Claudio Fannieri

He has been excellent this season and looks to be a very good influence and role model to the younger players.

The last week has been chalk and cheese from the horror of the Southampton and Sheffield United defeats, massive credit to Marti, backroom team and the players who have regrouped and look a completely different team and unit. Love it 💙🦊

Superb result and definitely a sea change since Winks and Faes were hooked at half time vs Sheffield United. There seems a real togetherness within the group now. Good to see us scoring goals, that’s 10 in last 4 and 7 points has been a very good return this week from 3 tricky games.

Would be great if we can deliver a professional and clinical 2nd half performance secure the points and really give ourselves a platform to push on. In fairness since the Sheffield United 1st half debacle we have really turned the screw in the 1st half’s but need to show an ability to now close these games out.

What I did find interesting, well actually pretty worrying in both 2nd half’s but especially on Wednesday night was the increasing habit of players just aimlessly booting the ball 20 or 30 yards and immediately surrendering possession back to the opposition to build yet another attack. For a club hell bent on playing possession based controlling football, the 2nd half was anything but in fact at times it resembled U7/8’s grassroots football. At no stage in that 2nd half did we look remotely capable of stringing more than 2/3 passes together to wrestle some semblance of control back into the game instead we turned it over repeatedly and pretty much allowed Bristol City to launch wave after wave of pressure, we were unable to assert any level of control but equally looked devoid of any kind of threat either on the counter attack. It was literally an attack vs defence training drill.

I have wanted to support him and defended him for inheriting a complete and utter mess however that is yet another game where we have thrown away points from a good winning position at half time. It’s not only the result but the nature of those performances in the 2nd half where we have literally shown zero attacking intent and looked like rabbits caught in the headlights against bang average opposition. The concern I have is that he really doesn’t seem to have a coherent plan to play as a counter attacking unit in the 2nd half of games when ahead we just seem to want to sit deep soak up pressure and hope for the best.

Appalling 2nd half and a shocker of a first substitution, credit to Marti for Saturday but he has to take the blame for throwing away 2 points. At half time we had a chance to push on and start a run but we literally handed the whole initiative of the game and possibly our season over to Bristol by sitting back and to then bring Daka on for James was a complete headloss moment. The natural change was Aluko and shift Hamza into midfield to take over from JJ who was clearly running on empty.

Lose this and I think he has gone this has been an appalling half of football what is concerning is our inability to offer any threat as a counter attacking force against a team that has thrown bodies forward in this half.

This has been a shocker of a 2nd half performance we have shown zero ability to control any element of this half and zero intent on the counter. That equaliser was coming and now we will be lucky to get out of here with a point.

Very good performance, patterns of play look really good and really positive reaction since that first half vs Sheff United. since Winks and Faes were hauled off at half time we have scored 7 and conceded 1 in 180 minutes of football.

You also have to find a club prepared to pay him what we are, or that he is happy to accept a pay cut, otherwise we could end up having to foot the deficit. The book value is important because you have to take it all into consideration, especially if you need/want to generate money to help bring in new players, or if you need to make sure you are compliant with PSR and avoid a potential breach and possible points deduction.

Yes I agree but the issue is we also pay ridiculous wages so the problem is we take a hit on book value and the buying club refuse to match the wages and we also end up covering the shortfall so miss out on both parts and therefore book a loss and have no room for manoeuvre on the wages front either.

I think this will be the line up on Wednesday Stolarcyk Hamza Nelson JV Thomas James Skipp Fatawu BDCR Mavididi Ayew subs Begovic Aluko Riccy P Faes Page Thomas Evans Daka Carranza

But that viewpoint further compounds the PSR and financial issues. I would be more than happy to see Winks, Faes et al rot in the stands but the cold hard business facts are by doing that we would have 250k a week or over £10m per year in wages doing nothing and in the case of Faes losing a potential £10m+ transfer fee. Whilst in the premier league you may be able to hold that stance with one or two but not in the championship. In honestly believe the club wanted to limp through to January in the hope they could offload the likes of Winks, Daka, Soumare for fees or loans that cover amortisation but more importantly cover wages and then offload the likes of Faes and VK for fees that give us some profit and opportunity to generate funds to bring in 2 or 3 fresh faces.

What did impress me was his calmness in tight situations, ability to draw fouls and played a few line breaking positive passes, I didn’t feel by losing Winks that we lost anything possession wise in fact if anything we played with a much quicker tempo and in addition we looked a lot more secure and physical in midfield.

we absolutely had to give ourselves a fighting chance to have a negotiating position, the owner and DoF will have hoped that once the window closed the players who wanted out would knuckle down and show their class as they did for the majority of the 2023-24 season, however times have changed and moved on and unfortunately this time round this hasn’t been the case. I agree a loan that covers any amortisation and 100% coverage of wages is best we can hope for but to even secure that kind of deal means they needed to be involved. Leaving any of these in the stands from September through to the window opening would have led to nothing more than low ball offers.

Ah thought so it was the earlier this year at home bit that confused me.

Decent post but what capitulation are you referring to?

You do realise that PSR and amortisation means it’s not quite as simple as just giving players away for free, also interested clubs may not pay the same level of wages we are paying so we then are at risk that we have to pick up the shortfall. So for example if we freeze out Faes and as a result accept a low ball offer that is a couple of million short of his book value and then the buying club offer him reduced wages and we pick up the £20k per week shortfall that would be in PSR Terms a £2 million loss plus we would still have a £1m per year wage commitment. We would literally be preventing ourselves from signing a replacement. So the club have to try and keep these players involved and maximise value to ensure we generate funds to be able to reinvest. PSR does not allow clubs like ourselves to take baths on poor signings on high wages.

What a player, a real leader for someone so young and considering he is only here on loan. I think he really wants to be here given he is from Lutterworth, he seems to have really taken to the club. Hope we can sign him and he can become the lynchpin of our team for many years to come.

Not playing these player severely weakens our negotiating position. The board will have felt based on previous season at this level that they would do enough to keep us in the promotion contention whilst putting themselves in the shop window to negotiate a deal that works for the club in January. The difference is this time certain players have checked out and effectively downed tools. These players are expensive assets paid huge weekly salaries there is no way any owner / DoF is going to allow players earning in excess of £250k per week to sit rotting in the stands.

I will die on this hill and continue to say this, performances and results have been a mile off where they should be, however I remain convinced that Marti has been instructed to select/use certain players to keep them in the shop window and/or due to their high wages. Last week Marti was again thrown under a bus by said players and this week bombs a few out and lo and behold we see more academy players involved and a shift change in style and togetherness. I honestly believe after last week he has said if I am going to lose my job I will go doing it my way. The biggest indicator of this was the fact he refused to throw Faes on at any stage and went with the young academy players to see out the last 10 minutes of the game. I have a feeling Marti has been somewhat of a fall guy until now trying to make a silk purse out of a pigs ear and having both his hands tied behind his back having to select players who clearly checked out. Yesterday he didn’t do that and the performance and result were a different level to anything we have seen this season. Even the 2nd half was so much better the work rate, togetherness and commitment of each and every player was something different.

I think he is an excellent keeper and I really like his attitude and the way he conducts himself, you can see he loves the club. I thought he was excellent dealing with most of the crosses into his box, his distribution was a little rusty but also good to see us mix it up more, we were far less predictable which was a pleasant change.

Looked like the player that burst onto the scene vs Sheffield United during COVID. Was bloody excellent today.

Look at last week same happened with us 2nd half we fought back and nearly grabbed a draw, in that first 10 minutes of the 2nd half we were looking the more dangerous team, there was always going to be a time where Derby had to have a bit of a go and overall we stood up to it. How people can criticise him today is beyond me, he made the changes we wanted to see, we played with intensity and showed some fight and bollocks in the 2nd half and he threw 3 academy lads on to see out the game. Fair play to him from me.