kevinhectoring

I’m not sure I follow your logic either. Every season for every club since I first watched footy could have been different were it not for a ref decision here or there or a save or a missed open goal. Twas ever thus and ever will be.
The plain fact is that we weren’t good enough to go up this year. We challenged but fell short. The proof lies in the table. Lots of reasons for that chief amongst them in my view - you may not agree - the effects of the financial and disciplinary issues we’ve faced. Our club has been decimated from the academy upwards and Clowes, rightly i think, decided after his internal review that the issues on and off the pitch needed time to fix, thus the 4 year contract for his chosen manager and the 5 years to get established in the championship goal.  They go hand in hand.
I suspect that he runs his, very successful, business in the same way. Building (excuse the pun) it over time. He’s not the type, it seems to me (and I’ve never met him) to chuck a load of money at something for instant success, rather he wants to build a club on firmer foundations over time, thus 4 years and 5 years. Logical. And, in my view, sensible, especially given what went before him. But demanding patience from those of us that watch. If we go up next year then great; if it’s the year after then not as good but so be it.

don't follow your logic. Nor do I understand why anyone would say it will take time when we might well have gone up this year if a red card or so had fallen differently 
Sooner the better   don't know how that can be debatable 

I’m impatient, sorry. I’ve now been to Fleetwood - it wasn’t on my bucket list - and the novelty has worn off. And I have no desire to go to Stevenage because tho I have no idea what style of football they play I think I’ll find it even more tiresome than driving on the A1. 
 
I can’t remember exactly what words were used, but I wonder whether Clowes’ squidgy statement was off the cuff or premeditated. I’d say it’s purely an exercise in managing the expectations of the fan base, and it enables us to fail to get promotion soon and not regard it as what it is: failure. We should not be in this division and going to quaint grounds to sit in crickety stands to watch indifferent footie on a bad pitch in a cold wind loses its appeal quite quickly. MORE TO THE POINT, if we fail to get promotion soon, we risk being seen as a div 1 club by all and sundry, and we ourselves risk falling into that state of mind, and it is a state of mind that will keep us there. We lose our best players (bye bye Jason, Eiran) and we find it harder and harder to recruit anything but clodhoppers.
(It’s particularly irritating at the same time to see our noisy neighbours cling on in the PL - there is a prospect they may be there as long as we could be in div 1)
So putting aside whether Warne was the right choice - I think he’s just about OK, no more - imo the length of his contract was bat$hit crazy. 
 
So yes, Mr Clowes’ statement can be interpreted in different ways - that was his intention. But I wish he’d settled on a manager who would take a 3 year appointment and had said, in words of one syllable: our goal is to be back up in three (3) years
 

He’s from south london 

So, promotion next season it is! 😉

He’s from south london 

Back to Derby then (the club who gave him his first senior debut).

He’s been a monumental player for us. I think those who think he’s average at this level, or at championship level, should probably give their heads a bobble. 

Bardic, brammie.  Beautiful 

He’s been a monumental player for us. I think those who think he’s average at this level, or at championship level, should probably give their heads a bobble. 

1. McFarland v Benfica.  1972.
2.Mackay v Chelsea 1968.
3. Hector v Liverpool 1969.
4. George v Real Madrid 1975.
5. Micklewhite V Man Utd. 1989.

such as ‘40% of the time he’s frustrating’, or ‘is he injured, Owen, I don’t know...’.    Fair enough you might stay, he didn’t pick Didzy so why should they get on. But managers need to be careful what they say about players in public and Warne is sometimes not.  It’s a bit too much all about him and his hats. 
 
That said, he’s told us he’ll only recruit players if the personal chemistry with him is  right. So in time you’d expect a group that will be as tight as (reportedly) the Rotherham group was.
Didzy is - in div 1 - a star. I don’t think stars fit very easily into Warne’s World - and that’ likely to be a glass ceiling on his potential as a manager 

Darn yer knit picking. Nothing makes me angora 

What a comeback, oddly enough I thought they would do it.
I hope they go up now, especially for Moore. Not bothered what they sang at a match, we would do the exact same thing.
Good luck Owls!
 

Harry the horse ?
 
(Oops sorry off topic )

He’s been a monumental player for us. I think those who think he’s average at this level, or at championship level, should probably give their heads a bobble. 

Totally unexpected. Right chuffed for Darren.

For the last 15 games I wish PW had started  Barkhuizen instead of NML. I’d wish we’d re-sign him 
 
PS Since you’re called ‘sage’ shouldn’t you say ‘whom’ ?

He’s been a monumental player for us. I think those who think he’s average at this level, or at championship level, should probably give their heads a bobble. 

Well the match did finish 11 days ago.

He’s been a monumental player for us. I think those who think he’s average at this level, or at championship level, should probably give their heads a bobble. 

He’s been a monumental player for us. I think those who think he’s average at this level, or at championship level, should probably give their heads a bobble. 

Such a shame with him, I so want him to take games by the scruff and have the impact Will Hughes had early in his career. It just doesn't seem to be there anymore.

I really don't think that's a good group of centre halves for a back 3 though.  In a back 3, the wider centre halves basically have to be able to play as fullbacks, because they have to come out wide and support the wingback when attacks are coming down that side.  So they need to be able to deal with tricky wingers running at them.  Forsyth and Chester can both do it, but Chester barely played all season, and Forsyth is the wrong side of 30 and was being played on his wrong foot towards the end of the season.  Cashin, Davies and Stearman are all far better at tackling, winning headers, engaging physically with strikers etc, than dealing with pace running at them.  If you play them in the wider positions you're just exposing them to what they're weakest at.  
And if you don't have your wide centre halves coming out to support, you either have to have wingers helping out (in which case you aren't playing a back 3, you're playing a very negative back 5), or you get killed out wide because they've got an overload every single time they get the ball out there.
And it was like that all over the team.  We had Cashin forced into dealing with pace, Forsyth on his wrong foot, Knight and Roberts playing as wingbacks (when neither of them can cross, neither of them are particularly good dribblers etc), NML as a Number 10.  That's 5 players in positions they aren't totally comfortable with.  And if you start shuffling those players into positions they are comfortable with, it just creates problems elsewhere (NML, Barkhuizen at wingback etc). With the back 4, we had one of Knight or Smith at right back, and sometimes Sibley at left back. That's 1 or 2.
Fundamentally, I think the big reason we struggled to score goals last season was we seemed to lack any kind of game-plan going forward.  We didn't seem to be setting out specifically to do anything, it was just run around a lot and hope we can force them into a mistake.  So that meant we were very reliant on individual players winning games for us.  And if you're in that kind of position, the more players you have in positions they aren't comfortable with, the harder it's going to be to win games.

My mum used to say there was an enormous slimy one beneath the bed;  and if I didn’t go to sleep it would slither up and engulf me, turning me into an enormous bald head without a body
 I’ve never told anyone that before