Preparations for League 1

[Gee SCREAMER !!]

16 hours ago, Dean (hick) Saunders said:

League 1 is going to be great.

Playing football every Saturday.. Some new away grounds… Some other stuff…

[Asanovic70]

I think our manager has done as good a job as can be expected in adverse circumstances that very few managers have had to endure. Leam Richardson has shown that he is a capable manager after last season when Wigan were fighting a relegation battle.

What I am about to say is heresy. Where I question our manager is if he'll be the right man for a massive rebuild. I say that because he's ambitious and maybe he's done enough to earn a crack at staying in the Championship. Nigel Pearson was mostly a caretaker/successful interim before he became the Leicester manager in L1.

I feel that we need a complete re-set & need to go in a completely opposite direction from what has happened by bucking the trend in football where patience has gone out of the window. I realize that I am contradicting myself here by questioning if Rooney is the right man for League 1. I think he is the right man now. He has had to become the de-facto public face/spokesman of Derby County FC  in the absence of an owner & even the administrators, who are operating behind the scenes.

We need to identify a manager/coach who is developing a reputation & is ambitious but would see us as the next level rather than the crisis club who have dropped down a league.

Coaches with proven records at developing good teams with an identity/style, promoting home-grown players & selling them on, but who keep putting out sides that compete despite this upheaval. At the moment, Rooney's job has been restricted, we don't know what he is really capable of in that he hasn't had any money to spend (Last January was Plan B, not A) apart from when Bielik was in the team & we looked a more than good enough side for this division. The personnel available to him mean that he hasn't been able to show his full potential.

.................................

Rooney could still be that person, but the two I would go for, for a re-building job that may take at least two seasons (the inevitable hangover from a difficult period), are Karl Robinson & by way of contrast, Alex Neil, less expansive perhaps but tactically astute & very experienced, an Arthur Cox type figure. It will be interesting to see if Lowe can improve Preston if someone like Neil could not take them any further. Whatever our problems, we remain an attractive proposition. There are the elite, the rest of the PL, and then the sleeping giants/underperforming sides/tradition clubs. There aren't as many as people think.

Nigel Clough's tenure was beset by frustration but it accomplished a slow-build of sorts in the face of a slashed budget. It's probably the approach we need now. An appointment that is mutually beneficially rather than that stock phrase when clubs & managers part with 'mutual agreement' .

A manager needs the reassurance that he will be given time & not sacked after the first sequence of bad results (look at Jack Ross in the SPL) & we need to have someone in the job who can implement something long-term rather than the haphazard approach we had in the last five + seasons.

There's no guarantee with any managerial appointment, but we may make it less risky and more likely to succeed if we look for someone to meet certain criteria. The next appointment (s) are probably the most important in our history and more important than the personnel. They can come afterwards. We may be able to get a managerial appointment wrong once, but not twice, though Leeds went through three before getting promoted back to League 1, but it meant more disruption. 

Edited December 11, 2021 by Asanovic70

[Oldben]

1 hour ago, Tamworthram said:

Depends. Given Derby will almost certainly be in league 1 next season, perhaps he fancies his chances of helping Wycombe go back up and either playing Championship football with them and/or using the opportunity as a springboard to another Championship club with better short/medium term prospects than either Derby or Wycombe.

I agree on this, but without chasing significant firepower we will not be promoted from league 1 in a hurry.

What's the benefit to a new owner, spend 60 million on buying Derby and spend two or three years in League one.

If a new owner has 60 million to spend on buying Derby they are never standing for rubbish players, they will do a significant rebuild.

Derby will not to spend to rebuild.

The current team is definitely not strong enough to be a winning team in League 1.