him another month to make the squad gel and decide at the end of November whether to sack him or give him until April. The season is still salvageable and it's normal for teams to struggle with such a high turnover. The problem is he's lost the fans. Now failure is guaranteed. The atmosphere in the dressing room will be difficult enough, but as soon as things go a bit wrong on the pitch, the players will really struggle to cope with the toxic atmosphere in the ground. Under those circumstances, team cohesion dissappears, the players become overly cautious and their energy levels drop. Warne could be saved by a good run, but the hostility of the fanbase will make that impossible. Players get paid a fortune because, to people like us, football is so much more than 22 men kicking a bag of wind around. We spend our cash because we care. Football needs emotional attachment, and it's a facet of that which makes Warne's position untenable. It's best for everyone if he goes now.
  11. Halloween horror show followed by a manager being rocketed on Bonfire night?
  12. McClaren did not play safe football. His style with us - which I believe was actually highly influenced by Paul Simpson, was nothing like Cocu's.
  13. No, Cocu and Rosenior stuff is tedious, safe, anti-football designed by statasticians and an anethama to anyone with a footballing soul.
  14. Losing away to a mid-table team isn't the end of the world. Being close to the play offs fairly early in the season, when we had such a big squad turnover in the summer is not a bad place to be. A large proportion of our fans have regularly called for stability and you don't get that by sacking managers when the position is redeemable. Sacking Warne plus 3 will also take away money that would, ideally, be better spent on players. There is a good case for giving Warne more time. However, we're Derby County and at the lowest place in our history. There's no discernable playing style, so it's hard to see any 'building' going on. But most importantly, Warne has zero goodwill from the fanbase, and in five decades of watching football, I have never seen a manager come back from that. IMO, Warne's removal from managerial duties is now inevitable. That being the case, it's better that it happens as soon as possible, rather than being dragged out. Hopefully Clowes pulls the trigger tonight. Jake Buxton in charge until Wednesday, when we announce Eustace or Wilder.
  15. Actually, Phil Brown is sounding orangely appealing at present.
  16. I reckon there's been some mass hypnosis of football fans over the the last few years. Somehow, people now believe that tedious, short, sideways passing for most of a match is good football. It isn't, it's turgid anti-football nonsense. The brand of football peddled by Clement, Cocu and Rosenior is the least entertaining way of playing imaginable. I'm just amazed that so many people have been convinced by the excitement free, safety of the slow build up. It's Emperors new clothes writ large. Warne's problem isn't that his brand of football isn't entertaining or effective. A fast passing game with early crosses and a high press is a great way of playing. The trouble is that we aren't playing that way. We're too slow to see the pass, too scared to take risks, not pressing as a team and delaying the crosses until the defence are organised. Warne's massive problem, and the reason he will soon be gone, is that he has failed to get the team to play Warneball. I wonder if that's a facet of being at a bigger club? Is he looking too far forward? There's a big thing been made that most of the recruitment has been of players with Championship experience. I suspect at Rotherham, that wasn't a thing. The players brought in were younger athletes with just enough ability to play in an organised League 1 side, but that was perfect for Warneball. The players bought in here have more proven ability, but are that bit older and slower. Maybe they are also less mouldable, having already seen how football is played at a higher level. Is that why a proven League 1 manager appears to be a poor fit for Derby County? He's adjusted his style for the bigger club and diluted his winning formula. After 50 years of watching football, the common factor with successful teans has just dawned on me. Our best sides are built around the striker's style. Warne is trying to shoehorn the strikers into his style. Yet our best managers worked out what their best strikers needed to be the most successful and set the team up to deliver it for them. Chris Martin was a donkey for a lot of his career, but as a pivot striker with Bryson, Ward and Russell running past and Eustace or Thorne feeding him, he looked like a world beater. Look at the movement of Biano, Wanchope and Sturridge - all made possible by three central defenders and a holding midfielder. Hector and O'Hare - fed by Hinton and constantly assisted by Gemmil. Stevie Howard, Charlie George, Saunders and Goddard...etc. Even Nigel fell on a system with Shefki Kuqi starring that briefly looked brilliant until he inexplicably replaced Kuqi with Young. Warne himself accidentally got a winning formula last year with McGoldrick in the 9.5 role (yes I made that term up, but you know what I mean). My conclusion is that the style doesn't hugely matter, as long as it suits the best strikers available at the club.
  17. That may be Paul Warne's or David Clowes's current view, but football doesn't work like that, - at least not at Derby County The only way that Warne will stay is if results in the next 20 or so games improve significantly - especially the home form. If were look like we're heading for a promotion challenge, the majority of fans will calm down and this will be like Fergie being one game away from the sack. However, if things don't improve very quickly, Warne will be gone shortly. He's lost a significant portion of the fans and the rest are only a couple of defeats from turning on him. Derby County is it's fanbase - other clubs might be 95% dependent on their owner, but not us. We couldn't function with 5k league gates and a boycott of the concourse food. No manager can survive here without the support of the fanbase. Football club ownership and management must both be to some extent driven by ego. Neither Clowes nor Warne would enjoy protests. They would both be looking for a way out and when fans, owner and manager all want Warne out, it's only meeting away from happening. .
  18. If we want promotion, Steve McClaren is the best bet. IMO, McClaren is a brilliant short term manager. He comes in and makes the players believe. He takes away the fear and pushes morale through the roof. He also helps a lot with skill based coaching, which does improve certain players quickly. I think we'd go up in the top two with McClaren back. The problem is that McClaren is poor in the medium term. He's tactically one dimensional - other coaches quickly work out how to counter his system. His recruitment decisions are generally below standard and he has no interest in the academy. He is also pretty lax on discipline so dressing room problems eventually take root. Once the feelgood factor has worn off, there's not much left. To me, McClaren only works in very specific circumstances...it's just that we're exactly at the place now, where we need a bit of brolly magic.
  19. Maybe we should get Mansfield's manager? What's his name again?
  20. Before his injuries, Craig Forsyth was actually very quick when going flat out. The problem is that even then, his acceleration was quite slow, so there weren't many in game opportunities for him to use his pace. I have seen a couple of times, where he had 20 yards to get moving, he left some pretty quick players for dead. He never looked like he was going that quick, but his strides were about 50% longer than most other players, so he moved faster with the same leg speed.
  21. David McGoldrick vs Sonny Bradley. What could possibly go wrong?
  22. Such sad news. It feels like a small part of me has died. Dad tried hard to get me into football - first couple of matches in Brian Cloughs title year and the a season ticket for Mackay's title, but as youngster I was a bit meh. Then Franny Lee thumped Norman Hunter and the BBG was the most exciting and loudest place on the planet. I was hooked and my interest in Derby County has never wained from that evening. RIP Franny.
  23. So you're saying that they were cheaper because they were on a downward trajectory and no other club wanted them?
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