vonwright

Very much hope he takes a cautious approach, but I doubt it. Pressure can do funny things, particularly if there's an early goal or two. Hopefully this is where my mocking of our 'good characters' recruitment policy comes back to bite me on the a***, and all that experience really does get us over the line.

Think he's still got a big part to play. There will be a lot of pressure in the games ahead, and he's played in a lot of big games.

I guess although 'to remains a going concern' is a bit of a worry. Suppose that's just how football is these days.

Give him just one more season he could still come good

Classic Championship. 13th place and six points off the drop.

Yes I mean wasn't part of the point of the Chelsea 3-4-3 to give them numbers in midfield?

Rosenior threw a new (and impressive) squad together from nothing under incredibly difficult circumstances and had us in seventh, playing progressive football and arguably unlucky not to be higher. If people think he had his chance and failed, fair enough I guess. But it's a bit rich if those same people defend Warne on the basis he is acting under incredibly difficult restrictions, needs more time to impose his style, has new players who haven't fully settled and gelled, etc etc etc...

"Be brave" isn't a particularly useful tactical instruction, is it? If it's supposed to mean 'Get your head up and look for a forward pass' then you have to set your team up to give the player those options. And then make sure you don't give them contrary instructions.

The to-and-fro about Warne feels increasingly pointless. Our strengths and weaknesses - and his - are clear, in our wins and our losses. Nothing much is likely to change before the end of the season. Why argue? Consistent results, one way or the other, are the only thing that will make anyone change their mind. For me? There will be more of the same. This is how we play. So these are the games, and results, we can expect. I'm not convinced having Collins (or Washington, or Waghorn) available would have made the slightest difference. Feels like the Billy Davies season, although then at least you had a sense of what he was trying to achieve. It all felt a bit more... coherent. Anyway. Could still happen, with a decent slice of luck. (Which is exactly the problem.)

Exactly that's the whole point of 3pts for a win - to encourage teams to play for wins. One win and two losses is as good as three draws.

It's so predictable, and so frustrating. And if we somehow steal a win it will all be forgotten.

It's also looks like a 'fight fire with fire' approach which isn't necessarily the best way to go. But we will see.

Wait - you mean there are restrictions on how many passes we can take before we lump it aimlessly forward? Curse you, EFL!

So is it the budget or the restrictions? Those are very different things. What does the 'evidence' tell us?

You recently told me I couldn't possibly presume that players like Bradley and Ward are on good money, because I haven't seen their contracts. Yet you seem to be very certain about the limits of our budget and terms of our restrictions.

To be fair to Bird he doesn't seem the type to give less than 100% - and especially to us. Plus why does he need to avoid injury? He's already secured the move, he's only here on loan

I get this but surely you have to look at our transfer activity as a whole? We didn't start the summer with no money - it seems like we spent quite a bit. We didn't even start this transfer window with no money. And throughout we've had at least some assets we could have sold to generate £££ if things were so tight. If we really left ourselves in a position where the only option to fill a long-gaping hole was a failed bit for Lee Gregory, surely that suggests our recruitment strategy hasn't been great?

We can't, but I think we can say with reasonable confidence our overall transfer strategy since summer has been poor. And that whether through a lack of planning or a lack of imagination, it's brought us to Lee Gregory.

Think that's fair, but also feel there's a lot of space between 'unrealistic signing' and Lee Gregory. If he's really the best remaining option then we shouldn't have put ourselves in this position.

The players weren't good enough to make Cocu's style work. So much possession with zero penetration. And always just one mistake away from an unrecoverable 1-0. He's still to blame, though, either for not figuring that out, or simply being incapable of trying something else.

Is your position that unless we successfully outbid every other club in this division for every player we are in for, our financial and other advantages 'count for nowt'? No matter how much we've already spent elsewhere? Or how much we actually want the player in question? We clearly have huge advantages over other League One clubs in terms of finances and facilities. We've assembled what must be one of the best-paid squads in the division. It's bizarre anyone would feel the need to deny it.

They are doing what he wants though. That's the problem.

That's exactly why it should not need 'a moment of magic' to beat them. Our tactics are just so... poor

Please don't take this the wrong way, as I think you are an excellent poster, but you can sometimes be weirdly pedantic and binary about things like this. Surely it's reasonable to assume these players are on very good deals for League One? As in it's highly unlikely they are not?

Of course they might come good. Any player might come good after any length of time. But also: they might not. The question is what's a reasonable judgment after a reasonable length of time. Enough time has passed to say that as things stand a lot of Warne's signings look pretty poor. The more time that passes without them having much impact the stronger that conclusion will be. Particularly when you consider part of the reason for signing 'seasoned pros', 'good characters', etc was that they could have an immediate impact. When exactly in Bradley's two year contract are we entitled to expect him to 'come good'?