RedSox

The Academy is apparently ahead of schedule after the decimation of administration
What is the plan for developing these players into first team members & why were they so underused during the EFL Trophy campaign?

Another sensible question I’d ask would be “what consideration is there to vary the tactics?” Backed up with a summary of Warne’s own comments around gas out football, crosses, get the ball forward quickly.
I’m very much still patient in my stance with Warne and the club, but not ignorant to some of the issues and concerns. His gas out football works to a point against certain opposition and garners good results, hence our league position. It’s the lack of adaptability or variation that concerns me. Where we have got players missing and the squad is stretched why not adapt? Be less open, more solid, look after the ball and play patiently until we can see an opportunity rather than forcing it and being exposed on the counter. 
 

Do you think the football your Derby team is playing is entertaining for fans and good value for money in terms of what they are spending to follow the team?

Let’s be honest it’s been a tough watch most of the season.

@Big Trav gets it right again 

The end?? He's 24, with good L1 experience.
Some of our fans could do with losing that "bin him off" mentality - and if the manager is trying to offload him already, maybe the owner should remind him who's paying the bills?

The midfield balance is not right. Teams find it too easy to run through the heart of our team, I think it's something that we need to address as it was a big issue vs Peterborough and again today. 

Deserved to win that.
Listened to Radio Derby on way home and they’ve watched a different game where Burton deserved a draw.
Call me old fashioned but to score 3 they’d need at least 3 shots on target.
We had two iffy bits of defending and they had 2 excellent finishes. Other than that I thought Burton were one of the poorest teams we’ve played. 
The only slight negative is that we didn’t get the winner in the 97th minute. Couldn’t believe their plucky new manager moaning at the amount of time added on ……after he’d called a basketball style timeout with their mortally wounded number 3 a full 8 mm from the touch line.
Got what they deserved.

Glad we’ve won, but it was unnecessarily difficult to watch. Ref was poor, game management poor, BUT it’s 3 points when it could have been less. 😮‍💨 

Get in!!!!!!
Hourihane volleys in from the edge of the area 

Agreed, I’m far more patient with Warne than some on here, but his in game management using subs (or lack of) genuinely infuriates me, why wait until 84 mins to put Thompson on?! It doesn’t make sense to me 

I’m not gonna offer an “it’s early yet he may come good comment”, but there were defensive headers Bradley did win in that game and ultimately we’ve won so he doesn’t need labelling “disastrous” in my opinion

It’s more the lack of a functioning midfield than the back three. Countless times they get exposed because there’s a chasm in front of them. 

Bring him home 

Just an update for the stats lads…………………makes for good reading. 👍🐏

 

Premier League Thurs 21/12/2023
Crystal Palace 1 - 1 Brighton & Hove Albion
Attendance 24,171
 
EFL Sky Bet League One
Derby County 3 - 1 Lincoln City
Attendance 27,192
 
…………no further comment required. 👍🐏

B4’s Sisters matchday record.
Played 4
Won 4
Goals For 9
Goals Against 1
 
………………………..and long may it last  👍🐏

Long balls from back to front too often = giving the ball away …basically ..shorten it up a bit and let’s get up the pitch as a team …quite poor so far and PV are pants must win these sort of games 

Great round of applause, quite a few around me in the South Stand i noticed with arms held high clapping, forum members i presume?
Fair play to the Rovers fans for joining in as well.
❤️🐏

Today is a bit more ammunition to show Smith and Hourihane doesn’t work as a pairing. Wasn’t much coincidence the goals came when Fornah was on. 

Listen up everyone! We need the all the positivity you can muster on Saturday. We need a sea of black and white and strong voices. If it ain’t going our way, get behind the lads and build them back up! Bring all the B4 energy. Wave the scraves and flanges. Sing your hearts out and clap until your hands sting in the 38th minute.
COME ON YOU RAMS!!!!!!  WE ARE DERBY, SUPER DERBY, SUPER RAMS!!!!!
YOU ARE OUR B4 OUR ONLY B4!!!!!! 

Pinched from elsewhere…………………..highlighted in pink. 👍

Couldn't agree more. I've been saying it for a while (alongside you and a few others) the academy is the one major advantage we have as a club that we can draw upon to essentially punch above our weight but we have to be set up for it and have to take some of the teething pains as we put the rights thing in place for it flourish.
The one thing I'll add, the short term "fast promotion" argument would have weight if it looked like that was what was going to happen. Last season we finished and right now we are looking for a finish that's more or less the same (within a few places). In what world does that look a fast promotion? That's my biggest biggest problem with Warne is we are doing neither a fast promotion nor building for the future.
 

I do not believe that Warne is deliberately and wantonly defying the owner at all. I posted yesterday that I think that Warne is proving to be a one-tricky pony who knows only one way of playing and with those methods he achieved promotion three times with Rotherham (followed notably by two relegations from the Championship). He has not previously managed a club with a Category One academy where the EPPP programme is adopted and the first team play a style of football in line with that taught in the academy. Derby still adopt EPPP as do all PL2 academy teams. We now are the only PL2 club whose first team does not play a style which reflects EPPP; that causes a problem for academy players stepping up and we are failing those youngsters in who we have invested so much. I think simply that Warne's methods are extremely limited and he knows no other way, which makes him a poor fit for Derby County. It's not his fault, he simply knows no better. The academy coaches are good but Warne is not the right coach to further the development of the academy graduates. Other clubs have appointed younger coaches with long experience of academy coaching as head coaches and they are way ahead of Warne; Kieran McKenna has been at Ipswich less than two years and has turned them around from mid-table in Division One to a side on the brink realistically of promotion to the Premier League. There are many other similar examples of coaches outperforming Warne.
If you doubt that the rebuilding of the academy was part of David Clowes' intentions and he might not have told that to Paul Warne I simply cannot help you and you will have to take that up with the owner. I find him candid and honest about what he has said about his intentions for the club. Are you confusing him with his predecessor ? I hope not. I have not been privy to any of his conversations. I simply trust his public statements backed by the clear support and investment in the academy.
I don't get the misunderstanding about the competitive budget which David Clowes said we had. Is it not competitive? Paul Warne said he had chosen to spend not on transfer fees but on wages which allowed him to bring in more players. I don't find that confusing; it was Paul Warne's choice on he spent the competitive budget.
Yes, with what I have witnessed in the past year, I now think that Liam Rosenior would have been the logical appointment. For all I know, the owner may or may not be thinking the same thing. Hindsight is a benefit available to none of us at he time of making crucial decisions. I don't do guessing so I can't help you there.

I don't know how much academy football you watch. I have been watching it for eight years whenever the first team aren't playing. This is the first time I have been worried that we are not making the best use of the potential resources. I know that other regular academy attendees who post on here and others who follow it on Rams TV, share the same concerns.

Not picking you out particularly with this, it's more of a general comment, but the bold bits get to the root of why I'm so opposed to Warne.
The way I see it, we have everything off-field ready for the Premier League - the fanbase size, the stadium, the training ground etc are all good enough.  Obviously we have no divine right to be in any league, but in theory there's no reason why we shouldn't be in the same group of clubs as the likes of Leicester/Burnley/Fulham/Brighton/Norwich etc who have spent at least as much time in the Prem as they have out of it in recent seasons.  I'm not saying we can win it like Leicester or be top 6 like Brighton or anything, but we absolutely have the potential to get there and stay there, but the onus is on us as a club to make it happen.
Obviously, one way that happens is that a new owner comes along and throws a lot of money at the club.  But there's no guarantee this happens, there's no guarantee it works if it does, and we all know what the potential fallout can be if it goes wrong.  It's certainly not an option we should be relying on.  Another way is just genuine luck, alignment of stars type stuff - you get the right manager at the right time, a bunch of signings all work out and you hit the jackpot.  We came close with Burley+Rasiak+Idiakez... and McClaren+Martin+Bryson... but ultimately fell short.  Again, that's not something you can rely on - you need a lot of things to all hit at once, and even then it might not work.  And it gets harder and harder as the championship gets dominated by clubs with parachute payments.
So IMO we should be doing the one thing that we have some degree of control over, and that's doing our level best to get the most we can out of the academy.  But that means fully committing to it.  When academy players are hitting 17/18/19/20 (it will be different for each players), they need to start being introduced to senior football.  If they aren't they won't progress.  If we take the approach that we can't play youth players now, we need to get promoted first, then you're basically writing off the current generation of academy players.  They won't get the first team exposure they need and won't kick on. 
So if we do get promoted what happens?  We can't afford to play academy players, we need to get stabilised in this league first.  And then?  We can't afford to play academy players, we need to kick on for the top 6 now.  And then?  We can't afford to play academy players, we need to get promoted to the prem first.  If your attitude is "we can't afford to play them now", then you won't be able to play them when they're good enough later, because they won't get good enough.
You can't just have an academy sat on the sidelines and hope it produces players now and then.  If you want to be like Southampton and have a steady stream of them, you have to gear the whole club up to make it happen.  You play similar styles of football across all age groups, you gear your transfer policy to not block promising players, you commit to giving youngsters first team chances when they're ready and if they take it you let them run with it.  And from what I can see, we can't do any of that with Warne in charge.  So we're just stuck hoping a youngster pops up, fully formed, once in a blue moon.  And that's one of the big advantages we could have over similar sized clubs that we are just choosing to throw away.
I have no idea if Weston is good enough, I've never seen him play.  But by all accounts he did well when he came on, and scored a good goal.  If you give him say 20 minutes against Barnsley and he scores again, then okay, maybe we've got something here.  If he then starts against Crewe and scores, then we've got a potential first team striker for nothing.  And if he doesn't do any of that then fine, he goes back to the U21s and maybe gets another shot in a month or 2.  But right now, we've just got a guy that scored a goal once and then never played again, which is no use to anyone.
Sorry everyone for the long post, but I genuinely think appointing Warne was a catastrophic mistake for a lot of reasons.  The ridiculous short-termism of "he was brought in to achieve promotion quickly" sums it up - it's like there's no thought as to what happens when we do get promoted.  And when I see fans almost actively celebrating it ("I don't care about academy players, we won 3-0" type stuff) I just find it a bit sad really.  I want the club to be in the premier league, I want the club to play good football, and I want to see academy players getting into the first team and doing well, and I want the club to be actively trying to make all that stuff happen, not just flailing around doing stuff at random and hoping that one day it might work.
(and breathe...)