vonwright

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. 

12 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

"The idea that Warne is some impoverished coach with no resources and a begging bowl is utter nonsense. Our wage bill (even on our business plan), pulling power as a club (purely on size), facilities etc eclipse the rest of the division with maybe one or two exceptions."

Despite the above we were still outbid for a player by another team in this league.

So obviously all of the advantages you listed counted for nowt.

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. 

7 minutes ago, littleover ram said:

I worry Warne has lost the dressing room and it's unsalvageable

Senior players should be going straight to Clowes and demanding Warne goes 

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

12 minutes ago, oodledoodle said:

Still plenty of time. One moment of magic could change the course of this match. These are there for the taking.

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

39 minutes ago, Jourdan said:

How can you class what are mainly free or nominal transfers as big-money signings when we are not privy to the wages, bonuses, or the agents fees being paid?

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?

21 minutes ago, Jourdan said:

How can you class what are mainly free or nominal transfers as big-money signings when we are not privy to the wages, bonuses, or the agents fees being paid?

Yes, good players can come in and make an immediate impact. However many players need six months to a year before they find  their feet, understand their role, settle and start to perform. Many good players tend to look improved in their second year with a team, learning from the previous year.

The overall picture is only poor if your mind is made up. Keep an open mind and maybe some of these poor signings will surprise you.

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'?

20 minutes ago, Jourdan said:

You say his signings don’t fill you with confidence but how many managers get all of their signings right?

I see some good signs with hopefully more to come from some of the players. Players sign two or three year contracts for a reason.

Nyambe and Nelson have been very reliable. Wilson is a very exciting prospect. Washington and Waghorn contributed solidly before getting injured. Blackett Taylor could be a revelation.

The likes of Ward, Fornah, Elder and Bradley haven’t established themselves in the team yet but in reality they have been competing to displace some of our most trusted players (Bird, Hourihane, Smith, Mendez Laing, Cashin and Forsyth) but when you look at contracts, you can see there are going to be changes over the summer, and there will be an opportunity for them take on greater importance and seize the moment.

The bar he needs to clear isn't 'getting them all right'. That would be unreasonable. 

I think he's had too many misses and not enough hits. Even Nyambe (a hit) was the third right back he signed. Presumably because he realised his two previous signings weren't up to the job (they weren't helped by his complete u-turn on preferred formation after he'd spent all the money).

I guess we disagree as to whether big-money signings like Bradley, Ward, Elder, Washington are indeed 'bedding in', or if they represent bad business. Whether Fornah just needs time or will forever be lightweight and error prone. Personally I think they've been here long enough to form a reasonable view of their likely value, and the overall picture is poor. Good players often come in and make an immediate impact - because they are good players. At any rate, they tend to have a lot more impact than this. 

I think promotion is a completely reasonable expectation for a club with our resources, facilities, and the squad left by Rosenior: a demanding but far from impossible expectation. 

Failing that, you might accept a manager who managed to build a squad, and tactics, that gave you great confidence in future success. 

Personally, Warne's signings and tactics don't fill me with any great confidence about this season or any future season but I would be very happy to be proven wrong. 

I think this view is much more common than the 'vitriol' mentioned above. 

26 minutes ago, YorkshireRam said:

4. Because we favour 4 attackers and hitting quickly on the break. That's been exposed a tad over the last few games, and opposition have learned to pack out the midfield and catch us in possession. Warne needs to think up a solution to this. He's proved a certain level of adaptability in the past, so lets see what happens v Cheltenham 

 

Think this is right and also why we often struggle against better teams, with better stocked midfields. I personally don't like it - I'd rather be one of those teams that pack midfield and win the battle rather than avoiding it. 

Either way this is hardly a new problem and Warne's had a lot time to come up with a workable plan b. 

5 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

People keep stating they have a good squad and a good budget, but they won't even have a top 10 budget this season. For reference, only 2 years ago (in the Championship) their wages were under £13m... a figure no too dissimilar to our wage bill in this league. Whilst their wage bill since then would have shot up it would still be a modest wage bill compared withthe rest of the division. Their transfer expenditure is also on the back of selling Lewis-Potter for £16m last season.

They certainly don't have a better squad than most of the teams above them: Leicester, Southampton, Leeds etc.

Fair play to Ipswich. 

49 minutes ago, nottingram said:

Happy clappers may not be the right term because it’s naturally divisive but there was, rightly or wrongly, a significant number of posts on our good run sneering at any one who dared to question the manager or want him gone during the highs of defeats to Shrewsbury and Stevenage, as if good results masking at times sub par performances does anything to convince people who have long term doubts about the manager.

Performances being less than convincing even during good runs is a large part of why he has been questioned, certainly by me anyway.

In most games we get by because we have better players than the other team. I don’t see a huge amount of the effects of good coaching, I don’t see many tactical tweaks that gain us an edge. We look like a team who have a bigger budget than the majority of teams at this level, and not much else. I think our manager’s level is about where we are now, which worries me.

But alas he is here to stay. 

No idea what the strategy is. No idea what the tactical approach is, beyond 'put out 11 "good characters", tell them to get it forward quickly, and see what they come up with'.

Eight points off automatic and heading in the wrong direction, despite the manager inheriting a more-than-decent squad, and being given plenty of latitude to sign new players. Odd, piecemeal recruitment with no long-term vision. A squad increasingly tilted towards technically limited, League One journeymen. 

Anyone questioning any of this jeered and sneered at - as if you can't really care about something unless you believe, contrary to all evidence, that everything is absolutely fine!

It isn't. It really isn't. 

Always knew Cashin wasn't Usain Bolt but still... Alarming how often (and how comprehensively) he was done for pace. 

43 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

Based on Whoscored ratings, our best XI in the league is this (bold = Warne signings): 

Wildsmith

Nyambe   Nelson   Cashin   Forsyth

Bird   Hourihane

Barkhuizen   Waghorn   Mendez-Laing

Collins

Rooney is rated higher than Nyambe too, but he only played in 3 games so I haven't included him.

Recruitment this summer was pretty poor, and catching up with us now - Bradley, Elder, Ward and Washington presumably take up a fair whack of what budget we have, while contributing very little. 

16 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

With the current top 6 crosses only:

Nice one - second column (ie passes per cross) very useful in this context I think, maybe more so than the third. Thanks!

But yeah this feels intuitively right. Stevenage and us do seem quite 'crossy' in our approach.

On 01/01/2024 at 17:06, Ghost of Clough said:

The team with the most crosses in the league?

That's interesting. Wonder what it looks like adjusted for average time in possession though? Eg Stevenage see a lot less of the ball in a game - I imagine they put in more crosses per minutes in possession than Peterborough. 

One possible reason the better teams tend to put in more crosses is just that they see more of the ball. 

(Edit: although I notice Luton and Everton have the most crosses in the PL this season.)

On 29/12/2023 at 14:55, Ellafella said:

After 22 games, this is how DCFCFANS Forum members rate the players. The ratings are based on 375 observations (max) depending on games player by the player. Nelson is the clear leader, followed by Cashin. Top 5 is made up of 4 defenders so you can see what our season so far has relied upon. I'll be posting more analyses over this coming weekend. Surprised not to see NML higher to be honest. 

More analyses to come including recent improvements by Wilson and Collins.  

 

 

 

 

 

Four fairly high-profile signings at the very bottom. 

One at the very top. 

A mixed bag!

3 hours ago, TINMANTED said:

is edwards £6m better than cash,or do boro board have a harder negotiating method than the rams?we always seem to let our talent go for peanuts

He might well be £6m better to be fair. Maybe not in terms of performances right now, but as an investment. I love Cashin but I don't think he'll end up a top-six PL regular. Don't know much about Edwards but if there's a chance he will then the future gap in value will be immense.

Agree we've not been great at getting value over the years, but a lot of our best players haven't kicked on as we thought after they left the club. Maybe they weren't quite as undervalued as we thought. 

1 hour ago, oodledoodle said:

If we're following the Ipswich model, we need to sack Warne, get rid of almost the entire squad, spend millions on incoming players, get a young manager in his first job from a top side, and gamble massively that it all pays off. They way they went up was very, very Mel Morris-like, they just had the good fortune that it worked.

Not saying I want us to adopt that model but it wasn't good fortune. They just spent the money better: Mel wasted his. 

39 minutes ago, DerbyAleMan said:

To be fair to Warne he mentioned this in his radio Derby interview, and said we should not have kept hitting the ball in the area time and time again, we should have been more patient and try to work out better openings, the players chose to do this. 

Just randomly? Despite Warne telling them not to do this?

I'm a bit confused about how the players are being told to attack.

Maybe they are, too.

It's not coaching to tell players they need to make the right decisions at the right time. Coaching is setting up clear systems and tactics which help them to do so. 

6 hours ago, David said:

Just on that Rotherham thing, you know when you create a topic and later think why didn't I say that at the time? Maybe trying to avoid an essay, who knows but....

I never quite understood the turning up the nose of any Rotherham player that was linked, with any signing all background checks on their character on and off the pitch, if work hard in training etc. is all gathered by references, via third parties.

What's better than previously working with a player and wanting to bring them with you?

I can only put it down to that we're bigger and better than Rotherham to be signing any of their players, which kind of ignores the current league status of both clubs, or is it a Warne = crap so Rotherham players = crap assumption?

Don't get me wrong, there is a limit to how many former players you can bring before it looks like you're recreating Rotherham at Derby and that has to be a worry, this wasn't the case. As we've seen today with the Eustace link, these former connection links are always made, can't go bursting blood vessels over each one.

It's funny really as when Lampard was here everyone was asking where all the Chelsea superstar youngsters were, like Mount and Tomori were never here.

We're not too big for Rotherham players, need to lose that snobbery as he looks a useful player for us that many appear to be warming to now.

The question when someone goes back to their old club - particularly when they do it time after time - is whether they are using their connections to get us something better than we could otherwise get for the same money (which is good!)**, or whether they are being lazy/conservative/have terrible scouting and saddling us with something worse that we could have got for the same money (which is bad).

In general I imagine the wider you cast your net, the more likely you are a catch a good one. 

I'm personally reserving judgement on Washington for a bit because he's not got a stellar record, and he hasn't looked great before last night. But yes: really good performance, gave us something different (and something we need), fingers crossed its the start of a impressive run against good defences as well as bad ones.

My controversial take on "character" in football is that it's a bit overblown, largely because the 5% of bad characters get a lot more than 5% of the headlines. I think most professional players - if they are well coached and managed - aren't going to be a problem, particularly at this level. In which case, ability beats character nine times out of ten.

**Or in the case of Mount or Tomori, something that we would never have been able to get at all.

Just now, MickD said:

Great expense?

You think players like Bradley, Nelson, Elder will be cheap by L1 standards?

None of the existing players look comfortable playing this weird anti-football, and none of the players Warne has brought in look any good at playing it, either. 

At this point it's impossible to see where any significant progress is going to come from. Just the same thing week after week.

Just now, Millenniumram said:

Can’t believe I’m saying it… but get James Collins on.

Washington has been god awful

Ah but that's the mistake. You're judging him by his play. You need to judge him by his experience and character. 

2 minutes ago, NottsRam77 said:

The level of basic mistakes is literally unforgiveable 

overrunning the ball, s*** lazy ass passing, needless free kicks , not showing for each other 

its basic s*** 

im behind the notion of stability but the levels and standard were failing at is inexcusable 

Stability is good but this stinks of stagnation.

35 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

Not Lincoln, and Milton Keynes is more or less the same population as Derby.  I assume we're also ignoring non-league sides, and the multiple London clubs in L1 and below (Charlton, Leyton Orient, etc..)

The remaining teams are Bradford, Bristol Rovers, Doncaster and Notts County

Milton Keynes is hardly a surprise either. A new club in a newish city. So no real roots, no loyalty passed between generations of families etc.

Bradford's an odd one because it's close to Leeds. A lot of people who are within the council boundary look east.

Doncaster's small, Notts County is the second Nottingham team (behind Radford FC of course).