kevinhectoring

I know. I think the question of whether and how to use Sibley - if at all - is one of the hardest conundrums facing our manager. End of last season his starts ultimately proved a mistake (but I think playing close to Didzy is probably hard unless telepathy is your thing). Tbh Warne has used him more frequently than I thought he would, I was thinking he might be sold cheaply in Jan. There are players who read a game and find their best was to impose themselves. I don’t think he does that well at all so he’s often underwhelming esp when in midfield

Don’t blame you for not reading my posts ( I should thank you for not having me on ignore.) But if you’d seen my posts you’d see I’ve been saying for ages Ward should be used more (including after the two dropped bollicks). Most recent was a recent reply to ghostofclough who was saying the same thing in the Charlton match day thread. I like Nyambe and yes team selection is difficult because we’ve got a good squad now. But that’s exacerbated by the flip flop approach to formation which imo is difficult for the players. The price we’ve paid is that we’re not going into the last stretch with an established set up and the ability to play consistently good football. And possibly we’ve paid in points as well but who knows. I fear team selection rests too much on issues of personality and not enough on good analysis of football- based criteria. Indeed Warne has in the past boasted that his recruitment follows the same approach

there was nothing veiled about my criticism of Warne. IMO, if we want to watch decent effective football, Ward should be in or close to the starting XI. And his defensive frailties need not be exposed if he is given the right role, especially now we have Adams. Been saying it for many weeks.

Paul Warne £5 please

In front of goal he’s got poise and killer instinct

You only need to look at the guy on the ball to see his quality, and that’s not new. But he’s been on the naughty step and we’ve paid the price

I think there are better ways to make the fans believe their voices are heard. On a related point, it’d be interesting if DC were to devise a scheme for transfer of 49% of the club to supporters who want to invest. Would be complicated but now’s the time to do it (rather than when the club is in crisis)

For various reasons I think Warne is more likely to get 100% buy in and effort from a Rotherham dressing room than from ours

Having described our bench 6 games ago as the strongest the division has seen in its history

Cheating

Drawing pretty pictures on an overhead projector is one thing. It’s quite another to ask players frequently to adjust to different roles in different systems whilst there are players coming on and off, the oppo is throwing everything at you and you’re knackered. We’re good enough to win most of the time in this hapless div by playing the system that most suits us and one the players are accustomed to

Was surprised to hear Warne say in his post match interview that it wasn’t a tactical game in any sense. I thought all games had a tactical element

Exactly. NML being run into the ground and no sign of Barks or Ward. It’s not intelligent selection And yes, we probably get best value out of Sibley at LB.

NML gets knackered and loses his touch and control if he’s overplayed. Which he has been. He should be coming off at 70 mins regularly. Next thing is he’ll get injured. Just as happened to Fozzy when he was required to do teenage sprints up and down the left touchline week in week out. I think Warne, as a trim little fellow who keeps himself in annoyingly good shape, has no idea what impact old FatherTime has on the soft tissues of normal sized men

He’s our best keeper when at his best. but his head is in completely the wrong place. He clearly won’t be with us much longer We have a habit of losing our best players

In assessing the manager there is one question and only one: is he getting the players at his disposal performing to their potential ? A different question is: if he doesn’t, will the chairman sack him ? I don’t think he gets the best out of this team. And I don’t think he’ll be sacked any time soon

Every other club adopted the same approach tho’. And given the mess we got ourselves into, only a lunatic club would now change its policy. So the effect of the ‘policy’ decision was likely to ensure a common approach going forward. (I know that by its terms the LAP decision allows different approaches, but the effect of the decision and surrounding circumstances is to discourage anyone from changing) You’ll know better than I do, but I’m thinking ICAEW review certainly does not constitute their sign off on every technical point that underpins an audit. Or indeed on any technical point … I like ‘having been able to determine’. The IDC knows that on appeal, evidence is not reconsidered so comments like that are included to reduce the likelihood their judgement is successfully appealed. (No one likes being overturned.) Did we put forward evidence we had in fact carried out the determination in a consistent manner? ‘also’ ! It’s true I may have misremembered. But make no mistake, our legal team are the only people who know why we called no expert. If our expert was wobbling, for example , we would hardly put that forward as a reason for not calling him

The stadium was let at an undervalue for a start. And I’d think that at the very least the ongoing stadium rental payable by the club would have been set off against the deferred purchase price. If you look at 202’s balance sheet before the sale to DC the payable to the club will indicate how much of the £82 m was actually paid over.

It was a ‘policy’ decision. And probably one that overall reflected the thrust of the EFL rules. No doubt the LAP members concerned will have continued doing lucrative work in cases involving EFL Part of the problem was we claimed there was not a single document that we could produce which related to our estimation of player values. This led the LAP to believe we were engaged in manipulation of the numbers (regardless of the straight line approach you mention). The other big problem was the issue raised by MacGuire that kicked the whole thing off, namely that the rules are aimed at creating a level playing field for 72 clubs and that all except us used the same approach. We should have seen the risk and we certainly should have taken a ‘big 4’ technical opinion before stealthily adopting the policy. The problem is, a supporting big 4 opinion would probably have required a rigorous approach to player valuation. These are precisely the sorts of points on which a strong CEO would have challenged MM. (It seems very odd we didn’t put forward our own expert and it’d be interesting to know what lay behind that. I half recall we had one lined up and pulled him at the last minute. That’s not a good look)

I think it’s a bit weird that he’s still around. Word has it he was remorseful when Q was appointed, feeling he should have ‘stood up’ to MM (as his duties required). He then worked his balls off to help Q and this - as well has his expertise - would have been readily apparent to DC as the sale negotiations were ongoing. I’d also assume he was not going to be employed by any other club on the planet after the debacle, so the detailed terms of his ongoing role would have been largely dictated by DC and his team. Perhaps the initial intention was to keep him short term, and it then seemed to make sense for him to stay…? But given the intent to ‘reset’ the culture and business of the club, and for that to be seen to be the case … yeah it’s pretty weird he’s still around.

Are these really findings of the IDC ?

You forgot the hilarious comments about tea, bobble hats Etc ’you’re only as good as your keeper and your no 9’ was an interesting one. Revealing - we have lost too many times this season and last to strong midfields …

But this time we’re in div1. I’d hope that these players playing consistently well will indeed sweep all before them. Granted, we need Adams to stay fit …

Want to see us playing our preferred system regardless of what we think the oppo will do. Give players the same job to do game after game and most will do much better than when they get new instructions each week. We’ve got a strong enough squad to play our own way. 3 at the back please and make it decent to watch . Give Ward and Wilson a start. Give Bradley the chance to keep improving. If Sibley is to be our super sub, give him time enough play it fast and short with lots of movement. nil something.

It’s in our hands if we make top 6