Paul Warne

[Nuwtfly]

4 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

But you started your post about mindset and adopting an underdog mentality. You then went on to talk about defending for 90 minutes. Neither of these things occurred last season so, surely your comments are referring to the three games in the Championship and not the 100+ previously.

On those two particular points yes I am referring to the the last three league games.

Regarding my overall opinion of Warne and whether or not he's the right manager for us, that's based on his whole time here.

I think there are some posters, myself included, who criticise Warne and the immediate response is "ffs we're 3 games in."

Whereas I think in reality the majority of posters who aren't all that keen on Warne actually didn't like what they were seeing for large chunks of last season and across the 100+ games.

One other point: it used to really irritate me when people would say that we are just Rotherham 2.0. I thought it was unfair to compare the two clubs for loads of reasons.

But so far Warne's time has included us winning ugly in League One and going up 2nd, and then getting into the Championship and (so far) just seeming to play ultra-defensive underdog football and treating the opposition (Boro and Watford) like they're Real Madrid and Barca. 

I'm starting to see why people made that comparison now. I can imagine that's how it felt playing against those teams when you're Rotherham. 

[Nuwtfly]

4 minutes ago, Crewton said:

If it works, I don't care much how we play THIS season, because survival trumps aesthetics.

I can at least agree with you on that.

But in my opinion, if we play like we are currently playing under Warne, we won't survive. 

[Anag Ram]

4 minutes ago, Crewton said:

I mentioned 3 games in because I expected we'd take the first dozen games or so to feel at home in the division. I also said it was clear you'd made your mind up a long time ago so it wasn't worth me trying to change your mind.

Warne delivered promotion as expected last season, in accordance with his track record. I thought that critics might at least give him a whole month before filling this forum with repeat posts from last year. I should have known better. Keep bashing away on those typewriters lads....

I think that’s what they like.

[RoyMac5]

4 minutes ago, Nuwtfly said:

I can at least agree with you on that.

But in my opinion, if we play like we are currently playing under Warne, we won't survive. 

Maybe. But if we survive what then? Still waiting for the spots to change.

Another old squad to be replaced.

Who is leading the recruitment? Who decides what a 'competitive budget' actually is? Who decides whether a player is worth the money asked? 

[Nuwtfly]

6 minutes ago, Anag Ram said:

I think that’s what they like.

Are we at the point now where any criticism of Paul Warne is just "bashing him" ?

I don't really get what the point of a Paul Warne thread is if you can't debate whether he's any good at his job or not. 

I like the guy. I want him to do well. Other than his interview manner, I think he comes across really well. I just think he's a limited football manager and might get exposed at this level (again). 

[Nuwtfly]

4 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Maybe. But if we survive what then? Still waiting for the spots to change.

Another old squad to be replaced.

Who is leading the recruitment? Who decides what a 'competitive budget' actually is? Who decides whether a player is worth the money asked? 

I guess that would be a conversation for the summer. 

It might also depend on the manner of that survival. 

As for the recruitment, it's a concern. But we have to also accept that, unless we want to shop in League 1 and 2, players of that age (at this level) are the most expensive and the players every club wants.

[RoyMac5]

Just now, Nuwtfly said:

I guess that would be a conversation for the summer. 

It might also depend on the manner of that survival. 

As for the recruitment, it's a concern. But we have to also accept that, unless we want to shop in League 1 and 2, players of that age (at this level) are the most expensive and the players every club wants.

I accept that players have a price but who do we have that decides what 'the right price' is?

[tomsdubs]

Personally i'm glad Paul sees the reality of the situation and isn't having blind faith that things will go fine, contrary to the reality we see in general play on the pitch. We need more quality and that has been massively evident in all 3 games, we will always have our blind faith fans but everyone we've played so far said we were awful in general. When you look at our stats for creativity they are really poor.

I don't put any of this on PW either, he got us up on L1 free transfers and should be commended for that. After his years at Rotherham and last season he deserves some money to have a go but he can't compete on a Clowes budget. Rather we spent the Zetterstrom money on a striker and an attacking midfielder personally but by sounds of it we can't compete financially with our rivals at this level.

Just got to pray we get those three signings through the door and they are a good jump in quality for the squad otherwise it's a tough watch this season. Home games I think will decide everything for us, fans have to be massively up for it.

 

[Tamworthram]

12 minutes ago, Nuwtfly said:

On those two particular points yes I am referring to the the last three league games.

Regarding my overall opinion of Warne and whether or not he's the right manager for us, that's based on his whole time here.

I think there are some posters, myself included, who criticise Warne and the immediate response is "ffs we're 3 games in."

Whereas I think in reality the majority of posters who aren't all that keen on Warne actually didn't like what they were seeing for large chunks of last season and across the 100+ games.

One other point: it used to really irritate me when people would say that we are just Rotherham 2.0. I thought it was unfair to compare the two clubs for loads of reasons.

But so far Warne's time has included us winning ugly in League One and going up 2nd, and then getting into the Championship and (so far) just seeming to play ultra-defensive underdog football and treating the opposition (Boro and Watford) like they're Real Madrid and Barca. 

I'm starting to see why people made that comparison now. I can imagine that's how it felt playing against those teams when you're Rotherham. 

So, are you making two different points?

1) underdog mentality and trying to defend for 90 minutes. Far enough (so far) in the Championship but, we're only three games in and his previous 100 games isn't applicable. "still playing ugly football" is a difficult one to argue against but I'd prefer to judge this season's approach after a few more games especially at home (I suspect many away games are likely to be tough this season) having only played the fancied Middlesbrough so far.

2) The things he says in his interviews. I'm pretty confident that what he says for public consumption is a little different to what he says in private to the players.

 

[maxjam]

42 minutes ago, Nuwtfly said:

But so far Warne's time has included us winning ugly in League One and going up 2nd, and then getting into the Championship and (so far) just seeming to play ultra-defensive underdog football and treating the opposition (Boro and Watford) like they're Real Madrid and Barca. 

Warne was hired to get promotion asap - a lot of fans, some of whom are on this forum demanded we get out at the earliest opportunity and showed discontent that we didn't manage it at the first attempt. 

From a starting position of administration and 5 players there was never any real thought given to long term progression of players, just instant success.  Maybe a better approach would have been to invest in youth and evolve the team over 4-5 seasons as others of similar stature to us have done in the past.  But no, even given our starting point a lot of our fans were to arrogant to spend any longer than they had to in Lg1. 

Now we're back in the Championship imo the plan is to evolve the squad over several seasons.  We clearly haven't got much money to throw around and the process will take time.  We have been told we're not here to make up the numbers but also that stability is the priority. 

Anything other than relegation this season will be a good season, next season finish a bit higher up and so on.  We're obviously well off the pace compared to established Championship squads and those recently relegated from the Premier League.  The squad depth and quality of Boro and Watford etc is far ahead of us atm.  If a pragmatic approach to those kinds of matches nets us a few points then so be it.  

If in 2 or 3 seasons time we're still having this conversation then yes I'd agree that it would be time to look at different options, but we're a couple of seasons out of administration competing in a league above with a small squad on a budget.  I'm rapidly falling out of love with the modern world in which everyone wants everything now and gets angry when they don't get it. 

Unless we're going to throw financial caution to the wind again - and wealthy as he is, David Clowes isn't in that financial league anyway, the process has to be slow and steady.  I wonder if we did change manager, would the new gaffer actually achieve anything better?  He'd be worse off for starters as paying off the previous lot would no doubt eat into his available transfer budget.

Edited August 26 by maxjam

[nottingram]

6 minutes ago, maxjam said:

Warne was hired to get promotion asap - a lot of fans, some of whom are on this forum demanded we get out at the earliest opportunity and showed discontent that we didn't manage it at the first attempt. 

From a starting position of administration and 5 players there was never any real thought given to long term progression of players, just instant success.  Maybe a better approach would have been to invest in youth and evolve the team over 4-5 seasons as others of similar stature to us have done in the past.  But no, even given our starting point a lot of our fans were to arrogant to spend any longer than they had to in Lg1. 

Now we're back in the Championship imo the plan is to evolve the squad over several season.  We clearly haven't got much money to throw around and the process will take time.  We have been told we're not here to make up the number but also that stability is the priority. 

Anything other than relegation this season will be a good season, next season finish a bit higher up and so on.  We're obviously well off the pace compared to established Championship squads and those recently relegated from the Premier League.  The squad depth and quality of Boro and Watford etc is far ahead of us atm.  If a pragmatic approach to those kinds of matches nets us a few points then so be it.  

If in 2 or 3 seasons time we're still having this conversation then yes I'd agree that it would be time to look at different options, but we're a couple of seasons out of administration competing in a league above with a small squad on a budget.  I'm rapidly falling out of love with the modern world in which everyone wants everything now and gets angry when they don't get it. 

Unless we're going to throw financial caution to the wind again - and wealthy as he is, David Clowes isn't in that financial league anyway, the process has to be slow and steady.  I wonder if we did change manager, would the new gaffer actually achieve anything better?  He'd be worse off for starters as paying off the previous lot would no doubt eat into his available transfer budget.

The trouble is (and I am one who thinks we should’ve spent longer building a more sustainable team) is once you hire Paul Warne your signal is promotion, whether that is the intention or not. 

You hire a L1 promotion expert and people will expect (demand) promotion. I don’t think that’s Warne’s fault at all, but it’s not the fans who came out saying they wanted experienced oven ready players who saw themselves in the Championship.

Ultimately the proof in the pudding will be in the eating. If we go down this year then a right old mess has been made of the last 3 years. It is crazy (imo) we keep going through these cycles of “we just need to get promoted”, “we just need to stay up”. Maybe we do stay up and the ends justify the means but it’s taking a big risk on doing that. We go down this year and we’ll be in a pretty tough position. Even if we stay up we’re just kicking the can down the road because at some point we are going to have to look long term. 

[Tamworthram]

9 minutes ago, nottingram said:

The trouble is (and I am one who thinks we should’ve spent longer building a more sustainable team) is once you hire Paul Warne your signal is promotion, whether that is the intention or not. 

You hire a L1 promotion expert and people will expect (demand) promotion. I don’t think that’s Warne’s fault at all, but it’s not the fans who came out saying they wanted experienced oven ready players who saw themselves in the Championship.

Ultimately the proof in the pudding will be in the eating. If we go down this year then a right old mess has been made of the last 3 years. It is crazy (imo) we keep going through these cycles of “we just need to get promoted”, “we just need to stay up”. Maybe we do stay up and the ends justify the means but it’s taking a big risk on doing that. We go down this year and we’ll be in a pretty tough position. Even if we stay up we’re just kicking the can down the road because at some point we are going to have to look long term. 

Surely those demands were met then so those people have no reason to complain (apart from the unrealistic folk who failed to suspect it might take more than one season after surviving administration).

Regarding “kicking the can down the road” if we stay up, surely that depends on the nature of how we stay up and if we expect a season on season improvement as @maxjam suggests. If we somehow manage to finish mid table (or at least not seriously flirting with relegation) and on occasions playing decent football (there are no doubt several seasons when we’re just going to have to dig in) then I wouldn’t consider that as kicking the can down the road. 

[Caerphilly Ram]

1 hour ago, Nuwtfly said:

Are we at the point now where any criticism of Paul Warne is just "bashing him" ?

I don't really get what the point of a Paul Warne thread is if you can't debate whether he's any good at his job or not. 

I like the guy. I want him to do well. Other than his interview manner, I think he comes across really well. I just think he's a limited football manager and might get exposed at this level (again). 

You can debate it. But you said yourself in an earlier post “you don’t get the positivity”, there are plenty of people of which I’m one who doesn’t always get the constant negativity from some posters. So that’s the debate. “I want to be negative” vs “I want to be positive”, and a bit in between.

All parties in all camps are entitled to their opinions, and all parties in all camps are entitled to discuss, debate and challenge those opinions. I accept people have their own opinions so (mostly) respect that. 
The frustration for me is when people cannot or will not consider the views of others. I get and share some of the concerns around youth development, ideally want us to have recruited with a little more forward thinking in terms of the age profile, and can see some of the concerns around how we play but don’t fully share them.

There are positives to Warne’s time here, the unity he’s built into his sides through promotion of culture and character is very much what I want to see from the club more than slick football. We improved our away record massively under him. We became defensively resolute. We’ve become a consistent threat from set pieces which I’ve felt was a weakness for years other than when Rooney and Shay Given had us doing piggy backs and cartwheels at the back post for a brief handful of games. I wanted us to have a more robust, physicality in the squad for years and he’s added some aspects of that. He has shown elements of adaptability (yes some of it forced through injury) throughout his time here by changing formations, some criticise it as a lack of commitment to a formation or constantly “trying to force a back 3”, yet won’t credit him for making it work with a back 4 at times.

The world, and Warne, doesn’t exist in the black and white colour scheme of our kit. There are grey areas, Warne has some good qualities, and he could massively improve in others. I don’t get why more people can’t see that balanced view and insist on one set view without flexibly considering other views and comments. So yeah, let’s discuss and debate it, whilst accepting the views of others and the current reality that he is who we’ve got in charge for now, and as much as we air our praise and concerns online it ain’t gonna change for the foreseeable. 

Edited August 26 by Caerphilly Ram

[maxjam]

33 minutes ago, nottingram said:

The trouble is (and I am one who thinks we should’ve spent longer building a more sustainable team) is once you hire Paul Warne your signal is promotion, whether that is the intention or not. 

You hire a L1 promotion expert and people will expect (demand) promotion. I don’t think that’s Warne’s fault at all, but it’s not the fans who came out saying they wanted experienced oven ready players who saw themselves in the Championship.

Ultimately the proof in the pudding will be in the eating. If we go down this year then a right old mess has been made of the last 3 years. It is crazy (imo) we keep going through these cycles of “we just need to get promoted”, “we just need to stay up”. Maybe we do stay up and the ends justify the means but it’s taking a big risk on doing that. We go down this year and we’ll be in a pretty tough position. Even if we stay up we’re just kicking the can down the road because at some point we are going to have to look long term. 

Agree - if we go down the past few seasons will have been a bit of a mess.  Hopefully a new approach (fan allowing) would be to build properly, invest in youth and aim for promotion with a squad thats maturing.

As for this season and beyond, I guess it depends on how you interpret 'not here to make up the numbers', 'stability' and 'competitive budget'.  

At the start of the window PW stated he wanted 12 players (and for those players to be 1st team players).  We're well short of that with a few days to go in this transfer window.  We've played a couple of the bigger teams in the division and whilst not looked totally out of our depth, both the starting 11 and strength on the bench show us we're lacking.

Our competitive budget clearly isn't competitive enough to bring in a couple of £4m strikers as Boro have done - and even we we could have, it then wouldn't have been enough to bring in the 11 other players that PW wants.  I've also read on this forum that we've missed out on other players due to their wages demands. 

Assuming we do stop up, I do think the ends justify the means.  We'll go again next season from a starting point better than we did this season - maybe instead of stretching the budget over 12 players, we'll only need 9.  The season after 6 players etc.  Its clearly been impossible to do in one transfer window, so lets get behind the team and give ourselves the best chance of stopping up, not bickering on the forum and living in a financial fantasy land.

[nottingram]

2 minutes ago, Tamworthram said:

Surely those demands were met then so those people have no reason to complain (apart from the unrealistic folk who failed to suspect it might take more than one season after surviving administration).

Regarding “kicking the can down the road” if we stay up, surely that depends on the nature of how we stay up and if we expect a season on season improvement as @maxjam suggests. If we somehow manage to finish mid table (or at least not seriously flirting with relegation) and on occasions playing decent football (there are no doubt several seasons when we’re just going to have to dig in) then I wouldn’t consider that as kicking the can down the road. 

Dunno, I’m not one of those people or even complaining really so you’d have to ask them. All I’m saying is if we get relegated this season our short term focus has been a mistake. If we don’t get relegated (my kicking the can down the road point) we will still need a rebuild because we’ve done it with a team that it looks like will be made up of loanees and “experienced” players.

The overarching point is fans demanding promotion is quite chicken and egg. Do fans demand promotion because you show little long term thought or do you show little long term thought because you demand promotion? 

What I found on here last year was that questioning our short termism led to being told to worry about the Championship when we got there. Well were there now and lots og the concerns seem to be (on limited evidence, I grant) coming to pass. It is not so easy to build a championship team in one summer on a small budget. 

[maxjam]

7 minutes ago, Caerphilly Ram said:

There are positives to Warne’s time here, the unity he’s built into his sides through promotion of culture and character is very much what I want to see from the club more than slick football. We improved our away record massively under him.

Home records not bad either.

 

[Bob The Badger]

On 18/08/2024 at 10:22, Day said:

Don’t feel like this is respected enough.

We’re not a club that went down, retained our squad and bounced straight back up after one season.

We was stripped bare, had to rebuild the entire squad to come back up. 

20 odd years in the Championship prior means absolutely nothing, we’re a newly promoted side and our expectations going into these games must reflect that.

Boro had better players all over the pitch, we did what we needed to do, that’s the goal for the season. Just stay here and gradually build to where we can go out there and match the likes of Boro and dictate the game.

There should be a new board rule that says you cannot offer an opinion without first reading this and explaining it back to show you understand it.

Any opinion given that doesn't recognise where have come from is born out of a sense of entitlement. The kind of entitlement that drives most of us mad when we see it demonstrated by fans of other teams.

[bcnram]

My expectation for this season is that we finish the campaign reasonably comfortably. At times during the games we have moved the ball around well, showing that we are capable of that. Too many times though we have carelessly given it away with passes that are just ‘passing the buck’, not taking responsibility for looking after the ball, or not showing for a pass. 
To me, that shows that the team is being sent out with a lack of belief in themselves, and that is down to the manager. 
We have a manager who wants to be liked, he needs to realise that it is not a popularity contest. 
Nice chap though. 🙂


 

[Tamworthram]

2 minutes ago, bcnram said:

My expectation for this season is that we finish the campaign reasonably comfortably. At times during the games we have moved the ball around well, showing that we are capable of that. Too many times though we have carelessly given it away with passes that are just ‘passing the buck’, not taking responsibility for looking after the ball, or not showing for a pass. 
To me, that shows that the team is being sent out with a lack of belief in themselves, and that is down to the manager. 
We have a manager who wants to be liked, he needs to realise that it is not a popularity contest. 
Nice chap though. 🙂


 

That could be the key point rather than judging progress after just three games. Let’s hope we’re one of those teams that gradually improve after a less than convincing start (I’m sure there are numerous examples including Derby’s record) rather than one that struggles to get going.

[McArthur Park]

4 hours ago, Nuwtfly said:

Lots of positivity on here at the moment. I’m honestly not sure why.

Just on this point, I think a few of us have tried to explain why we remain positive. I don't want to speak for others, but for me a large part of it is that the actual football is just a part of the whole  matchday experience, and even when the football is not going to plan then there are other things about the day to enjoy. But even if we are just talking about the football, I can feel positive that I have a team to watch, I can feel positive that we are finding our way in the championship and may improve when we find our feet. I can feel positive that we my sign some more players this week to improve us. Even in your post  things that you see as negative I can look positively at. You compare us in a bad light to Oxford and Portsmouth, but I look at the table and see we all have three points. You say if we  continue this way we will finish bottom, but if we continue in the same way, and so does every other team, surely we finish where we are now? We just look at things differently, neither way is right or wrong, just different.