How good is our squad?

[VulcanRam]

1 hour ago, i-Ram said:

I think you must be on the wind up if you think finishing 7th or 8th would be acceptable this season.  Is there anyone else on here that considers this would be acceptable this season?

I do.

 

 

 

 

 

(not really)

[duncanjwitham]

2 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

You could perhaps argue it with Ward who at Peterborough, was promoted, relegated, then failed to go back up, and Elder at Hull where he was relegated, promoted, then stayed in the Championship

Yeah maybe, although given that they both stayed with the same clubs throughout, I'd say it's hard to separate individual performances from the club as a whole.  You certainly can't really argue that Elder got kicked down to League One because he wasn't good enough at Championship level, and Hull seemed more than happy to carry on with him as a starter for 2 seasons when they got promoted back up.

I'd argue that James Collins is maybe a clearer example, where he was transferred up a league, didn't quite cut it at that level, then transferred back down to us.  But even Collins fits fairly nicely with normal career progression, given his ages at the time.

[BaianoPOTY98]

2 hours ago, i-Ram said:

I think you must be on the wind up if you think finishing 7th or 8th would be acceptable this season.  Is there anyone else on here that considers this would be acceptable this season?

NO! In truth if that were to happen I think Warne should resign!

[DavesaRam]

There is a good reason for people thinking highly of this squad - we have seen what it is capable of. On occasion. Throughout Paul Warne’s tenure.

The big problem isn’t league position - we have never been threatened with relegation - it is the dire stuff being served up as football. But at times these sane players have played some excellent football, but all too soon it disappears again.

We saw it last season when it was obvious to a blind bat that 3 at the back wasn’t working, largely because we didn’t have the  players to work it. But then injuries forced us to go 4 at the back and for a while the performances came. But inexplicably we reverted back to 3 at the back and we were back to the dross. 
 

This season we have the insistence of whack it out to the wings then lump in the crosses, on the basis that if we put enough crosses in something will fall our way before the season ends. iRam hinted at this when he said that this system would even make James Maddison look pretty useless!

There us no denying that we have got the points and in a reasonable position, but we can’t say that it has been earned, but we have managed to get the results, especially away from home which suits our counter-attacking. The issue is the manner in which we have got there, plus the fear that we will eventually get punished, but haven’t been yet. Being consistently outplayed by lesser teams on minuscule budgets is not nice to watch.

Yet we have seen some lovely  football, Lincoln, Notts County and the season opener being a case in point.

But will we see the flowing football which we git at times last Tuesday when we roll into action a week on Saturday?

Who knows? I will be there in hope!

[BathRam72]

1 hour ago, Ghost of Clough said:

The logic is that we would require a high turnover of players no matter which division we're in.
Failure to go up = some players are not good enough for Warne's system, whilst others are too good and will move on anyway
Promotion = L1 quality players aren't good enough for the Championship so need replacing.

Based on the evidence so far, I don't think recruitment in the summer was as good as our management team first thought. For example, you would hope someone on a 2+ year contract in a L1 side challenging for automatic promotion would be a starter in L1 and squad player (or better) in the Championship. However, Bradley, Elder, and Washington have so far failed to show they're better than their competition (Cashin, Forsyth and Waghorn)

While I agree with what you are saying.

Just to throw my two penneth worth. I remember Glenn Hoddle playing in his first few games and pushing balls into spaces where no one was.

I thought he was rubbish, until I realised he was used to better players around him, who would know he would put a ball into that space. Once they got used to him, wow.

Maybe it is a case of the players (and we have bought in a good few this summer) getting to know each other.

We haven't just got a hand full to learn this we have a hatful.

 

I don't think we are far off what we expect and maybe a few games with ALL players fit, it will come.

 

[duncanjwitham]

I don’t know about you lot, but this England game is soooo entertaining that I’ve resorted to working out which of the current England team are “predominantly lower league” players, based on this thread.  I reckon at least 4 are - Watkins, Dunk, Johnstone and Bowen.

[Tamworthram]

8 hours ago, BaianoPOTY98 said:

NO! In truth if that were to happen I think Warne should resign!

There is no way Warne would resign if we only finished 7th or 8th IMO and it’s ludicrous to suggest he should. It could happen but I personally doubt he’d even be sacked. 

[BaianoPOTY98]

48 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

There is no way Warne would resign if we only finished 7th or 8th IMO and it’s ludicrous to suggest he should. It could happen but I personally doubt he’d even be sacked. 

I respect your opinion Tamworth but for me Derby County finishing 7th or 8th two years running in League Division 1 is not acceptable 

[hintonsboots]

2 hours ago, duncanjwitham said:

I don’t know about you lot, but this England game is soooo entertaining that I’ve resorted to working out which of the current England team are “predominantly lower league” players, based on this thread.  I reckon at least 4 are - Watkins, Dunk, Johnstone and Bowen.

Watkins has played the majority of his career in the lower leagues, it’s a mystery how he gets selected for England 👀

[sage]

At last a thread to unify the forum. 

 

[CongletonRam]

56 minutes ago, hintonsboots said:

Watkins has played the majority of his career in the lower leagues, it’s a mystery how he gets selected for England 👀

He hasn't. Ollie Watkins played has played the majority of his career in the higher leagues.

You clearly don't check your stats.

[CongletonRam]

3 hours ago, duncanjwitham said:

I don’t know about you lot, but this England game is soooo entertaining that I’ve resorted to working out which of the current England team are “predominantly lower league” players, based on this thread.  I reckon at least 4 are - Watkins, Dunk, Johnstone and Bowen.

Of the players you mentioned, all have very comfortably played the majority of their careers in the higher leagues.

Please check your stats before posting.

[duncanjwitham]

3 minutes ago, CongletonRam said:

Of the players you mentioned, all have very comfortably played the majority of their careers in the higher leagues.

Please check your stats before posting.

We’re talking about England Internationals here, so “lower leagues” is anything below Prem IMO.  By your metric all of those players have played the majority of their careers at Championship or below, so are Championship-standard players.

[CongletonRam]

1 minute ago, duncanjwitham said:

We’re talking about England Internationals here, so “lower leagues” is anything below Prem IMO.  By your metric all of those players have played the majority of their careers at Championship or below, so are Championship-standard players.

 

Oh,...so you've decided to shift the goalposts to suit your attempt at humour.

Nice.

 

[plymouthram]

AVERAGE=Meaning middle, not top or bottom. Current league position of the Rams "8th" out of 24 teams= Above Average (win our game in hand and could be 4th).  Scored 18 goals so far, only 4 sides have scored more= Well above average. Conceded 11 goals, only 2 teams conceded less= Again, well above average. Lost 3 league games, only 2 teams have better records= Yet again well above average.

Lets not forget, we still have another 35 league games to play. We have players to come back into the reckoning from injury, we could lose some of these "average" players in the January window. We could even gain some above average players in the same transfer window.

Oh, and some other facts, best supported League one team= Very good (no average marks there). Our Manager ? is he poor, average, above average or good !!!!!!

[CongletonRam]

Just now, plymouthram said:

AVERAGE=Meaning middle, not top or bottom. Current league position of the Rams "8th" out of 24 teams= Above Average (win our game in hand and could be 4th).  Scored 18 goals so far, only 4 sides have scored more= Well above average. Conceded 11 goals, only 2 teams conceded less= Again, well above average. Lost 3 league games, only 2 teams have better records= Yet again well above average.

Lets not forget, we still have another 35 league games to play. We have players to come back into the reckoning from injury, we could lose some of these "average" players in the January window. We could even gain some above average players in the same transfer window.

Oh, and some other facts, best supported League one team= Very good (no average marks there). Our Manager ? is he poor, average, above average or good !!!!!!

 Absolutely. Why are so many (actually most posters on this very thread) calling for our managers head. It's ludicrous.

[duncanjwitham]

5 minutes ago, CongletonRam said:

 

Oh,...so you've decided to shift the goalposts to suit your attempt at humour.

Nice.

 

Why wouldn’t you in this case? Unless you think you should use the exact same levels for evaluating England Internationals as you would use for League One players… 🤷‍♂️

[CongletonRam]

4 hours ago, duncanjwitham said:

I reckon at least 4 are - Watkins, Dunk, Johnstone and Bowen.

Oh dear...wrong again.

Bowen and Dunk have played the majority of their career games in the Premiership.

You must do better Duncan.

[Gee SCREAMER !!]

8 minutes ago, CongletonRam said:

 Absolutely. Why are so many (actually most posters on this very thread) calling for our managers head. It's ludicrous.

We've just drew with Cheltenham who are bottom and totally abject with our 'coach' advising the game plan was too stick it wide to avoid their devastating midfield getting hold off the ball.  We're mid table in a crap league and he's wasted the money we had for an attacking option on some donkey who can't trap a bag of cement never mind get goals. We've also won one league game in front of our own fans this season with November on the horizon and 2 in 8 months.

Apart from that I have no idea.

[CongletonRam]

Just now, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

We've just drew with Cheltenham who are bottom and totally abject with our 'coach' advising the game plan was too stick it wide to avoid their devastating midfield getting hold off the ball.  We're mid table in a crap league and he's wasted the money we had for an attacking option on some donkey who can't trap a bag of cement never mind get goals. We've also won one league game in front of our own fans this season with November on the horizon and 2 in 8 months.

Apart from that I have no idea.

Just to put this in context; we battered Cheltenham and on another day could have won comfortably.

Win our game in hand and we are in the play-offs. It's a bit misleading to say we are mid-table.

Warne has made it very clear he wanted to bring in a striker.

I think we all agree that our home form needs improving. To balance that up however, our away form is very good.

 

I agree with you in part. I am not a fan of the dire, defensive minded, slow and rather predictable football that Warne has us playing, but I am factoring other things into the equation here and firing Warne would IMO mean 2 giant steps backwards for the team, and would leave us in limbo financially. We have to run the football club in a sustainable way and if Clowes is the astute businessman he comes across as, then firing Warne would not have even entered his mind.