vonwright

Must admit I never thought I'd see @Ghost of Clough being called a hater, toxic or one of the usual suspects, or someone who doesn't get the art of discussion 

Think Max Bird has all three. He's maybe missing some other things that might keep him from reaching the top level: elite-level athleticism, perhaps (which might look like a lack of hard work, but really isn't). 

Aye. I've asked before but what does he do?
What are his attributes?
How do they got in with anything Warne says he wants us to do?
Why was he so keen to bring him in? To prioritise a portion of our budget on a player he doesn't even seem to know how to use?
We / he can't complain about not being able to afford a better striker when we've wasted resources on this turkey
 

There are some people who seem to have convinced themselves that Warne is a fantastic manager at this level (regardless of any other considerations - club, squad, whatever) and seem to be willing to believe literally anything to avoid having to confront the reality that he really isn't.

And anyone wanting him gone will be called toxic, repetitive, told we're enjoying this etc etc etc

Nowt black and white about anything that's happened at Derby in the last 5 years.
I don't think Rooney is a particularly good tactician or coach. But then neither were some of the greatest managers in history. In the right circumstances, he showed himself to be a great leader and gave us pride and hope when we had none.
Somewhat inevitably, given his celebrity profile, he comes with a fair bit of baggage and a circus behind the scenes that has no appeal to me.
Whether he can actually succeed in football management remains to be seen. Personally I think Brum have made a mistake.
I'd rather he didn't sniff around at the likes of Bird and Cashin personally.

Yep. Agree. I though Cocu would be brilliant, and he just wasn't. Maybe his brand of football wasn't suited to the Championship. Maybe it isn't suited to any team that isn't Barcelona, or the equivalent of Barcelona in other leagues (he's not exactly tearing up trees with Vitesse).
Rooney achieved much more with far fewer resources, surrounded by utter chaos and with a huge points deduction hanging over the club. Yet some people still think Cocu was a better manager.
There's more to management than a nice suit and an urbane manner. 
Also, I'm not sure about all this 'He was undermined by having to play Rooney'. Rooney wasn't great but he wasn't exactly terrible. When played in midfield he had some good games alongside Bird, and was key to Bird's development. I'm not sure he deserved to start every game on merit but Cocu's problems didn't begin and end with Rooney. He was here a long time. It just didn't work.

Yep. Agree. I though Cocu would be brilliant, and he just wasn't. Maybe his brand of football wasn't suited to the Championship. Maybe it isn't suited to any team that isn't Barcelona, or the equivalent of Barcelona in other leagues (he's not exactly tearing up trees with Vitesse).
Rooney achieved much more with far fewer resources, surrounded by utter chaos and with a huge points deduction hanging over the club. Yet some people still think Cocu was a better manager.
There's more to management than a nice suit and an urbane manner. 
Also, I'm not sure about all this 'He was undermined by having to play Rooney'. Rooney wasn't great but he wasn't exactly terrible. When played in midfield he had some good games alongside Bird, and was key to Bird's development. I'm not sure he deserved to start every game on merit but Cocu's problems didn't begin and end with Rooney. He was here a long time. It just didn't work.

Yep. Agree. I though Cocu would be brilliant, and he just wasn't. Maybe his brand of football wasn't suited to the Championship. Maybe it isn't suited to any team that isn't Barcelona, or the equivalent of Barcelona in other leagues (he's not exactly tearing up trees with Vitesse).
Rooney achieved much more with far fewer resources, surrounded by utter chaos and with a huge points deduction hanging over the club. Yet some people still think Cocu was a better manager.
There's more to management than a nice suit and an urbane manner. 
Also, I'm not sure about all this 'He was undermined by having to play Rooney'. Rooney wasn't great but he wasn't exactly terrible. When played in midfield he had some good games alongside Bird, and was key to Bird's development. I'm not sure he deserved to start every game on merit but Cocu's problems didn't begin and end with Rooney. He was here a long time. It just didn't work.

Not sure why there is all this love for Cocu. Nice bloke certainly, but we were woeful that year, should have been relegated, and the squad was far better and built under far fewer restrictions than the following year. Other than 2007/08 it was the worst I have seen Derby in 40 years of following them. 

Fikayo Tomori - not sure I've ever seen a player get caught so far out of position and get away with it so many times, because he could make up 10 yards on a striker without breaking a sweat.

He had a team full of kids, Bielik's injury and an embargo to deal with. If it wasn't for Rooney's contacts, the following season would've been even worse

Conveniently not mentioning the 21 points deduction.

Maybe it's just me, but if a player plays a bunch of games at League One level, then steps up and plays a bunch of games at Championship level, then steps up and plays a bunch at Prem level, that makes the player a Prem player.  Not a player who's spent most of his career in the lower leagues 🤷‍♂️.

Think Max Bird has all three. He's maybe missing some other things that might keep him from reaching the top level: elite-level athleticism, perhaps (which might look like a lack of hard work, but really isn't). 

Think Max Bird has all three. He's maybe missing some other things that might keep him from reaching the top level: elite-level athleticism, perhaps (which might look like a lack of hard work, but really isn't). 

Think Max Bird has all three. He's maybe missing some other things that might keep him from reaching the top level: elite-level athleticism, perhaps (which might look like a lack of hard work, but really isn't). 

Decent win, could and probably should have been more comfortable with more wasteful finishing on show (I know I say that every week right). Good enough overall, shame the young uns didn’t get more opportunity, wonder if they would have without the penalty incident blotting the copy book. Nice of Bradley to let Didzy out of his pocket at fulltime for a catch up with his former team mates 😉 

Special mention to Josh Vickers doing the club and his late wife proud tonight 👏 

Vickers has done really well tonight. So pleased for him.

FYI, the wage bill was £16.4m in 13/14 (12th highest in the league) and £21.8m in 14/15 (9th highest in the league).
In both seasons we outperformed our financial budget. Can Warne say the same?

There's a big gap between throwing money at it and tying your manager's hands. Having at various points Ibe, Lingard & Ince on loan, Bamford the season before, spending £3m on Thorne, bringing in Christie etc isn't having your hands tied. The assertion that Warne has had his hands tied is also misguided when you consider he's been allowed to bring in 10-12 players with many at the top end of the budget for the league, regardless of them not requiring transfer fees. It's hardly an insignificant number of additions.
McClaren didn't need to do much to create a well balanced squad because he took what Nigel Clough had left him with (a good team) and came up with a way of playing that got the best out of those players whilst making sensible additions to complement them and to create a very good team, whereas Warne's plan was initially to force the inherited players into his system whether they were suited to it or not.
(McClaren's inherited squad was admittedly already more suited to his style,  but that's why he was such a good appointment & Warne less so)
McClaren tweaked the system slightly in 2014/15 but essentially built on a winning formula . He didn't try to reset anything, he recognised what worked, what didn't and recruited to suit.  In Warne case, he again got stuck on his vision for 3 at the back and set about recruiting for that, seemingly without recognising that one of the biggest reasons for our change in form under him the previous season was dropping that system - this contributes to making it more difficult to find our rhythm this season.
While they've both had issues with injuries, I really don't think you can compare us having a slow start this season to the collapse in 2014/15. After 34 games under McClaren we were top of the table by 2 points and that was with Martin missing for a few games already, but no matter who you are and what good form you're in, losing much of the spine of your team will mess up your form.
Warne has been lost / been unable to access certain players, but there's no evidence yet  that even with those players being available we'd have been significantly better off, or that his desired system really suits either his inherited players or even a number of his additions.
  
Do you not think there's a rather large difference between the balance of your midfield being ruined (with the backup player being an academy player who never was and ever would be good enough to play Championship football) at a time when you're seriously  chasing automatic promotion to the Premier League, and a player/players in a more peripheral position (RB) getting injured during a League One campaign?

When a forum poster could tell you their names weeks before any of them were official, I think you can pretty much guarantee that the first flush of signings - Ward, Nelson, Bradley, Elder & Vickers were first choice signings.
2 of them have so far been a waste of a wage, likely amongst our highest  (I'm not including Vickers as it's important to have a good backup keeper). Could one of those have been 'sacrificed' in favour of a more proven striker?
That we've committed to paying a fee for Washington on promotion would also attest to him being someone of high priority. He's not an automatic pick for our starting lineups but has contributed.
Nyambe probably too, although not sure if that's because the forced formation change required a more traditional RB to come in and it moved him up a notch.
Can't really tell with Fornah due to it initially being proposed as a loan deal,  Wilson seemed an opportunistic signing but as we were planning for a wing back system we'd need multiple options and I can't think of a better backup to Ward than him who'd have been on our list.
Obviously Waghorn wasn't 1st choice, he wasn't even on the radar. TJJ seems unlikely to have been someone we planned from the start of pre-season, although I'd say there's a chance Embleton was. Not sure I can explain my loflgic there it's just a feeling.
Either way I'm not really convinced on the comparison to Clough.
Clough inherited a squad of prima donnas on high wages and long contracts who'd been 'stained' by the abject nature of our relegation and needed clearing out, most weren't interested in playing for us in the Championship. Massive job 
Warne doesn't have a massive job. Administration allowed us a reset and a chance to build pretty much from scratch, the club's reputation may have still been in a ditch but it had nothing to do with the players we kept from the previous season.
If we're to claim that the players Warne inherited are getting in the way of him playing the way he wants and that we need to clear them out before he can start his job in earnest then quite frankly he shouldn't have been appointed at all.

The key is to find these forwards before they become £1m players. It’s not easy obviously but that is what people are paid good money to do. I don’t think the question is how much would Colby Bishop, Devante Cole or Dion Charles cost now, but rather how much did Bishop and Charles cost Accrington, and Cole cost Barnsley.
It’s not an exact science, I’m sure Accrington have had some duds alongside those two but if they can find these hidden gems, so can we. Incidentally Bishop was at Derby til he was 15 and released. Probably the best all round 9 at this level now. 
If the manager or recruitment team are simply looking at last seasons top scorer list to inform their targets then we will never ever get good value for money again. We have to be smarter.

I find these sorts of comments baffling. Warne picks the team. We can all see Collins is a terrible finisher and also that Warne needs to set up differently to make us more threatening. For me, it's absolutely Warne's fault that he's relying on Collins to take chances, without having us playing in a more dangerous way that creates better chances, and for better finishers.

Think people are really harsh on Rooney. He was managing when everything was falling apart, squad stripped and no budget. He threw together a bunch of academy kids and no-one-wants-them loanees and got really impressive results. We finished with a much better record than the previous season and would have comfortably survived but for the huge points deduction. There was even a time where we thought we might do the impossible, before the number of matches caught up with a small and very young squad. 
Oh, and somehow Rooney kept a sense of calm and purpose despite all the off-pitch drama. 
I'll always remember him well.