Chesterfield_Ram

Be interesting if the game Warne mentioned he was going to tonight was at Chesterfield to see Dobra. According to a mate at the game Chris Conn Clarke is having a great game. I’ve heard him rumoured with a few football league teams. He’s a 22 year old (maybe a decade too young for us) attacking midfielder, with 13 goals in 23 games at Altrincham and had 10 in 33 last season.

3 hours ago, Tyler Durden said:

From the BBC Sports website about Reading:-

One MP, Damian Green, is a Reading fan and was at Saturday's game against Port Vale which was abandoned after fans invaded the pitch to protest against owner Dai Yongge. 

"The word on the street is that he now doesn't want to sell and is just asset stripping and is doing it quite visibly with players," Green said.

"He is willing to sell any player of any value for what little he can get and wants to be left with the training ground as a piece of property having folded the club. 

Surely there's some half decent players still left at Reading we can get for a nominal fee?

 

 

Maybe we could poach a player or two for peanuts, like when we sold Shinnie to Wigan.

For me Wildsmith hadn’t done enough to get dropped. It’s tough for Warne because he probably has the best goalkeeping department in the league.
 

Having seen Vickers the in the last couple of games he looks short of confidence, which could be seen in him trying to punch away catchable balls and dropping a few crosses. Could he potentially be loaned out to another team in League 1, who aren’t promotion rivals, that way he could get game time to build up his confidence / match sharpness and maybe take a point or two off our promotion rivals. We then promote one of our young keepers to get experience being in and around the first team, with the option of recalling Vickers if Wildsmith gets injured or suspended.

1 hour ago, Tamworthram said:

According to the press, Forest may try to defend against their case on the basis that if they’d sold Brennan Johnson earlier (at a reduced amount) they would have been within the rules. Well derrrr. They should have done so then.

I don't pay much / if any attention to Forests finances, but from what I've read they simply spent more than they are allowed to. It's frustrating when teams are coming up with these lame excuses for not staying within the rules.

Everton had a number of similar excuses that are laughable. They tried to defend themselves by saying one of their signings underperformed. Well I'm afraid that happens at most clubs.

I'm no finance expert, but surely ffp should be more black and white than its being made out to be. You can spend x amount. If you spend more you get punished with a points deduction for every million or so you overspend.

56 minutes ago, David said:

115 charges is a lot, I grant you that.

So why not break them down, 10 at a time in chronological order. 

I suspect you're right, PL write it off, or come to an agreement with Man City where they pay X million fine and grassroots funding, try and spin it into a positive for the game and a win for them.

I agree with that, but there is a reason why. I can’t remember exactly why. I think it was something along the lines of having to put a defence together for every case before they get heard. 
 

In other words, let the lawyers get richer and the big name gets more time to try and get out of it.

On 15/01/2024 at 07:59, David said:

Can anyone explain why Manchester City are avoiding answering their 115 charges before the rule changes in August, whilst Forest and Everton must answer them now?

115 charges which has dragged on for how long?

I want to sit here and take the piss out of Forest as nature intended, however it's just wrong how Manchester City are continuing and picking up silverware whilst others are having the book thrown at them.

Teams have to be allowed to build a defence against these cases according to the POF podcast. As Man City have so many charges they have to be given a similar time frame to build a defence against each case. I think Kieran Maguire said that he expects City’s cases to be heard sometime towards the end of the 2024/25 or 2025/26 season.

As the legal fees come out of the clubs pockets, it’s possible that Man City could get away with it because they will probably get it to keep dragging on and on with legal fees for the PL getting ridiculously high.

As for Everton, I believe that there case has dragged on for some time, longer than I expected anyway, with all the evidence having to be heard by a committee. 
 

From what I’ve read Forest could be quicker to have their hearing, because they simply spent more than they were allowed.

I think it is normal / acceptable for the pitch not to be pristine at this time of year.

Typically, grass doesn’t grow as quickly over the winter months with the usual weather conditions, so with the massive amount of rain we’ve had recently it is probably to be expected that the pitch is looking like it is.

Prior to administration, I presume that the grounds people had a larger budget to utilise. I may be wrong on this though. Having a larger budget would allow more work to be done on maintenance with better equipment available to use. I’ve got a feeling that the glowing lights (non technical name) that help create ideal growing conditions for grass were sold by Quantuma to bring in money.

Once we get better weather I expect the pitch will start looking better again.

1 minute ago, Srg said:

Bolton's 2 games in hand will be huge. Bolton away at Posh last game of the season could prove tasty.

I hadn’t noticed Bolton playing posh on the last day. For some reason I just can’t stand Peterborough and would love them to miss out on the last day of the season, ideally to us!
 

Bolton’s games in hand makes it even more important that we start to build a gap between us to put pressure on them. Points on the board is good and came in handy in the championship a few seasons back when Rotherham had something ridiculous like 4 games in hand on us.

It’s looking very tight at the top, with Bolton being a point behind us in 4th. 

As you said we must be doing something right, but I still think that this team can perform better than what we’ve seen which is promising.

Hopefully, we make the most of our next few games to build a bit of a gap.

With Portsmouth falling off the top 2 seems wide open imo.

TV

31Vickers - 5 - looked a bit shaky, felt he could have caught a couple of the crosses he punched away, which could be a sign of a lack of confidence

2Wilson - 6 - was able to get up the pitch, but lacked end product 

35Nelson - 7 - looked solid all game and his double tackle in the first half was one of my highlights of the game

6Cashin - 7.5 - my motm, seemed to win everything in the air, again looked solid. I was really impressed with his performance

20Elder - 6 - I was thinking he was having a decent game until the second Burton goal. He hadn’t done too much, but hadn’t done much wrong up to the equaliser.

17Sibley - 6 - Just average. Not much more, not much less

11Méndez-Laing - 7 - like most games he looked good going forward and was a fantastic pass for Barkhuizen’s goal.

8Bird - 6.5 - above average game imo. As far as I can remember he didn’t lose the ball too often, but maybe didn’t have as many progressive passes as he could have had.

4Hourihane - 6.5 - was involved in the game without making too much of an impact, but he took his goal very well. I wish at times he would display this quality of end product more, as he can become anonymous at times in other games.

7Barkhuizen - 6.5 - got into scoring positions and put one of the chances away

5Bradley - 6 - average

19John-Jules - 6 - average not too much to say on him

16Thompson - 6 - again didn’t make too much of an impact of the bench, but got around the pitch well

9Collins - 6.5 - took his goal well, worked hard. However I’m convinced that by having another player alongside him would get more out of him

I just hope we don’t sit back and let burton get too comfortable and come at us in the second half.

1 hour ago, Tamworthram said:

I agree to an extent but how do you distinguish between people who are unable to get to games and those that would normally attend but choose not to if it's streamed for free? Free streaming must inevitably lead to smaller crowds.

That’s one of the potential problems. Could there be a small streaming fee possibly. But the other way of looking at it is that it could attract new people to go to games in person.

It would be good if more matches were streamed in the future. I’m not talking about having a multi camera setup, but enough for people ,who are unable to get to games, to keep up with the action. 

For us to continue progressing within the championship, I believe we would need a moneyball style approach similar to Brentford and Brighton. I support Clowes in running the club sustainably, but to compete that way we will need to do things a little different to the others. 
 

While I like the sound of a ‘Paul Warne player’, we need to be looking for more than just someone who works hard. Could we utilise the data available to look for players who have something like an idealistic number of sprints per game, distance run per game or top speeds recorded, paired with forward passes, pass completion % or chances created/taken.

Without sounding like a football manager player, could the club hold onto some of these border line players for an extra year or two and have them loaned out to lower levels. The club that takes the player would pay some or all of the wages, which wouldn’t increase the costs too much for Derby.

Using Freddie Draper, who was just brought up, as an example the club would have had an extra season or two to assess his ability in the men’s game. By the sound of Ghost of Clough’s comment he’s had a decent season so far.

I'm sure some of the youngsters would benefit with more loans at teams like Matlock Town and Mickleover. Bartosz Cybulski seemed to develop more after his loans at Matlock and Solihull Moors, than playing in the academy. It just happened that it was probably to late for him at Derby.

I agree with Dave Fletchers comments that it is a derby based on the distance between the teams, but in no way is it a rivalry.

I hope we get Cashin on a long term contract soon. I’d love to see him progress as a derby player, but I hope he doesn’t become another Louie Sibley. I might have got this completely wrong, but didn’t we turn down a £10 million bid for Sibley from Leeds at a similar time of Bellingham going to Dortmund? Cashin could potentially give more back to the club in a big money transfer than he potentially could as a player.

I’m not a superstitious person, but I don’t like the idea of the ‘manger of the month curse’ and ‘new manager bounce’ clashing tonight.

1 - 1 Collins

I think it’s an interesting model and I can see how it could help teams get promotion from L1. Without looking into it, I presume teams who gain promotion, would have around 6/7 leading players in their starting 11, with another 1 or 2 to come off the bench.

Our problem is that we have too many players in that second category of ‘good’ players who will need replacing at a higher level.

Personally , I can’t quite decide whether this is because they aren’t being used in a way that suits them, or whether they are just average L1 players. I’d probably put the following players in this group: Forsyth, Hourihane, Bradley, Barkhuizen, Collins, Waghorn, Smith, Washington, Sibley, Elder, Fornah and Ward. I find it a bit concerning that most of these were brought in during Warne’s time as manager.

As much as I love Waghorn his career is on the decline now and I only really see him as a team guy for the next season and never saw him as making to much of a goal scoring impact, like Washington, which begs the question why did we sign them? I’d like to see players signed for more than their work rate, as a proper goal scorer would be able to get more out of Collins imo. 
 

As much as I appreciate how Clowes is running the club financially, I don’t see how the club are going to be able to add players to the group 1. Would it be worth spending a bit more if the club are in a position to sign an Alfie May type of player like they were rumoured last year.

With the players we’ve been linked to, I just see us adding to the fringe players we have. I admit I haven’t seen too much of the bloke from Charlton, but I have seen quite a bit of Dobra and just see an average lightweight player who has been hyped up by an over confident fan base. He goes down far too easily, to the point that he doesn’t even win free kicks when he has been genuinely fouled because referees are used to his diving. I don’t see him as a Paul Warne player at all.

Any idea when it will be available for pre order?
 

3 hours ago, Jimbo Ram said:

Perhaps we could become Exeter County 😁

Tbh those 3 players are quality at this level and should be at better teams. I’ll pass on the rest of the Exeter players.

I’ve just been looking at some of the out of contract players and found some potential targets

LWB:

. Luke leahy (had a decent season in L1)

. Archie Brown (I thought he had potential when he was in our academy)

. Jack Sparkes (As I have family from Exeter I have seen quite a bit of the team and he has always been a standout in the team. He fits Warne’s system fantastically, and with him being available on a free I think it is well worth the risk)

RWB:

. Josh Key (another player I’ve seen develop at Exeter, I honestly think he could transform derby alongside sparkes. He’s very dangerous going forward and would have a bigger impact on the team than Byrne had in recent seasons imo)

. Sam Byram ( I’m not sure whether the club could afford his wages under the restrictions, but could he be attracted to the club like others were last summer?)

DM:

. Cameron Brannigan (could the Oxford connection with the recruitment staff make him a target)

. Archie Collins ( another Exeter player but he has a lot of potential and at 23 he could be a player at the club for a while. I’ve been impressed with how he can win the ball and drive the team forward. He’s a different style to bird and hourihane so could work well. If I had to compare him to someone it would be Jason knight, so could warne allow them to play with more intensity then swap them during the second half)

ST:

Niall Ennis (I thought he looked dangerous when I’ve seen him play and scored goals this season, but I doubt Plymouth would let him go)

Hopefully he learns from his red today. In the future if he’s going to stop someone he takes his legs out to avoid a red

Wildsmith - 6 - handling wise average, could possibly go lower as I felt his distribution was poor today

Smith - 6.5 - I felt he was ok today at times looked decent, other times looked very poor especially late on. From my perspective he should have just put his boot through it and put it forward, but he’s a professional and I’m not for a reason.

Cashin - 4 - I think he has the potential to be a solid player, but he seems to be having more poor games than good games atm. I hope he     learns from the game today. I don’t think he needed to pull the Torquay player back when he did as Forsyth looked like he was about to clean it up. Also if Cashin thought he had to stop the Torquay player he should have at least played the ball so it’s a yellow car.

Forsyth - 6 - too many poor touches late on, other than that he was average imo.

Roberts - 6.5 - thought he did alright, just lacked an end product with his crosses

Mendez-Laing - 7 - I thought he was one of our better players today. If he stayed on I’m sure he would have created another good chance, especially with Torquay throwing everyone forward at the end.

Stearman - 5.5 - I don’t want to sound like I’m being overly critical, but he seemed to keep putting the ball into dangerous areas late on. Poor communication with wildsmith when he put it out for a corner instead of letting wildsmith catch it and boot it into Torquay’s half.

Sibley - 5.5 - again didn’t do too much today. He needs to be more cautious as he gave the referee a decision to make with his high boot. With my black and white tinted glasses on I felt the ref got it right, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was red.

Hourihane - 5.5 - no end product again

Bird - 6 - not disastrous, not great really

Dobbin - 6 - inconsistent but that happens with lots of young players

Osula - 6.5 - took his goals well, could he have done more when he was 1 on 1 in the first half?

Thompson - 6 - imo he would be better off if he could be loaned out to a team in l2 or the NL, where he could be kicked about a bit and strengthen up. I don’t think holding midfielder is his best position, as he doesn’t seem to have either the physicality or the technical skills to succeed there atm. Like Cashin though he’s a player who can have a bright future if he gets the appropriate experience, but is playing out of his depth due to the lack in squad depth.

Collins - 5 - I thought he was anonymous today