Alty_Ram

34 minutes ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

Sigh. I've never been convinced it's the best approach, it keeps the pressure on you and makes life easier for the other side. A defence that knows what it's doing is preferable to having another of your attacking players standing around to just be there.

No, me neither because I think the tendency is for the ball to just come straight back at you and I also think that you are more likely to get a clumsy tackle in your own box from someone who is not a defender. It just makes sense to me to put one of your quicker players up the pitch so you have someone to chase a clearance and let everyone push up. The attacking team is not likely to leave just one player back then to mark them as that is a high risk approach as they may slip or get beaten for pace so it pulls a couple of players out of the attack.

In terms of Warne's idea that it prevents the opposition having space, well the counter to that is that it is increasingly difficult for your keeper to claim the ball though a more congested penalty area. Warne being Warne, I'm sure that he has decided on this tactic through analysing some stats but it feels counterintuitive to me.

Rams 0-2 Portsmouth

7 hours ago, BaaLocks said:

It's an utterly pointless discussion this one, which is why nearly every club in the land sings "we're by far the greatest team" with no sense of irony. And it's actually irrelevant, or possibly even more relevant, if they are smaller than us. I understand why we can't keep up with a club like Man City or Liverpool, in the same way I guess most Fleetwood fans do recognise that in the long run they can't keep up with us. But I really don't care if we get bigger gates that Bournemouth or have bigger away support, what I do care about is that they are in the Premiership (sic) and we are not, even though we have an infrastructure that suggests we could be.

I also think that money from bigger gate receipts probably only really works as a significant advantage in the lower leagues. By the time you are in the top flight, the extra fans (and therefore gate money) vs anyone else in that league is just not really that big a factor as TV money dwarfs the money coming through the turnstiles. That's how the likes of Brentford, Fulham etc seem to manage not to struggle. They obviously can't compete with the Man Utd's of this world for players fees and wages because their (United's) worldwide presence is a huge factor in their wealth but as the likes of Everton are finding out, no amount of history or bigger gates is going to guarantee you finishing ahead of these smaller teams, not with the way the top flight finances are structured.

After last season's narrow failure to get into the playoffs with a hurriedly assembled scratch team, I don't think that an expectation from fans of doing better this year is unreasonable, particularly when there was talk of having a fair bit more financial flexibility to tweak an already reasonably decent side and to fill it with players who fit the manager's chosen style rather than some square pegs in round holes. I don't think it's fair to expect us to spend nothing and walk the league but an improvement is something that you should always be looking for unless you are in financial trouble and having to shed your best players.

The challenge has come with the recruitment and injuries. I don't think the recruitment worked out quite as well as Warne had hoped and we've had a string of injuries before the season has even really got started. Add to that a pretty challenging start fixtures-wise and I guess our current position is not entirely surprising at this stage.

That said, once we've got our teeth properly into this season and we've got a few of these players back then we'll have more options and I think it is perfectly reasonable, even with one of two longer term injuries, for us to be expecting to be in the mix. I don't think it is reasonable to consider anything less than automatic promotion as a failure because our fee outlay is negligible, but surely an expectation going a minimum 1 place and potentially just 1 point better than last year and being involved in the playoffs is perfectly reasonable ?

I don't see it any time soon if I'm honest. Hopefully we can be back to the Championship relatively soon, maybe the next couple of years but I think we are going to need a lot of things to align to get a team that can get promoted to the top flight. We will have to spend some money and we will need a good manager (don't know yet whether the current manager is that man) and the sort of blend of players that just seem to click and are far greater than the sum of their parts.

Who knows what timescale that'll be on and whether the gap is going to be harder to bridge than it is already. I'll just hope for the best but it feels like it's likely to be a long road back. Hopefully we'll have some fun along the way though. I'd love to see us get promoted though, even just from this division. It's been a long while and it'd be a big boost to the fans and the city generally.

I know the season is barely underway but this feels like a huge game already for some reason. A win here feels like it would be a significant moment after the Bolton setback. Last year we failed to impress against promotion rivals but if we can see these off plus the win over Peterborough then it feels much more positive than the general mood on here.

I'd like to see us be on the front foot and get at them. They have a really tight defence so I hope they don't score first and sit in.

I think what frustrates me personally is when you think back to the Fleetwood game. There was a move just before Waggy's goal where we played some fantastic crisp one-touch passing football and went quickly from our own penalty area the theirs, leaving Fleetwood chasing shadows. The crowd really responded and it showed that this squad, for all its shortcomings, can play some high quality football. So why do we not do that more often, and why did the players choose to do it at that moment but rarely again ?

If he wants to go then he's as good as gone, that's no "boo hoo poor us", that's just reality and absolutely no ill feeling towards the player himself. This is unfortunately what you're up against when you ply your trade in the 3rd tier. There is nothing we can do to compete with what Brighton can offer and the remaining contract situation is going to seriously impact what we can get for him but we just have to get what we can.

2 minutes ago, Warren Blufitt said:

You’re right mozza we are struggling after a very bright start. No Santos, no midfield, defence leaking goals it’s a real puzzle. On the plus side though Dion Charles is on fire at the moment and Adeboyejo is improving so if we can get the service right at least we can score. You on the other hand have picked up recently and seem to be hitting form so it should be a cracking game on Saturday with maybe a few goals in it? I still think we’ll both be there or thereabouts at the end of the season so Saturday could be an important pointer.

This probably belongs in the match thread so apologies to the mods.

Interesting, cheers for that. As for us, well I honestly don't know what to expect. Like many League 1 teams it's been a real mixed bag. We've looked really ropey in some games and yet we also managed to blow Peterborough away in 16 minutes last weekend. Warne seem to want to play a system that doesn't seem to work with these players and we look very vulnerable (3 at the back). Teams seem to just stroll through our midfield at will, but whenever we've abandoned that system we seem to look more effective. Looking at the squad before the season started we all thought defence would be solid but we'd struggle to score.. shows what we know !

The squad is paper thin though with injuries plus quite a small squad to start with, so not that much in the way options off the bench. Signed a couple of players before the last game so hopefully that's been addressed in part.

Honestly, no idea as to the scoreline. We might beat you or we might get a hammering, it's that kind of season so far !

I'm surprised that nobody else has brought this up, but Waghorn needs to take a long hard look at himself. It's all well and good banging in a hatrick but what a total waste that 3rd goal was. He didn't need to score that for us to win the game and he should have kept that goal in reserve for when we need it. We exactly the same nonsense from McGoldrick with his stupid spree scoring. Why oh why can't we have a striker that knows how to score exactly one more goal than the opposition per game. Bloody liability this fella..

5 minutes ago, Srg said:

We didn’t spend a fee on Friday, for what it’s worth. It was a free with clauses. 

You must be mistaken. We always throw vast sums at stuff. A Posh fan told me.

4 minutes ago, strawhillram said:

They lost

 at home

 conceding 4 goals

Ah yeah, but that's only because we have a vast bloated squad of star names constructed with obscene levels of investment that would make the Saudi league blush, estimated as 196 trillion quid (and 47p) apparently.

Outstanding result and great effort by the lads. Nice to see us so positive and seizing control of a game after going behind.

Had a quick read of the Peterborough forum and it never ceases to amaze how the narrative of us throwing money around like confetti persists with some clueless people. Oh yeah, that's right this forum is completely awash with posts from people worried about the vast sums that we've spent on transfers. Oh no, wait, that's right it isn't, because that is total b******* and we seem to be spending nothing and have sold £3m of players so far. Fridays transfer is the first fee and we don't know what it is as it was undisclosed.

Apparently we also have the biggest wage bill in the league. Clearly this is where we've all been going wrong. We don't need to speculate on wages offered and transfer fees paid because someone of the Peterborough forum knows all this info to the penny. Silly us. Nasty money bags Derby strike again. FFS...

10 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

We should fear no one in this division and be looking to win every game. We are the biggest thing in town. I don't accept this "take a point now" mentality. Time to start rising up the table and making the rest take notice. We are Derby!

I think this very much comes down to expectation versus acceptability. I'd agree that we should obviously always try to win every game because as much as anything else, starting off with an intention to only get a point usually seems to backfire as you spend 90 mins with your backs against the wall and then have to change your mindset mid game if you fall behind.

There are obvious shortcomings in this team as it stands but even so, we should be able to hold our own and not fear anyone in the sense of expecting a hammering. That all said, personally I reckon that if you can beat any promotion rivals at home and not lose to them away then you'll definitely be there or thereabouts. I'd love us to win this game but if we have a decent go and get a point then yeah, I'd be happy with that. They'd feel like it was an opportunity missed and I think that tells you everything you need to know. We haven't been able to recruit quite as we'd like and we're suffering badly with injuries at the moment, so consider a draw here as some sort of failure seems harsh in the extreme in the current circumstances.

59 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

You speak in more riddles than PW 😀 What exactly is the supporters mantra? What involvement are you seeking? 

I’m with @Gaspode on this one. We pay our money and what we “deserve” is to see a game of football (the quality of the football on display may not have always been worth the entry fee but that’s another matter) and statements from the club (or manager) when they deem it appropriate. I trust DC to run the club and don’t expect a running commentary on its financial position. Equally, I don’t expect a breaking news article from the club every time we’re interested, making a bid for or have been rejected by a player. Frustrating as it is, I think we just have to accept that PW and his recruitment team are doing the best they can to find the players PW thinks we need (unless any off us want to stump up and buy the club off DC).

I certainly get that and mostly agree but I think there is a mitigation for the slight impatience in our current situation.

I genuinely had no expectation last year. We had a march, the club had been saved at the 11th hour and we had a rookie manager who had to throw a team together of emergency signings, just to put a team out. Now we obviously almost got over the line and could have got promoted but I had no real expectation of that, far from it. We had some good players (Didzy was a joy to watch at times) but were unbalanced and lack obvious specialists in certain areas, never mind backups for those players.

I think though that finishing 7th puts a certain expectation on the next season to go one better though, particularly when there were noises about the EFL giving us more slack and there being a transfer budget to spend. I think that perhaps a few folk (not unreasonably) just expected that we'd kick on a bit this year, and I don't think that is 'entitled' or unrealistic. I totally get that injuries have seriously hampered us but some of the new signings have yet to convince and all round we look a bit ropey at this stage. Plenty of time yet of course but if we do want to be in the mix for playoffs then we can't afford fall too far off the pace.

Perhaps some fans were expecting a bit less, maybe another season of stabilisation as a rebuild continues but others like myself perhaps expected us to build on last year and be stronger and have a real pop at this. It felt like once we'd got over the disappointment of missing out on playoffs that we'd have a good summer and hit the ground running this year but for whatever reason we seem to have struggled a bit in terms of injuries, signings not materialising and some signings just struggling a little to bed in.

Maybe this stuttering start will help by resetting expectations a bit and allow us to get some players back/in and gradually build some real momentum as the season goes on. I just hoped that we'd come flying out of the traps and set the pace for once. My support hasn't dimmed whatsoever but perhaps I just hoped for a little more at this stage, that's all.

Ah, excellent, pretend to be Plymouth and see if we can get promoted that way 😉 Seriously though, I really like this. Something a little different and it benefits from not having distracting and clashing colours on the sponsor logo. 👍

Not losing and being a bit more organised and resilient would be absolutely fine. With injuries we're down to the absolute bare bones and not in great form so I'd definitely would be more than happy with a point. Anything better than that is pure bonus territory. Tough ask though, but who knows, this is Derby we're talking about..

4 minutes ago, TomG said:

Is 'shortly' the new 'soon'?

Nah, it's the new '48 hours' mate 😉

Really worried that if we start badly that it'll get a bit toxic and the away side will love that. We badly need our home form to be really solid but big home crowds seem almost more of a hindrance that a help when you are struggling like we are.

Rams 0 Fleetwood 2 No RFGS

11 hours ago, MackworthRamIsGod said:

Our defense is stronger, undoubtedly, but we have just lost our best player in McGoldrick and Jason Knight, without replacing either.

As it stands today I would be amazed if we bettered last seasons position.

 

This is it for me. We seem to have have done decent work with the defence and acquired specialist wingbacks but we look weaker in midfield and attack options.

Obviously it's not over yet regarding loans and such but overall it seems to be a step backwards for me and I think we'll struggle with the squad at this moment to better last year's effort. Other than with Rams tinted glasses I don't see how folk can see this side as head and shoulders better than last year and a shot at he title when we were 22 points short of even the 2nd automatic places last year, never mind the title.

It feels like playoffs at best IMHO and I think we'll do well to get that so would need to consider it a decent effort. I'm worried that some folks expectations of what this squad can or should achieve does not reflect the severe limitations that we continue to operate under. I really don't want to see anyone baying for Warne's head because we're in 7th at Christmas when they expected us to walk the league for some reason. Hoping for automatics is one thing. Expecting/predicting it is quite another.

3 hours ago, Ambitious said:

Not a dig, so don't take it as one, but I'd be really interested to hear why you feel Oxford are currently better equipped to finish in the play-offs over ourselves? 

It's a team that were two points away from relegation last season, who have since lost their (joint) top goalscorer in Kyle Joseph and had just the two league wins in the final four months of last season. They've added, for my money, just two good signings in Ruben Rodrigues (essentially unproven in professional football, though) and Jordan Thorniley. Mark Harris has never scored more than 3 goals in a season, regardless of level (3 in 24 games in non-league) and Josh McEachran was a big part of a recently relegated MK Dons side. 

The loan players are essentially unproven, with no real high expectations. They did do well against QPR but were demolished by a more competent Bristol City side (a half-strength Bristol City side) a few days before. 

No, that's an absolutely fair and reasonable question and in truth it was a bit of a wild card to throw in there rather than naming the usual suspects. I hadn't in fairness really noticed exactly how they'd finished the season but was going on a memory of what seems to have been a bit of a purple patch with them handing out some trouncings against poorer teams and at the same time getting some very creditable draws against the top sides at the sharp end of the season around April which perhaps suggested better things ahead. Draws against Wednesday, Peterborough and Pompey just suggested to me that with a few tweaks they might be a dark horse.

So no, your points are entirely reasonable. I do however think that currently we have gone slightly backwards overall and our squad is too small to sustain the football we want to play. It feels to me like we are in the crosshairs of a significant number of teams (Wycombe, Lincoln, etc) and I think we are short on numbers, creativity in midfield and strikers as it stands. Time for that to change with loans of course but we kick of the season on Saturday and we are already carrying injuries to players who have not had a pre-season in what is a small squad. I'd love us to start strongly over the first say 10 games and set the pace but we feel a bit under-strength to me still.

Without reinforcements I think we'd struggle for playoffs so possibly 8th/9th as it stands. Bolton and Barnsley for automatics. Blackpool, Peterborough, Oxford and Portsmouth for playoffs.

To a point, my thoughts are just 'What will be will be'. I'll be there in South Stand cheering on whoever is wearing the Rams shirts so I'm really looking forward to the coming season as I invariably do. That said, it does feel as a combination of club and press that we have been slightly economical to this point with regards to our financial situation ('restrictions lifted' headlines) in the sense that very few people expected Bielik and Knight to leave for fees without Warne having the opportunity to reinvest some of that. If Bird leaves too, will that just be absorbed as well ?

You might (possibly correctly) say that we could have spent some of the incoming fees but chose not to, at least not on what was available at the price, but the reality is that we have still had to assemble another team with free transfers, potentially topped up by loans. That being the case, I think we need to seriously temper some folks expectations as other teams have not had that restriction and have been able to build on last year. With the contracts situation overshadowed by EFL restrictions, we have had to have a major rebuild again with very little resource.

If that's the reality then I'll live with that because that's where we are and as we are all aware, a bit over a year ago things were dire and we faced an existential threat to our club, but it did feel as if we were led to believe that there was perhaps more freedom to shape the side by buying players than perhaps seems to be the case.

Re 20-25 goal strikers, certainly that is not a requirement for any team getting promoted but that assumes that there are several meaningful contributions from elsewhere. At the moment I'm not really seeing where our goals will come from. The midfield apart from Hourihane hardly look to be full of goals and we still desperately need at least 1 additional forward/striker, ideally not in the veteran category who can take some of the load over what will be a long season. There were members of our squad who looked to be running on empty in the run in last year and with Warne's preferred intense pressing style I just think that running out of steam again is a real possibility if we can't give some positions a break. Our squad is tiny again.

I'm sure we'll all give Warne and the lads our full backing when they step on the pitch, but I think it is fair and legitimate to just raise a few concerns about some potential limitations to our ambitions. We have remodelled this team again with what little resource we seem to have had available but I am not seeing anything approaching a title challenge (just my opinion). After just missing out on playoffs last year, I think the expectation of most was that we'd be right in there this year with Warne able to sign players to fill the roles that he wants and that we'd have a transfer kitty that with a few outgoings and good ST sales that we would be used to fund that.

Warne suggested that promotion wasn't vital this year but he alluded to being judged if he didn't achieve it. Personally I think he is being asked to achieve a lot with this squad and I fear for him slightly re expectation.