Ambitious

Pragmatic is a choice word that a lot of people use, but by very definition I find it is actually synonym for how Warne approaches football strategically. Pragmatic, to me, would be more Rosenior - with Cashin playing 140-odd passes backwards and sideways, attempting to move players out of position. Safe, controlled, usually with limited risk. Warne beats the drum of chaos, nothing about how we approach games is controlled and therefore can’t at all be described as pragmatic.

I like Warne as a person, can see why he was hired and why Clowes likes working with him. All that said and done, I don’t think he’s right for the club. He simply has to get promoted this season, because the relationship with the fans won’t last another year in league one and commercially the fans are the lifeblood of the club at this level. Ironically, my fear is promotion with him in the role is equally as bleak as I don’t have the faith that we have the competency within the club to rise above our financial station. Clowes hasn’t got financial muscle to have us do anything other than treading water in the Championship. The foundations of this club, post-administration, has been unfortunately built on sand. Restrictions has made it difficult, obviously I take that into account, but there is no real philosophy other than to ride the coattails of journeymen Championship footballers, mostly on the downswing of their career, to overpower the dross standard that we found ourselves in.

Barnsley haven’t won a game by more than the odd goal this year, which in this league is probably a sign they’re too lacking quality to put teams away. Portsmouth took huge strides adding decent players like Moxon and Lang to their team in January, otherwise they were also faltering at times.

Started brightly, got the goal. The game became somewhat of a mess after that, compounded by Wildsmith being an absolute f****** idiot. Lost a tight game mostly down to poor decision-making at crucial times. In the grand scheme of things, we are a pretty f****** dreadful football team but that goes for every team in this league. Promotion would be great, but I have no faith in the club to make any great success of it. We simply get away with it in this league because we’re able to pay three or four times the wages of other teams. When we’re financially competing with others, notably financially outmatched by others, there’s nothing I’ve seen from the club that shows we can exceed expectations.

I've had a look at the fixtures for every team and it definitely seems that we have the best run-in on paper. Bolton have four of the top six to play away in their remaining seven away games. They're a good side, but that's a tough ask of any team - especially a team conceding so many goals of late. Barnsley have a fairly steady run-in too, so may actually be the ones to watch, even if their games are often uninspiring wins by the odd-goal. Honestly, as a betting man, I would be looking at that thinking it will be Derby who have the easiest opportunity to pick up points. The next four games are crucial - three home games and away at a poor side. If we come through unscathed then we could be sitting in a very good position. Portsmouth - Home: Oxford, Burton, Barnsley, Derby, Shrewsbury, Wigan. Away: Blackpool, Peterborough, Wycombe, Bolton, Lincoln. Derby - Home: Charlton, Port Vale, Reading, Bolton, Blackpool, Leyton Orient, Carlisle. Away: Bristol Rovers, Northampton, Portsmouth, Wycombe, Cambridge. Bolton - Home: Cambridge, Oxford, Shrewsbury, Reading, Portsmouth, Port Vale. Away: Wigan, Barnsley, Exeter, Derby, Stevenage, Bristol Rovers, Peterborough. Barnsley - Home: Bolton, Lincoln, Cheltenham, Cambridge, Reading, Northampton. Away: Wycombe, Carlisle, Portsmouth, Burton, Charlton, Stevenage, Blackpool.

Worth noting that we have on record Bogle earning £9.5k at 18/19, so wouldn’t be surprised to see Sibley on excess of £10k a week.

I do kind of want to see him move on and reach his potential. The best player from that generation coming through, significantly so, yet hasn’t been afforded what the others have. I’d love to see him thrive somewhere and just don’t think it’s here - at least it has proven not to be the case up to now. We have seen how Archie Brown and Morgan Whittaker have thrived away from the club, Sibley deserves that opportunity.

I didn’t watch the game, and when the team was announced I was more than a little disappointed in our approach, but it was clear that Warne thought we just needed to do a job without a striker to call upon. In the end we won the game thanks to a player who I would have absolutely had in from the start as he’s at least proven to score goals when given the opportunity in attacking positions. We did a job against the team who specialise in ‘doing jobs’. A huge three points, more so with Bolton drawing. Barnsley will be a tougher challenge but hopefully we will have a striker to call upon by then, depending on match fitness & EFL approval.

Gayle is far too intelligent of a striker not to score goals by the hatful in this league, he’d help us take a big stride towards automatic promotion. Hopefully the EFL don’t put the breaks on, but even if they did at least announcing it will give us a ‘us against them’ siege mentality for the remaining part of the season - that’s not to be underestimated especially in terms of creating an atmosphere around the club.

Incredibly solid performance. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but Adams gives me hope not only for this season, but in the competency of the club going forward. A player who had done nothing in football past tier four, doubted at tier two, but highlighted by ourselves as a player who could provide the stability and balance much required to our midfield. Player recruitment is everything and we showed we have more to ourselves than just looking at a player’s CV. I do still think the top two is a bridge too far, for us, Portsmouth have picked themselves up after a good January window. Bolton, for me, have been the standard since the start of the season despite blips. I’m confident we can go into the play-offs with some confidence. Stevenage haven’t been in great form recently, but I’m still worried about Steve Evans doing a number on his bib & cone boy, as he so eloquently put it. Barnsley is a real litmus test. We will see how well we fair against them, away from home, especially as last year was such a f****** disaster.

After 31 games this season, I think most of us know roughly where we are as a football side. Results have been impressive, at times, performances just haven’t been. Days like this are going to happen, especially when the performance levels aren’t there to back it up, so it’s not one to get stressed about.

At the rate the top six are going, even if Charlton were to win every single game remaining of the season then they still wouldn’t get in the playoffs. Ignoring the fact they’re now 14 without a win in all competitions.

The budget was set at the start of the season, we’ve manipulated it as best as possible to accommodate CBT on the basis we were getting another in. I don’t think there is any issue with Clowes’ financial commitment to the club at all. I don’t know his opinion on the recruitment, going by what Warne said the whole thing was planned out and everything documented but the dominos didn’t fall. Clowes will have an insight into the inner-workings of the strategy so perhaps won’t be as blunt as we are as supporters who can only really focus on the results of the recruitment. It’s not been good and we’ve brought in a lot of players who have struggled to string games together. I’d imagine the one thing the owner hates more than anything is signing players on wages that they’re picking up sat at home.

Dwight Gayle is far too smart of a striker not to score goals at this level. We saw it with Jordan Rhodes who people assured me had lost his legs and wasn't the same player. I said the same thing then as I am now. The level we are playing at is absolutely honking to the point where it's embarrassing for some of the lads playing to even call themselves professional footballers. Gayle is probably finished as a forward in the Championship, but in a top 8 team in the League One would cause no end of damage. I have no doubt he's better than the other strikers on our books.

I’d give a lung to have either of those two over what we have now.

But it’s not the fans job - I like most was excited about Bradley, but I hadn’t seen him play a full game or analysed him ahead of a contract that was going to cost the club close to a million pound. I’m going to assume if you watch that last two years of Bradley at Luton you’re going to see a very similar guy to the one we signed. Players don’t just magically get worse overnight, and they don’t magically just get better, the signs are there for all to see - the club just need to know how to analyse them properly.

Reaction and results are a different matter - if you are able to identify talent then it doesn’t matter what the reaction from fans is. What is a problem is when you blow a huge wage on a player because he’s Luton’s captain, don’t worry about his actual ability or how he will fit in the team, then drop him within the first month of the season for a number of howlers. Equally, sign a bunch of players coming back off injuries who struggle to put a run of games together, because, well they get injured. I’d buy the ‘woe is me’ line from Warne & the recruitment staff had they not ignored whopping red flags prior to their signing. As I said, incredibly lazy CV-based approach to signing footballers. Nothing a f****** 12 year old with the latest version of football manager couldn’t achieve.

Surely the correct thing to do then is look for players IN our constraints? It’s not like there isn’t a player now playing non-league or otherwise in world football that isn’t going to go on to have a very good career - the job of our club is to find them. We have a lazy approach to recruitment, that hasn’t changed since Mel Morris was chairman. How often do we sign players from down the pyramid as opposed from up it? Since the takeover, we have signed one player from a level lower than our own - Scott Loach from Chesterfield. Peterborough have made more signings from a level lower than themselves in the past two seasons than we have in the past decade. We just don’t do it. Take a snapshot of almost any season in history and you see names littered amongst the lower tiers - it happens all the time. Why on earth we take such a lazy approach to recruitment really irritates me. No excuse for it given our position.

Guaranteed to get injured on Saturday now to exacerbate things BTW

At some point we’re going to have to come to the realisation that with so many players out of contract at the end of the season, and with Warne turning Derby into a short-term stop gap for footballers, we’re going to have a complete rebuild to build a culture within the dressing room. How on earth can you have faith in Warne/Thomas/Pearce.. to oversee that based on their body of work up to now?

The inability of this club to deliver on its actions is concerning. We went into the window wanting a striker, publicly stating for a long time how we need extra men upfront, spent probably 6-8 months identifying strikers, yet despite raising funds through a player sale on the final day - still can’t get the job done? It’s this exact approach why unless there are changes this club will struggle to be successful. We are without direction and conviction. This is not me moaning we haven’t signed a striker BTW, I’m not sure I trust the club to sign one with quality anyway, but this is a unequivocal example of how the club can’t even follow up their own actions.

I would say that beyond a doubt that Nahki Wells would score a boatload in this Derby team in League One. You only have to see what the likes of Jordan Rhodes, Chris Martin and other aging Championship players are doing to know that Wells would make easy work of this division.

We actively seek value in players with injuries at the moment, so it’s not surprise really.

This was always going to happen, hence why I’m in disbelief we’re keeping him on loan.

I get that, but just makes no sense on all parties. He’s been getting hammered by fans for about two months now on-and-off, this is just going to exacerbate things. It’s as obvious as the sun rising in the morning. Bristol City fans are already tired of Liam Manning so by the time he gets there he may not even be manager. He could do with him in the team now. If we were a properly run club with a half-competent recruitment strategy we would’ve already highlighted his replacements and know where to turn once the money hits the account. We can then move on. Bird sticking around for the remainder of the season, I don’t know, I’m just not a fan of it. We’ve bemoaned the lack of balance midfield for the entire season, we get the opportunity to do something about it and we bring back one of the sources of the problem? Daft.