TomTom92

10 minutes ago, PistoldPete said:

Strange by Warne to play Sibley at Barnsley but not tonight. Cannot work his team selections out always seem wrong way round.

Agree with the Sibley part but I guess he’s wanting to keep us tight at the back. Which is odd when we’re at home to Cheltenham.
 
My main point of contest would be that Springett appears unlucky not to start.

I don’t think Warne’s some great tactical genius like some managers are. But he knows what he wants from his players and his record speaks for itself. 
 
His best attribute appears to be man management. 
 
Question marks over tactics, transfer nouse and coaching. That’s not me saying he’s bad in these areas but not seen anything to suggest his tactics are Sineoneesque, coaching  Bielsaesque or his transfer nouse Redknappesque.

Derby 1 - 0 Cheltenham 

McGoldrick

22 minutes ago, TuffLuff said:

Hi @EFL View, just wanted to say thanks for posting and felt that was a very good and thought out piece from a more neutral perspective.

Fully agree with your points and to be honest if James Chester is showing any signs of fitness it would not surprise me if Warne tries a 3-5-2 because I think he knows that the current system has been worked out and something needs to change, even if it ends up being a plan B.

Our biggest issue is the transfer embargo and our  lack of real activity in January, whilst our competitors strengthened we have essentially replaced a loan and bought in a back up. It’s similar to last year, although we lost important players then. Warne said post game on Saturday he considers us to have a ‘superior squad’, and I think he is correct on that but that also doesn’t guarantee anything and I think that’s something we need to learn. We really lack league 1 experience truth be told, after a good couple of months we’ve been a bit naive about that.

My prediction at this time, will be that we can make the play offs but will probably fall short of winning them. This means we will probably have to sell Bird, Knight and possibly Sibley + Cashin, but hopefully it’ll provide more funds to put together a side more suited for a League One promotion push rather than our mix of youngsters and experienced heads.

Except we can’t use any funds brought in to significantly strengthen. Unless of course the business plan changes. 
 
Not getting promoted puts us and the 4 players futures at risk. Sure, Warne won’t want players who want out sticking around, but we can’t let them go for peanuts just to get rid. 
 
Rather perversely the restrictions put in place to punish the club could actually hold back the development of 4 young pros. Not sure that’s really in the spirit of the EFL and what it should stand for. 
 
I want promotion asap just to avoid the potential stickiness mentioned above.

1 hour ago, RoyMac5 said:

Don't want another season in this league, it's made doubly crap by the officiating going against footballing sides. ?

Agreed but whether we go up is out of our (the fans) control. If we’re still here in 3 seasons time then somebody needs a good scolding.

Long way to go, if we win on Tuesday the gap is down to 8 points with us still having to play them. 
 
Even if we get play offs and lose, that’s exactly what Wednesday did and they’ve been the best team in the league by a country mile.

33 minutes ago, NIGHTMARE said:

We won 4-1 and moved above you in the league. 

To be fair we were on top of the word after our big unbeaten run. Ultimately are you the second best team in the league? Because the play offs will be a lottery.

The positives: With Plymouth losing we haven’t lost ground. Plus Bird should be back in 2 weeks. 
  
The negatives: We’ve been so poor in two away matches against direct competition and any momentum has been snuffed out. 
 
Compare Wycombe and Barnsley away to Ipswich, Bolton and Portsmouth. We seemed to show a steely determination albeit we lost to Ipswich thanks to Curtis. Has a bit of complacency come in? Are we just playing our game and assuming that’s enough for the win rather than keeping it tight and looking to steal it?  
  
Need two wins at home now, no excuses.
 
 

Not sure how the EFL go about this, as others have pointed out. You either go to the match or travel to China and watch for £10. The championship is far less desirable than it was 5 seasons ago.

Think it’s only a matter of time before televised sports is revolutionised completely. PL are constantly crying because of all the fire sticks and whatnot. 
 
Football fans want to watch as much football as possible for as cheap as they can get. An unfortunate truth for the PL and EFL.

Critchley going just shows you how baffling football management can be. 
 
Did a class job at Blackpool before weirdly joining Villa as understudy. Then goes to QPR and stinks the joint out. 
 
Is he a good manager or not? 

Good news one would think on Ainsworth to QPR. However, not getting the bunting out completely until we see who comes in to replace. 
 
Be intrigued if they stick to a manager who’s philosophy is similar to GA.

Birmingham won’t go under and probably won’t even end up going down. Yes it’ll be nice to see their fans squirm but really can’t see them getting any karma we think they deserve.

The draw may have done us a favour. Even if we’d won sat and tonight we’d have made no ground up. Unfortunately both Wednesday and Plymouth have been freaks this season. Shame as us, Bolton, Barnsley and Ipswich are all fairly even. 
 
Autos dead, just got to concentrate on staying in the play offs now. 
 
The lads looked tired and I think that’s on Warne. Thought before kick off he should’ve changed the team up and it showed. 
 
Don’t want to pile in on Collins because at the end of the day if you played him blind faith he’ll hit you 15 goals in a season. But jeez he offers nothing in build up play. Think Knight needs to play 10 and White needs a chance to shine. 
 
Play offs not to be sniffed at and even if we don’t do it this season, Warne has a full summer to recruit and get his team in to shape. The negatives being we’d probs lose Knight and Cashin.

 
Anyway up the Rams and see you on Saturday. 

Play offs not nailed by a long stretch but with our home form back to its best (touch wood) I’d expect us to be in the shout come the end of the season. 
 
Still think we’re in the top 2 hunt although Saturdays results really did hit us for six. Bolton annoyingly looking to join the race as well which is frustrating with how well we dealt with them in jan.

Don’t think holding off on subs will be an issue tonight. I’m convinced this was done at the weekend because our options whilst talented are a little lightweight. Lincoln won’t be employing the same Neanderthal tactics as Wycombe.

Surprised we’ve gone unchanged. Class team on paper but thought he might rotate out a few of the older heads to give them a breather. 
 
Clearly sees Lincoln as a threat/or wants the team that disappointed on sat to blow off some steam.

Think Jones' next job will be a real make it or break it for him as a respected manager. Flunked at Stoke and Southampton (albeit not really given a chance). But obviously worked wonders at Luton.

Maybe the prem is too much for him and his real skill is with galvanising the underdog in to over achieving. To be fair to him if that is the case then he'll never be out of work as there's always the need for fire fighting in the championship. 

His interviews did come across as odd and once the fans go against you its usually game over (think Phil Brown here). 

Very much looking forward to seeing his next move although if i was him i'd treat myself to a couple of months off an pick my next destination in the summer. 

Fair play to Huddersfield, looked dead and buried but have just appointed survival.

Leeds fans have already decided that he will keep Southampton up at their expense. In my opinion I disagree as I don't rate him as a manager and I think its another poor appointment by them. That said I think Leeds will go down unless they make a smart appointment. 

As things stand right now my 3 for the drop are; Leeds, Southampton and Bournemouth. 

Wildsmith

Smith, Forsyth, Cashin, Sibley

White, Hourihane

Barkhuizen, Knight, Dobbin

Collins

Trying to fresh it up without disrupting things too much.

1 minute ago, G STAR RAM said:

? one loss and the 'bottled' word is rolled out straight away 

Just how I see it. Maybe that wasn’t the reason why he didn’t put them on, but I thought we were crying out for a couple of changes even before our goal.

Will be tougher than people expect but after today it’ll be nice to exercise some demons straight away.

Totally bullied today and I think Warne got it wrong. We scored against the run of play and then made no changes. I can only imagine he didn’t trust White, Sibley and Springett with their physicality so bottled putting them on. 
 
Not here to moan and everything can be put right on Tuesday. But Plymouth winning does mean that talk of top 2 should be put on ice.

10 hours ago, AndyB said:

Any of the 3 results in that game will look good if we win our game.

Agreed. 
 
A draw for me is the ideal as we close 2 points on both, followed by a Wednesday win so we overtake Ipswich, then an Ipswich win which would see the gap close for all 4 teams. 
 
But all meaningless if we don’t do our job. 

Complete non story as others have alluded to whatever punishment they get won’t really be a punishment. 
 
Fine - they’ll pay it with ease.

points deduction - they’ll just come back with a vengeance next season. 
 
Strip them of their titles - Who would they give them too? 
 
Transfer ban - Probably the most harmful but they’d still finish top 4. 

FFP is a waste of time and hasn’t helped anything or anyone. I’d love to see a wage/transfer cap put in place but you’d have to make every division in the world agree to it so that’s a non starter. Then as David stated there will be ways around the cap. 
 
In some respects I’m not against the super league if it means English football can take stock and come up with a way to make things fairer.