Ambitious

1 minute ago, oodledoodle said:

Radio Derby - "I'm surprised the Derby fans are surprised"

It’s the tale of our season so far, ironically the complete opposite to last season where we struggled with the team’s around us but were clinical against the teams who struggled to offer players more than Motorpoint can offer sales staff. 

I’m not entirely sure why, either. 

I didn’t watch the game, so can’t comment on individual performances or how we approached the game.

Easy to assume a lack of professionalism based on the result though. A stain on the career of every single player on that pitch in a Derby shirt.

I hadn’t had chance to get on the forum as I was out after the game yesterday, but saw someone mention it on Twitter as I was scrolling through this morning - it’s really knocked me for six.

Like most, I never knew him personally but having been on here for so many years, he was one of the stronger characters and his positivity was unwavering. The club meant so much to him, as it does to most of us, so it’s upsetting that he won’t get to see the rebuild and hopefully the club back in a strong position. I know it would’ve meant the world to him. When that happens, should I be lucky enough to witness it myself, I’ll share a thought and drink in memory of B4. 

Incredibly sad news. 

I didn’t watch the game, but I believe we had something like 700 passes and 30-odd shots at goal with almost 80% possession. 

I thought the majority wanted Warne out because we didn’t play in that manner more often? It’s hard for a manager to have total control over situations in football games, it’s not FIFA, all he can really do is set up a team in a way that generates the most possession, opportunities and the players are liable for the rest. 

Again, without watching the game, but just looking at the box score, I’m not sure how you can blame Warne for this?

David Clowes has a free pass for life. The situation we were in when he bought us makes that so. I'm amazed that others feel anything different, but guess people do have short memories. 

I will critique his ownership of the club, in a constructive manner (not that he would listen, nor should he) but you'll never see anything derogatory from me towards him and if anyone is bold enough to do so then I would hope there is enough of us to pull them up on their b******* and explain the gravity of the situation we were in when he saved the club. 

I really hope this works out for him. He obviously feels like he's got a good one in Warne and is happy to bat for him against the supporters. Many weaker owners would buckle to fan pressure. Of course, he could be completely wrong and the situation never gets any better. He's the one with skin in the game at the end of the day, so I'll support his decision - whatever it is. 

That said: I personally do not see it getting better, by that I don't mean our league position, because I think even with Warne we will be in the play-offs come the end of the season due to the nature of just how s**** this league is, but I definitely don't see him as a long-term solution for this club. That is my opinion.

Warne... IN. 

I’m not even going to say Warne is a bad manager, like most in the game I’m sure he will have good and bad spells wherever he goes, but it’s definitely not working out here. 

It’s a very sad situation. I feel the players and the coaching staff have an us against them mentality (Derby supporters being the them) and it’s just toxic. 

Look at the fallout from the game today and I could make an argument for Paul Warne to be one of the most hated managers of this club in my lifetime and probably the most hated manager of the past 20 years. I can only think of John Gregory and Phil Brown as worse situations. I don’t think Jewell got it this bad, certainly didn’t have this level of animosity towards him at the time from memory, in my opinion. 

I think any connection between the fans and Warne is well and truly sullied. Warne is waiting for a payout from Clowes and in the meantime the atmosphere at the club continues to get worse. We are looking at a complete rebuild next summer, again, because of our short-term approach (albeit under restrictions) so the commercial strength of this club, the fans, should be considered. A League One Paul Warne’s Derby County kicks off next season to an opening crowd below 20,000 - in my opinion. 

Steve Evans has turned Stevenage into a more competent team than Paul Warne has Derby on roughly a fifth of the budget - without the benefit of a category one academy to utilise. 

We’re both playing the same type of football, they’re just better at it. What a sad day in the history of this club. 

On 25/10/2023 at 19:35, DerbyAleMan said:

Thanks for the reminder lol

Yes it is a poor division, alot said we could not afford him. Which now with hindsight looks a shame. 

Against Blackpool, i thought Nelson did very well against him, shows you what a great defender we have in Nelson. 

Nelson, like Rhodes, is probably at the stage of his career where he could probably carve out a career in the Championship, probably as a third/fourth choice in a team, but looks streets ahead of everyone at this level. 

I was never in doubt that Rhodes was too quick mentally for defenders at this level, even if his legs have gone a bit, he is a composed finisher and most defenders at this level give strikers every chance to put the ball in the goal. 

On 27/08/2023 at 23:24, DerbyAleMan said:

My opinion stand, you can have yours, i will have my, will not even hit double figures mate, time will tell. 

You know i am a man of my word 20 pound he will not hit 10 goals for Blackpool, if i lose I will donate 20 pound to Cancer research, if you lose you do the same. 

Was that 10 goals by the end of the season or by the end of October? 

It has been good of Rhodes to put on notice just how the most run of the mill Championship striker (at this stage of his career) looks in this f****** dreadful league.

I didn’t expect him to get 9 goals in 10 games, but assumed he would easily get 20 at this level. He looks like it could be on for 30+ if he carries on. 

I can honestly say I'm not at all arsed about who starts for us. The balance is miles off - Max Bird is the best example I have in that he has started 7 games for us this season and we've lost 4 of them. In the six games he missed, we won four of them. He's one of our better players, but we are a weaker side with him for how Warne wants to play. 

I don't think we would be any worse off if we picked the team via a raffle. 

I don’t blame Clowes for hiring Warne. He talks a good game and I think fundamentally he’s a very intelligent tactician. 

Like most of us, who have grew up watching football, we have an idea of how we would want things to look and processes on how to achieve that. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple and I think Warne has ultimately fell away from being able to achieve his vision for whatever reason. The question is now, for both Clowes and Warne is where do they go from here. Clowes obviously has an affinity for Warne as a person, but will naturally be worried about his investment. By any metric, we are underachieving. The fans aren’t happy.  In this league, the fans are our commercial strength so there is an emphasis to keep them onside, more so than if we were in the Championship or Premier League. 

I think there needs to be an honest conversation between the two and some more immediate key performance indicators outlined. I think ideally they drag each other through this period, but there needs to be a plan in place. 

You also have to take what Warne says in the press with a pinch of salt, he’s trying to keep his job and stop the players from going under. At this point, I think you can largely ignore what he says in the press as it will be very different to his thoughts and real opinion. 

Warne will do well to survive this… 

This sounds morbid, borderline depressing, but I don't have any realistic ambition for Derby at present. 

I don't believe we have the competency or cash available to mount any serious push for the Premier League. By default, we will continue to fight for promotion in League One until we eventually get it and then we will do our best to survive in the Championship with a middle of the road budget. 

The difficulty the club faces, realistically, is keeping bums on seats. 

If we stay down this season: we will lose our good young players coming to the end of their contracts. Replacing them with quality won't be an unsurmountable task, but realistically any signings we can make in League One aren't going to excite fans. Assuming in this scenario Warne is out, who do we bring in as manager - how can you capture fans imagination? How do you stop thousands of fans from essentially walking out on the club. Anything other than promotion this season is commercially devastating to the club and the truth is three teams are coming down from the Championship in better shape than the ones last season. Take the bottom 5 for example at the moment: Watford, QPR, Rotherham, Sheff Wed & Stoke. The league will be a lot more difficult next season - there will be a lot less optimism around the club than there was last season which kept people engaged. 

If we get promoted this season: the fans are going to excited of course and it means Derby will be in a much stronger position, financially, going into next season. However, realistically speaking, the team is miles off where it needs to be in order to compete in the Championship. We have built our side similarly to how Sheff Wed built their side. I've seen little from the recruitment team to trust them to pull rabbits out of hats, nor do I believe that Clowes will fund a complete overhaul and I don't believe that Warne has the skillset to manage that situation. The initial excitement would be soon tainted with transfer window frustrations, poor results and the realisation that despite having one of the biggest crowds in the league that we aren't able to truly compete financially with a lot of the division who have owners able to more than bridge the gap and teams with parachute payments. We're essentially walking into a buzz saw. If we survive, great, but difficult to overlook the frustrations, the booing, the calls for the managers head, the calls for the players heads which all seems inevitable. 

For me: it's very much a damned if we do, damned if we don't. In order for Derby to be an ambitious club again, it either needs outside money either from investment or new ownership. Failing that, it needs an elite level of competency at the club in terms of coaching and recruitment - like Brentford have been able to achieve. It's obviously not easy when you're looking at what freebies you can pick up off the bosman list at the end of the year.

My own take is not to try and think of the future of the club too much, enjoy the games for what they are and don't let comparison be the thief of joy. 

The squad as it stands is probably the most experienced and deepest in terms of quality in the league. I really struggle to see any other team in the division as comparable. 

Oxford finished two points from the relegation zone last season, had very little budget to make adjustments and have managed to improve significantly to the point where they are now (on current form) a better team than us. I would put that down to Liam Manning, who is a good manager. 

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that we aren't working at an optimum efficiency - some players aren't performing as expected, the recruitment could've been a lot better and the coaching could be a lot more effective. I do feel like we're improving, generally, but there are some fundamental issues within the club that aren't going to see us become the next Brentford, Brighton, etc. 

You could see with the approach adopted by Sunderland and Ipswich that they were putting processes in place with a long-term vision and each decision was meticulously thought out. It's worked out well for them and they're going really strong this season. I don't feel like we have that level of vision, work-ethic or competency at the club to achieve at the same level.

8 hours ago, David said:

TeamTalk saying Cashin, Sibley, Thompson and Bird "could" be targets for Rooney

https://www.teamtalk.com/birmingham-city/exclusive-wayne-rooney-primed-decimate-former-side-birmingham-war-chest-january

Basically a load of reuniting former manager with players guff to fill an article. 

Rooney did plenty good at Derby, but he took a sledge hammer to Sibley’s development and career. 

I can’t imagine that’s a reunion that will happen any time soon. 

Game should’ve been done at half time, criminal how many chances we missed, but not completely unsurprising considering the last few draws we’ve had where chances and goal scoring opportunities have been in great volume but the final touches haven’t. 

Second half, you could see the players returning from injury really struggling late on and I felt Warne just wanted to run them into the ground to get minutes in their legs but from a performance point of view it I would hope changes would typically be made before it got to that point. Right before the penalty we may as well been playing walking football. 

Great to see Sibs bag twice. He really need to be in games where we need a spark because we just don’t have it otherwise, most of our players are industrious, honest pros. Sibley is the only player in our team who has an edge about his game, for me, so I just don’t see any good reason why he doesn’t get a run of games. It seems like he has to score every game to even get an opportunity to keep his place. He’s started three games this season and has three goals. It does baffle me. I’m just going to try and enjoy watching him while I can because it’s obvious that Warne is happy to see him gone at the end of the season. 

Imagine my shock.. 

I think we will end up playing a strong team: 

Vickers will absolutely start in goal and hopefully gets a good reception from the Derby fans. Forsyth, Nyambe both start due to the injuries to their alternates. Bradley needs minutes so will undoubtedly play and will play on the left hand side, hence why Nelson starts at RCB. Barkhuizen, Hourihane, Bird & Wilson are all in need of minutes - Bird and Hourihane in particular. Sibley, like Bradley, is almost guaranteed to start. Upfront, Waghorn will likely get a chance in the nine rather than the 10 with Collins rested. Equally, we may choose to give Brown a first competitive start. 

Notts County I imagine will play a similar line up to the one they did against Wolves which included about 6/7 backup players who very rarely get a game a couple of rotational players and then a couple of starters in Bostock & Baldwin. I can't imagine McGoldrick is going to see the pitch or even Langstaff. 

Comfortable Derby win - in a ground where there will be 2 Derby fans for every home supporter. 

Not to be that guy, because I like Bird but:

Without Bird - played 6, won 4, drawn 1 and lost 1.

With Bird - played 7, won 2, drawn 2 and lost 4. 

5 minutes ago, oodledoodle said:

If you're overrun in midfield then put another body in there. Tell waggy to drop back. Tell cashin to step up. Play sibs as a 10 and put him in the middle to win balls and break up play. How he came out with the idea to just give up on midfield is madness.

The quality of our players should be much, much more than enough to handle something as basic as there being an extra man in midfield. It's baffling for me.

I didn’t hear the interview so I’m only going off the small bits that I saw, to be honest, but I think ‘given up on the midfield’ is hyperbole. 

We dominated possession and our midfielders had a significant amount more touches than their midfielders - I believe he was just stating that the plan to transition was going to be in wide areas where the pitch doesn’t get congested and that we can get their players isolated. I think he was concerned about Cheltenham essentially playing a box six (3x CBs and 3x CDMs) and us trying to find space in the middle of the pitch when irregardless of their players’ quality that they’re still eating up space in those gaps. Us putting more bodies in that zone essentially creates less space and a more erratic football match. 

I don’t think anyone is upset with the amount of chances created or how we transitioned the ball, mostly the quality of our play in those situations. I’m happy to s*** on Warne as much as the next man but based on what I saw today I’m just not sure the blame is down to him, if anything he gave the players a good opportunity to win that game by ensuring they weren’t congested but they lacked the quality to finish the chances when they arose. 

8 minutes ago, Kokosnuss said:

Bloody hell haven't listened to a Warne analysis for a number of weeks.

We didn't want the ball in the middle because they had an overload in there. Didn't want to try to put through balls to the strikers because they had 3CBs. We just needed to get into the wings more and get more crosses in more quickly.

Now getting defensive over Dom asking him why Sibley didn't come in when we needed goals and he's called him the best finisher at the club...  Well we had other unused subs. Bradley didn't come on. Vickers didn't come on

..

Straight back to not listening to his interviews me!

In fairness I think we can all understand the logic in not wanting to play in contested areas  and for the most part it was the right decision because we were able to get into good positions and stack the box but the players lacked quality required on this occasion to make it count. 

The result is obviously a lot worse than the performance, for me this game was painfully similar to the Cambridge one.

I don’t think Warne got a lot wrong with his set up and team selection, albeit I would’ve liked to see Sibley for that little bit of guile and craft in the final third. It’s squarely at the feet of the players who made a ton of bad decisions in key moments and lacked quality when they needed it most.

You can definitely see why Cheltenham are where they are, but that’ll be something their fans have had something to cheer today.