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17/18 Loan Watch

California Ram.

By California Ram.
in Derby County Forum

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Carnero

Carnero

Posted
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3 minutes ago, Kernow said:

We'll have to find a team whose style suits him more than ours I guess...

I bet Barnsley would take him back on a free if we cover some of his wages (which won't be anything like the £36k/week quoted on owlstalk!)

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Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan

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We bought Butterfield in a panic when Hughes and Bryson were badly injured in the first half of the opening game of the season. If I recall we bid about 750k for him. Huddersfield said 5m. We said, OK it's an emergency so we'll give you 1.5m.  Huddersfield said 5m. As was their right when they didn't want to sell and had wealthy ownership who didn't need the money. 

We should have had a load of other targets, based both on the quality of the player but also the financial state of a player's club, so we'd know where to shop to get the best value. Instead we paid 5m as our terrible recruitment team seemed to believe he was the one player in the world who could do the job. 

I feel sorry for him because he must feel the move destroyed his career. It was terrible business all round. I really hope he can start performing so he might help take points from our rivals and so there will be takers to buy him at the end of the season, but it's not looking good. 

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Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan

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Posted

From an analysis of yesterday's game on the Swindon forum:

"Elsnik is the best player at the club by a country mile, his shooting and passing skills are exceptional, my only slight complaint is that he has a great shot so please shoot more often! their keeper was dodgy as **** with long ranger shots so we should have peppered his goal a bit more.

"Gordon needs to improve his delivery on crosses, he doesn't have the pace that he thinks he has so rarely can beat a defender for pace but looked better when we went 4 at the back and he was pushed up, still not 1st team standard yet IMO more of an impact sub."

For those who didn't see, Swindon played most of the game with 10 men but after outrageous skill Elsnik hit the post with a left foot shot from 30 yards and a striker followed up to net the rebound, and then with a couple of minutes to go he hit the bar with a right foot shot from 20 yards.

Lowe and Zanzala were unused subs. The same for Emil Riis Jacobsen who was on the bench for VVV Venlo's home win against Feyenord. Bent was injured so not in the squad for Burton at Villa. Bryson remains out of the Cardiff squad for the same reason. Shackell came on for the last five minutes to help Millwall see out their 0-2 away win at Reading, for whom Martin had come on as a 68th minute sub.

Guy has been right back for Bradford but wass moved into midfield for their 2-1 defeat at Oldham. He played the full 90 with the BBC report saying "Bradford posed little attacking threat until the 65th minute when Callum Guy drove wide from the edge of the 18-yard box."

Vernam played 66 minutes of Grimsby's home draw with Cheltenham.

Great for Mason Bennett to get his debut goal coming off the bench for County against Crewe, and he hit the bar in injury time.

Macabi Tel Aviv and Nick Blackman play tonight at 7pm. Apologies if I've missed anyone!

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whiteroseram

whiteroseram

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Ninos said:

Wednesday fans are incredibly united on the topic of Butterfield :

https://www.owlstalk.co.uk/forums/topic/267588-butterfield/

Also whoscored has him at average rating of 6.3. So you can only wonder...if he's that bad why is he starting still? he's made 18 appearances apparently despite an injury at one point, his 2 managers must be seeing something we aren't!

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Duracell

Duracell

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Posted
5 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

We bought Butterfield in a panic when Hughes and Bryson were badly injured in the first half of the opening game of the season. If I recall we bid about 750k for him. Huddersfield said 5m. We said, OK it's an emergency so we'll give you 1.5m.  Huddersfield said 5m. As was their right when they didn't want to sell and had wealthy ownership who didn't need the money. 

We should have had a load of other targets, based both on the quality of the player but also the financial state of a player's club, so we'd know where to shop to get the best value. Instead we paid 5m as our terrible recruitment team seemed to believe he was the one player in the world who could do the job. 

I feel sorry for him because he must feel the move destroyed his career. It was terrible business all round. I really hope he can start performing so he might help take points from our rivals and so there will be takers to buy him at the end of the season, but it's not looking good. 

I also feel like the Butterfield signing was data-driven rather than football-driven.

By that, I mean my understanding of the way we operated at the time was to draw up a list of targets for players in certain positions with attributes desired by the manager. This was done by a mixture of statistical analysis, video analysis and watching the player live wherever possible.

Given that there were a lot of cooks in the kitchen at the time, I can imagine that Butterfield’s name was top of the CM list where a ball-playing midfielder who kept possession safe was desired. Statistically speaking, a like-for-like comparison between Hughes and Buterfield would look very similar at the time: high pass completion rates, few goals but many touches, make themselves available for passes.

Of course the reality was they weren’t similar at all. Hughes brings aggression, Butterfield doesn’t. Although Hughes himself didn’t score and have many assists to his name, he had the ability to unlock space and make those around him play better in the way that Butterfield couldn’t. Butterfield was also a much better finisher, and playing him further forward, he always looked more likely to grab goals than Hughes ever did. These are things which are difficult to quantify, and you only pick up by watching a player regularly.

That whole era had the feeling of recruitment without soul. We went for players based on all sorts of clever systems it would seem, but to the point where it overruled common sense. Nigel Clough had a far more impressive strike rate without the resources simply by sending off someone he trusted to watch a player in action and then doing his homework on their character to see if they’d fit in. We recruited badly by trying to be too clever, imo.

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