Best Of

He starts tonight and we might just be going three at the back for the first time in months.

Thanks for the friendly post

Hello

Derby fan here (in peace)

I will be interested to see how Sonny does for you.

We were very excited when he came to Derby. Warne wanted to (still wants to whenever he can) play 5-3-2 and we thought Sonny would become the dominant centre back in that backline. He had a pretty iffy start the first few games (defensive errors) and was at fault (at least partially) for some goals we let in. More generally the team wasn't taking to a 5-3-2 and Warne reverted to 4 at the back after a few games. Sonny was the man sacrificed partly because of form but also because of formation and Cashin and Nelson were the favoured 2 with Sonny on the bench

He then barely played for the middle section of the season but came back into the side towards the end (we changed formation a bit IIRC). And he actually did pretty well then and I would say he was important in getting us over the line and he didn;t make the errors in games he made in his his first few. Warne spoke about his leadership qualities.

Although stats show he played 30 games forus last season, I suspect only 15ish of those were starts.

So my sense is that if he comes to you and has a good couple of first few games, and his confidence is good, he could do very well for you and be the Sonny that helped get us over the line and be consistent and influential. My sense is that he has an error in him (don't all players) and when his confidence is lower they come out more frequently and when it is high they are far less frequent. So I think how he starts will be more important

He could have just sat on his nice fat wage at Derby doing not a lot. The fact he has decided to come to you shows he has desire to play. That means something I think

Hope that ramble is of interest!

This would be my punt at guessing our formation

Umm...is there a plan for RB?

Yup, not a fan of the idea of Leahy in a back 3 at all, I’m going with the Leahy LB and Harvie RB theory

Ironic that JMac had no hope of a start behind and Grimmer and Pattenden, and now he might have been straight into the team.

Actually I didn’t confirm the signing just the intent. We can’t actually confirm Randall until we free up a space in the squad for him so hurry up and take Aaron off us. 🤣

That's what I'm assuming too. 3 at the back seems like the wild outlier guess to me.

You could well be right, just seems an odd time to move back to three at the back. Particularly with Leahy and Bradley not being the quickest.

My brain is boggling..... guess we will have to watch this space