Re Bryson, I think he's doing well again now after a quiet middle spell to the season...his energy intercepting the ball and bursting forward is often what gets us going.

Wouldn't be surprised re Howard, a full season in League One would do Ball the world of good...perhaps we could do Forest a favour?

Sorry, but I partly agree with Serial.

When we're in possession I don't have any complaints, but when the Oppo are in possession Bryson has someting of the school-playground-footballer about him, he's always chasing around after the ball.

Against opponents who don't have a great 1st touch or need a bit of time to decide what to do with it, this approach enables him to get a good number of tackles and blocks in.

Against the best midfields in this league though, they move the ball around until they have pulled him out of position, then there's a big hole in our centre that they attack through.

Lets not get too over-critical though. He's still relatively young and he's made a big step up to Championship level this season.

Like a good few other squad members he's a much better performer now than back in September. When he's got a bit more experience to add to his endless running we'll have a player on our hands.

I've never read such a collective swooning of absolute nonsense.

For starters, I dont base my opinion of spreadsheets of expenditure and how much someone has or hasnt spent, regardless of how misguided your information is (55+ players in 4 seasons)!

Football in itself is a game played on a pitch, XI v XI, trying to win. I judge THAT. This is not about anything other than football!

It isnt about money, it isnt about the quality of the pies, the standard of half time entertainment or the colour of the wallpaper in the club shop, why should it be?

I know enough to be able to see whether a club is either overachieving OR underperforming. When you have poor players, you can tell when they're still doing their best (Darren Moore in the Prem for example), similarly you can tell when your players are better than they are performing and only worthy of 3/10 as a rating.

Derby HAVE underperformed massively in the last few years. There can be no argument. Losing to Crawley, Shrewsbury etc

Beating ManU.

It's 11 v 11 and every time we get on that pitch anyone can beat anyone and the FACT we are exactly mid table says we are neither under or over achieving. To say we are massively underachieving is just Bolox.

Give it up mostyn, you sound less and less credible every week.

Suck it up, breathe it out and apologise for your Clough-bashing nonsense...

Iwas - that was the point I was making but so much more succinctly put!

Mostyn - "similarly you can tell when your players are better than they are performing and only worthy of 3/10 as a rating."
From what i've seen, our players perform to a consistent level (a rating of 6/7 being average) say 7/8 out of 10 times.
They will all have some better and some worse games as well. The fact that they occasionally show much better form does not mean they are capable of producing that every week.
We have players of mid-table championship quality and nothing more than that.
How do I know this? - because no-one from higher up in the Championship or Premiership has bought any of our players for ages.
Most of the players we have got rid of have gone to lower level clubs or for amounts similar to that we paid for them.

"Why on earth do you try and antagonise people?"

Jeepster you idiot! Don't you realise that holding a different opinion to Mostyn is deliberately antagonistic. I think you need to review the rules before posting. Mostyn is allowed to take resutls, transfers and any other stats from the past few years entirely out of context in order to prove a point, you are not.

exactly, and David Lowe (or whatever his name is) deserves a lot of credit for organising us for that game. But you prove my point whilst trying to disprove it!

We overachieved in that game.

Right now, at this moment in time, we are (in terms of points) doing not bad. But when you look at where we lost points, and over the previous few years. My argument stands.

Bolder, when we went on the awful run where we couldnt win or score, and plummetted form about 5th to 15th in 2 months, I didnt come on here giving it the "told you so". So I dont expect people to get all excited and tell me I'm wrong just because we've won a few games against poor opposition.

Milf, you've never understood what's going on. But in terms of credibility, you were talking promotion and have always been the "give it 6 more months" type poster. I know who has been right and who hasnt

I think we are going over the top in our praise for Clough at the moment.

I see a manager that has made many mistakes in his signings, formations and tactics, however, I feel he is slowly growing into the job.

He's no longer YTS, more City & Guilds Apprentice learning on the job.

That's true Mostyn, and I agree that "I told you so" posts don't benefit anyone. We're a very average team and the league table proves that.

I know you said in your previous post that football isn't about spreadsheets, but I'm afraid that's a rather archaic view. Everton and Man City are similar clubs in size and stature, but the gulf between their current expectations is huge. For what we spend our overall performance and league position is acceptable, not miraculous, not terrible, but acceptable.

Bolder, this is where I take issue. When you say "what we spend", what exactly are you on about?

Clough inherited a squad that was expensive and contained some of the best/better players at this level (Commons, Hulse, Green, Bywater (6th best English keeper) and some others). Certainly he didnt inherit players that you'd consider the 16th best in the league. He's then spent lots of little sums of money on lots of average players, where someone more experienced and self assured wouldnt have been scared of bringing in actual quality.

Derby bought 9 players in the summer. Not many clubs can beat that level of investment.

comment by mostyn6 - (1m guns in Notts, but nobody knows how to shoot!) (U1485)
posted 2 hours, 24 minutes ago

Milf, you've never understood what's going on. But in terms of credibility, you were talking promotion

---

Behave you little tinker, you can't just make things up to suit

comment by mostyn6 - (1m guns in Notts, but nobody knows how to shoot!) (U1485)
posted 3 hours, 41 minutes ago
Milf, you've never understood what's going on. But in terms of credibility, you were talking promotion and have always been the "give it 6 more months" type poster. I know who has been right and who hasnt

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Cheers Mostyn.

"Derby bought 9 players in the summer. Not many clubs can beat that level of investment."

Jeez Mostyn, Leicester spent 3 x that on one defender.

Moj, long time ago but I will answer your question pal

Rhys Sharpe (pen) and Kane Richards scored the goals

Come on people... its supposed to be a positive thread!

UTR

"When I hear Clough on about his target of 60 points it grates me!"

Perhaps he winds you up on purpose, Bush, because it's good entertainment value.

I heard the interview with Metgod. He said 60pts was the next target, if we do that in the next 2 or 3 games then they'll revise it. He thought the playoffs are a big ask but didn't rule it out.

Now, how can that be settling for 60pts.

It is if you're a stubborn fool who reads the negative into everything that's said by Our Nige

Cheers Sheepy!

Iwas, you're not actually accusing some people on here of twisting the words of others to suit their own agenda, are you?

Trouble is, Mostyn, when push comes to shove, your judgement of managers looks to be about as good as your judgement of players ('Waste of peanuts', anyone?)

I respect Mostyn for his passion towards Derby, but sometimes emotion seems to blind him from being fair.

As Iwaslevel said, the nine players we signed cost a fraction of Leicester's outlay and we bought cost-effective players to cover positions and bring a thin squad up to numbers. Apart from Shackell, the signings made were relatively modest.

We forget the chaos of last season when Clough was forced to shop around at the worst time of year (January) and he managed to pick up Ward & Robinson for about £500k and both have been key players this season.

A supposedly more self-assured & experienced manager would have to operate the same budget restrictions. The simple truth is that we cannot go out and buy quality because that costs money - which isn't available.

OOE, I was an am a lot kinder than most people here were about Theo. I still think he's not really one for the future and as I stated in the post that's been quoted, IF we were building a team to gain promotion and stay in the Premier League (which, if you werent twisting my words, was the topic of the peanuts article, "cant build a good team with peanuts", Theo would still not be considered good enough, in the same class as your Sharp, Lambert, Holt, etc who would score the 20 a season you need.

Bob, so what? What difference does it make? Liverpool spent more on Carroll than Man United did on Rooney? Does that mean Carroll should be better than Rooney? NO! It means Liverpool were more desperate to buy than Man United were, also Newcastle were less desperate to sell Carroll than Everton were Rooney.

So in the case of Leicester and us, well I compare Barker from Blackpool with Mills from Reading. Blackpool were a languishing club in need of money, Reading weren't. Had Barker been at another club, that club might and would've been able to command a bigger price. Quite simple really, think of Ferrie Bodde.

To pick out ONE player who cost £5m is a bit extreme. Especially when their GK was free, their LB was free, their midfielder was free, one or their strikers was free etc etc etc.