MadAmster

For those who weren't there...

The Pride Park deal is thought be worth around £23.5m Source thebusinessdesk.com/eastmidlands/news/2060386-developer-acquires-pride-park-and-announces-takeover-bid I know MM paid £80M and £23.5M is a "song" in comparison but £23.5M (I'd always thought he'd paid £22M) is about the right price.

Is the curse mandatory or can you accept the award but refuse the curse? Ian Evatt has won it for the 2nd consecutive month and it's not affected Bolton yet...

Surely, at least one of them saw "something" or the card wouldn't have been given? Had none seen it, nothing would have been given. Barks and OB on #RamsTV saw an overhead view and that, they said, showed a definite elbow and that red card was justified.

Never thought about it but it's likely he couldn't do a worse job than the last 5 incumbents...

You're only as good as your last game. On today's play Sibs at #10

I booked flights for me n er indoors for the Burton game. It's now the Monday so the flights have been cancelled costing me 50 quid. Fortunately I hadn't booked a hotel yet. Might still come over for a do on the Saturday in Burton and then stay till the Tuesday. Gonna cost me even more money.

1Wildsmith- 6 23Ward- 6 7 Barkhuizen- 6.5 35Nelson- 7 6Cashin- 6 3Forsyth- 6.5 4Hourihane- 6 22Fornah- 6 2Wilson- 6 17Sibley- 7 5Bradley- 6 8Bird- 7 11Méndez-Laing- 8 39Brown- 6 9Collins- 6 19John-Jules- 7 TV

Well, not the best of displays but 3 points is 3 points. 55% possession, 13 shots to their 8, 9 on target to their 2 are the stats. However, this game has me worried. A better side would have probably beaten us. So often they got past us on our right. Exposing Ward's defensive frailty?. Less fortunate on our left as they had little success there. Some success over and behind the centre halves. They had a succession of chances that they simply couldn't take. One, at 0-0, was one I'd have been angry with myself about, the ball hitting the non-striking leg and being cleared. We simply can't give that many decent chances away and get away with it. Wonderful finish from Sibs. Well worked NML goal on the break and idem ditto with Barks' goal. 3 good goals. The red? Not seen it from the aerial angle Shaun Barker and Owen Bradley saw it from but that view convinced both of them that it was an elbow and thus a deserved red. Down to 10 men they had way too many chances to score and failed.

In that case, what was the £140M he wrote off when we exited Administration?

The amortisation method used wasn't against EFL rules. The catch all "deemed to be unfair" clause was what caused the accounts to have to be reposted showing linear amortisation and that led to the -9.

You should be our goalkeeper Mucker me owd.... nowt gets past you 😉

My guess is that he saw the methodology he chose to use from 2015 as a way of making exceeding FFP limits more difficult. He was right. He also told the EFL he was going to do it. It wasn't until 2019 when that Smoggie chap got upset that they decided to "investigate". In the meantime they had accepted 4 years of accounts using that amortisation method. If you tell the EFL you intend to change and then do so and they don't complain, you can be forgiven for thinking there isn't a problem... It's also not impossible that, without the 9 point deduction which we wouldn't have had if the appeal hadn't found that catch-all clause. No 9 point deduction, maybe MM doesn't put us into admin... and who knows what would have happened then?

We were acquitted by the first committee, which contained accountants, of any wrongdoing. The appeal committee contained zero accountants and they found us guilty of breaching a catch-all clause which deems it an offence to do anything that might be construed as being unfair to the other clubs in the division. Nobody else used that 100% legal methodology so the appeal committee decided we were guilty of practice unfair to the other 23 clubs. That led us to having to repost several season's accounts using linear amortisation and that saw us break FFP and the 9 point deduction. That saw MM decide to put the club into admin which brought the other 12 point deduction as he could see us going down and thereby lose any chance of him recouping the £140M the club owed him....

No figure has been made public, just the phrase "allowed to pay moderate fees. My own guess is that, at L1 level, that would see a max of around £500K...

Please don't take this personally. I am astounded that this question is still being asked. After everything that has been in the news, on the club website, on Twitter/X/FB over the past 2 years, all the plethora of threads on forums, that there are still people who, apparently, are unaware that clubs coming out of Administration have to keep to an agreed business plan in the first 2 seasons thereafter. The club writes the business plan, submit it to the EFL and they have to agree to it. If they don't agree, they will request changes. This is our 2nd season. We have to adhere to the plan WE wrote and the EFL agreed to. This leads me to another point. I may be wrong but I doubt it. We may not exceed what is in the business plan, that's a fact. Last year's plan was based on 17K gates. We averaged >27K. I estimate that to mean we got around £6M more in than the plan budgeted on. We couldn't spend that on transfer fees, agent fees or wages. I am of the opinion we still have that "in the bank". We have a limited budget this year too. Wages "cap" is higher but not extravagant. Agent fees are allowed. Moderate transfer fees are allowed. Last year we were allowed to spend £8M. That figure is higher this season. Several people seem to be intimating that we are losing money and DC is having to pump millions into the club to keep it afloat. We aren't allowed to overspend. Therefore, I don't see (and that might be my fault) how DC will be having to pour millions into the club to keep it afloat when DCFC isn't allowed to spend more than it has and possibly less than that.

I haven't watched many televised PL games in the past 10 years. It will only interest me if we ever get back there. Same goes for televised SBC, L1 and L2 games. I watch Derby. Preferably in a stadium but, as an expat, only 10% to 15% are at the ground. The rest are 98% RamsTV and 2% when RamsTV can't broadcast and then I resort to activities which may fail the legality test. With regard to your last sentence... at 69 I don't apply the term "old" to myself despite most owd buggahs being my age... 😉

O's 0 Rams 2. Cashin.

Truth is, the days of spaffing megabucks up the wall in the hope of promotion and/or winning something are, hopefully, behind us. Many clubs will have learned from our experience. Others haven't been so lucky and either don't exist or they are no longer in the top 4 divisions. Others currently struggling include Everton -10 points this season. Citeh facing something like 115 charges. Chelski in the deep dark and sticky. Reading in deep trouble. Wigan still struggling. DCFC will, for the foreseeable future, only spend money it has. DC has made that clear. Right now we aren't, IMO, attractive enough for a billionaire wanting to turn his billions into millions... Abroad you see Real and Barca a billion each in debt. It simply can't go on.

approx. 15km to Schiphol. 540km to Brum airport. 65km to Derby. I'm 2 months short of 70 and hope to be making the trip for a fair few years yet. I hope it being no longer financially feasible arrives earlier than it no longer being physically feasible.

Oops! They need 3 wins to get there. All Luton aren't we? 😉

Been there, done that, T shirt dunt fit... Friday to Sunday for a home game can cost me up to £500 with flights, hotel, train, ticket, food and drink. 6 to 8 games a season max is the most I can afford. Last season and this I've tended to save by not flying in until the Saturday morning. March 2024, 3 of us over for the Reading game and staying for Bolton, 3 more arriving Friday for the Bolton game. We've decided to push the boat out and do the Toyota Package making this trip extra expensive. Come on Ewe Rams!!

,,, because Wash is out till March at best and, although I hope he gets another 20 odd appearances this season, relying on JJ keeping fit doesn't seem like the most solid of plans...

I'll be here in NL having watched that Nigeria Lawson's cooking show in the morning and then doing the Congo when we score.

Love the nomination. I sincerely hope Stevenage's Steve Evans gets it.... and the obligatory accompanying curse as well.