We are a fickle bunch

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Yes. Throughout the period of our history I remember when we have had a good manager, or even a limited manager that realises it, we have done well (enough?). For me there is no excuse for Warne not challenging (well tbh gaining) promotion from this division. It's based on who we are and what 'resources' we have.

You may not agree, that is fine.

That’s fair enough. I’m not disagreeing with you as such - it’s genuinely a point of interest. I think among our fanbase we have a sense of something which could be entitlement, possibly a legacy of winning titles, time spent in the premier league and the fact that we have a big fanbase and the club is so important to the city. But it could also be a sense of natural justice - almost the feeling that we’ve been hard done by (as supporters) for so long that we must surely deserve better than what we’ve been getting!

[Gerry Daly]

I don't think Derby fans are any more fickle than any other bunch of supporters. In fact less so than many, Forest fans for example are notorious for it

[BaaLocks]

1 hour ago, sage said:

I've laid them out. 

You can't play a high tempo pressing game with slow players in all 3 departments. That's the constructive criticism.

The solution is buy quicker players, though that will be difficult now, which is why I'm so concerned.

Alternatively change how we play only pressing occasionally when an opportunity arises.

 

It's a good challenge, I'll give you that. I can understand a 'solid' back line and I don't think we're right to expect Ashley Cole (in his prime) and Trent style wing backs at this level. Even Ebosele or Knight, they are just too desired to hang around long outside the top one or two flights. I can even live with a slow front line - I was never a fan of the Washington signing but his record at this level is very good. But you hit it when you say that a press requires a fluid midfield, one that can play behind the lines, turn defence into attack and chase down.

If I remember that last decent team we had Bryson, Hendrick, Thorne, Hughes and Russell were all able to do that. Before that, I'd hardly call McEveley or Moore lightning quick, nor Howard up front. But Bisgaard, Oakley, Barnes, Fagan* and Mears could turn the tide (the goal in the play off final being a perfect example).

We don't need lightning quick everywhere, but at the moment we have it nowhere.

* - to defend this point, I'm talking Championship, where he was effective and not the Prem where he was not

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Gerry Daly said:

I don't think Derby fans are any more fickle than any other bunch of supporters. In fact less so than many, Forest fans for example are notorious for it

But I thought Notts Forest had always had 30,000 fans consistently attending their matches (?)

🤥

[IlsonDerby]

12 hours ago, SKRam said:

Those in free fall after ONE league game (not counting last night, friendlies under another title….. until you make good progress, then there’s a little excitement) aside, I suggest they glance towards the North East, Sunderland suffered many times during their tenure in the third tier. Stability please. 

They kept changing manager until they landed on Neil though so maybe not the advert for stability you think?

[BaaLocks]

1 hour ago, jameso said:

Interesting - when you say “should be”: on what basis? The size of the gate (and therefore the revenue)? A sense of natural justice? (Derby fans/DCFC deserve at least this?) Something else?

Any club with a 20k plus fanbase should be able to challenge in this league - they simply have three to four times the gate receipts and, likely, Sky revenue than many other clubs. Got nothing to do with how much silver they won 50 years ago, just raw maths.

[SKRam]

9 hours ago, DerbyAleMan said:

I can remember the great bald Eagle having a terrible start to the season, I was at Tranmere away, Stimac debut, he scored we lost 5-1, I think we won 1, drew 1 and lost 3 of our first 5 games that season thats 4 points from 15 , fans screaming for Jimbo to do one, then come May we are promoted, we move to PP, and played some of the best football for years, lets all get behind our club, it's to early to panic, but after what Mel did to us, we must give our club time to recover, and we will. Once A Ram Always A Ram. 

……..I feel quite gooey now……..

[IlsonDerby]

12 hours ago, Tyler Durden said:

It was obvious from the matchday thread last night that there were posters on here whom would take great delight for us as a club to lose the next x amount of games to:-

(a) justify their own personal predujices against Warne and

(b) make him more likely to be removed from his job, see previous point above. 

Could never get my head around why a so called supporter would want their team to lose a game. Weird. 

Nobody wants us to lose. Nobody goes into a match even under Jewell/Brown/any proper awful manager we’ve had. 
 

Some might take comfort after being disappointed that it might spell the end for a manager they don’t believe is right but you don’t go into any game as a fan wanting us to lose. The nature of being a football fan doesn’t allow it. 
 

This isn’t the same as your accusation. 

[SKRam]

4 minutes ago, IlsonDerby said:

They kept changing manager until they landed on Neil though so maybe not the advert for stability you think?

No I didn’t mean they were stable, merely they copped for how many seasons in third tier (Was it 5? Pure guess!) and suffered some very poor results missing out on POs a couple of times? Bad days at the office (please no more Brent references) are gonna happen 

[RoyMac5]

14 minutes ago, jameso said:

That’s fair enough. I’m not disagreeing with you as such - it’s genuinely a point of interest. I think among our fanbase we have a sense of something which could be entitlement, possibly a legacy of winning titles, time spent in the premier league and the fact that we have a big fanbase and the club is so important to the city. But it could also be a sense of natural justice - almost the feeling that we’ve been hard done by (as supporters) for so long that we must surely deserve better than what we’ve been getting!

Is there such a thing? Anyway it's entitlement. I believe a club with our resources, our fanbase and (even after Mel) standing, our ambition, should be higher in the leagues. That we're not is a moot point.

[duncanjwitham]

1 minute ago, RoyMac5 said:

Is there such a thing? Anyway it's entitlement. I believe a club with our resources, our fanbase and (even after Mel) standing, our ambition, should be higher in the leagues. That we're not is a moot point.

For me it's more frustration.  Like you say, everything off the pitch is there for us to be a mid-table prem team.  The capability is there, and the fact we're not a prem team is entirely down to our own failings as a club.  And for me, rampant short-termism is by far the biggest reason.  Any suggestion on here that we should be thinking about anything beyond the next match/current season is met with howls of derision.  And then we just keep repeating the same mistakes, and people wonder why we're stuck in League One.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Is there such a thing? Anyway it's entitlement. I believe a club with our resources, our fanbase and (even after Mel) standing, our ambition, should be higher in the leagues. That we're not is a moot point.

In reality, no, but I’m not sure it stops all of us from thinking there must be!

[LazloW]

I’m not sure fickle is necessarily the right word for a lot of our  fans (at least on here)  - and not just of this club - nowadays.  Fickle would imply that, based on results so far, there are people who want Warne sacked but - if we win the next 5 on the bounce - will be singing his praises as the best manager ever and then want him sacked again when we lose again.  There will be some like that, no doubt. There are a lot of reactionary people out there who will come to extreme views based on whatever it was they last saw, heard, thought.  

But actually, I think there are a lot of people who have taken such intransigent views, particularly against Warne, that even if we won the league would still be arguing against him (and possibly those who if we got relegated would still be defending him). In the modern age, sides must seemingly be taken and, as we have access to everything anybody has ever said on this forum or other social media, for some reason many don’t feel they are able to change their mind based on new information or context. Not sure why this has happened really. Maybe because nobody likes to have their own words used against them or be seen as fickle or hypocritical, or accept they were wrong or even admit to changing their mind. It’s a weird phenomena that isn’t limited to football. It also means that everything gets twisted to support the view of the side you have taken, there is no room for doubt, every comment made comes back to the initial premise and no quarter can be given. A few people took agin Warne before he was appointed and haven’t been able to see past it. Is intransigence actually the opposite of fickle? 

I also don’t think it’s fickle to come on here and say we played badly when we played badly and we played well when we played well (although it probably is fickle to then equate those things with sacking if they are one offs). I appreciate posters who can do that.  As above, there are probably a few (and it may seem like more than it is because they post quite a lot of the same stuff time and time again) who can’t do that. Whatever the result and whatever the performance, they stick to their side and the arguments ensue. 

I’m not suggesting I’m immune to this. While I try to be balanced, I know I can often get drawn into arguments about things and probably find myself taking a particular side; I am critical of those I consider to be overly negative and/or reactionary. I do tire of the post defeat threads (and now try to avoid them… but it’s hard not to bite). 

 

Edited August 10, 2023 by LazloW

[RoyMac5]

2 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

And for me, rampant short-termism is by far the biggest reason.  Any suggestion on here that we should be thinking about anything beyond the next match/current season is met with howls of derision.  And then we just keep repeating the same mistakes, and people wonder why we're stuck in League One.

The point is that long-termism is only any good with the right 'management' of the Club. I'm sure many would have given Clough Jnr another 5 seasons, but one decent manager showed how resources should have been used. How long do we wait for 'short-termism' to end? 

[Tamworthram]

1 hour ago, davenportram said:

I’m old enough to remember attendances of under 15,000 in the promotion year 87. Fickle. If we dint go up this year attendances will fall and it will be even harder to get out of this division

They may well drop, but we'd still be one of the biggest (if not the biggest) club in terms of attendances and revenue by some margin compared to the majority of clubs in the division. 

 

[duncanjwitham]

4 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

The point is that long-termism is only any good with the right 'management' of the Club. I'm sure many would have given Clough Jnr another 5 seasons, but one decent manager showed how resources should have been used. How long do we wait for 'short-termism' to end? 

It has to be bigger than a single manager though.  The transition from Clough to McClaren was fine because McClaren basically carried on doing what Clough was doing, but with some tweaks/improvements.  The issue is when you give Rosenior free reign to build a squad then replace him after 10 games with the polar opposite.  We can't be giving managers 2 seasons to build a squad, then giving the next manager 2 years to dismantle that squad and build a different one.  And we've been doing that stuff almost continuously since McClaren left the first time - McClaren->Clement->Pearson->McClaren->Rowett->Lampard is just the most moronic thing.

[FindernRam]

Its easy to blame forums like this and other social media for ramping this stuff. People are finding their voices, where back in the 80 s and other dark times it was just mouthing off to your workmates or a few friends in the bar.  But just like when children learn to talk it has to be at full volume all the time. Maybe in 20 years time it'll quiet down a bit. I won't hold my breath even if I make it that far!

[BOB BIGGS]

2 hours ago, Tamworthram said:

I’m not sure all criticism on a forum like this needs to be constructive. It’s not as if we’re doing a one to one performance review. But it does need to be mature, sensible and measured.
Saying something like “I thought X had a poor game and really should have buried those easy chances” or “IMO Y looked terrible and got caught in possession too often” aren’t necessarily constructive comments but they could be considered as reasonable expressions of opinion. On the other hand, referring to our established players as a donkey or saying something like “I never want to see him pull a Derby shirt on again” are not particularly appropriate in my opinion.

Agreed. I can recall quite a few posts from a couple of seasons ago saying that Forsyth should never wear a Derby shirt again. Seemed a strange view to take at the time ( he’d made a mistake that led to a goal 😎) but it just shows how some people assess a player on short term performance rather than over a long period. 

[Carnero]

7 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

It has to be bigger than a single manager though.  The transition from Clough to McClaren was fine because McClaren basically carried on doing what Clough was doing, but with some tweaks/improvements.  The issue is when you give Rosenior free reign to build a squad then replace him after 10 games with the polar opposite.  We can't be giving managers 2 seasons to build a squad, then giving the next manager 2 years to dismantle that squad and build a different one.  And we've been doing that stuff almost continuously since McClaren left the first time - McClaren->Clement->Pearson->McClaren->Rowett->Lampard is just the most moronic thing.

Agreed, if we were to make a change (which I don't think we will) then we will need somebody that can continue (and improve) on Warne's style rather than switching back to a "football purist". Darren Moore would make the most sense.

[duncanjwitham]

4 minutes ago, Carnero said:

Agreed, if we were to make a change (which I don't think we will) then we will need somebody that can continue (and improve) on Warne's style rather than switching back to a "football purist". Darren Moore would make the most sense.

My preference would be the opposite.  I think the reason we're struggling is because we've still got a squad full of footballers, not runners.  I think if you put McClaren (or someone like that) in charge, we'd be straight back to 433/4231, playing through midfield, and looking a lot more comfortable.