ilkleyram
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Posts posted by ilkleyram
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2 hours ago, Asheville Ram said:
It was me that originally mentioned David Tepper as I have a house in Charlotte. Tepper as well as being the owner of the Panthers has also set up Charlotte FC soccer team who will be playing in the MLS next season, the Panthers have an 80,000 seat stadium and will ground share with Charlotte FC who will only use the bottom level seats with a capacity of 40,000. Tom Glick will be president of both clubs, I think them looking to get a team in the UK football pyramid makes total sense to them
Excellent. We can ground share if necessary
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Meanwhile
Rooney is important for three reasons, commercial, takeover and football.
He achieved the main/sole aim when he took over, to stay up; some of the football his team played in many matches was more than OK; he knows the club, squad and the staff and its weaknesses and strengths. Prospective players will want to talk to him. The club and squad now know him. We don’t have to start that cycle all over again. To the outside, whether we like it or not (and I don't particularly), we are Wayne Rooney’s Rams - he’s one of the main reasons why we are on Sky so much, why the newspapers cover us and not 99% of the Championship, and therefore he has a commercial value, home and abroad, as our manager and is an attraction to external investors.
So, ideally, you need Rooney to stay. If he goes, and he must be thinking of it, the external perception will be of a club in further difficulty.
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1 hour ago, David said:
Probably is, but then could also be missing friends and family, with a young family of his own fancy being closer to home. He may see this as the perfect opportunity to fulfil a dream of playing in the Premier League, one last crack if the interest is genuine.
Looks like he's loved over there by the fans, but look at Rooney, they adored him also but talk was his wife wanted to move back. One day you might bag a woman of your own and realise you can't do exactly what you want all the time ?
not at Fulham or Sheff Utd though
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2 hours ago, Beetle said:
Do you know how many of the players in the team that finished 19th we kept and who were the new signings? I don't think there are many players in this squad that are good enough to win the league even with a world class manager at the helm. Nothing would make me happier to be proven wrong though.
Thanks to the interweb I can tell you!
On the 4 May 1968 we played Blackpool at home in the last game of the season and lost 3-1 to finish 18th on Goal difference. Ipswich (the other East Anglian team) were champions that year. We won 13 matches all season and lost 19. Interestingly, considering Brian's mantra was to start at the back, we shipped 78 goals. Mind, we scored 71!
There were 5 players in that final team that we would all recognise as being part of our first great side - Roy Mac, John Robson, Alan Hinton, Kevin and John O'Hare. Kevin, of course wasn't a Cloughie signing, he was Tim Ward's greatest legacy. Also in the team were Reg Matthews, Mick Hopkinson, Pat Wright, Jim Walker, Arthur Stewart and Richie Barker. Barker and Walker did have (smaller) parts to play in our future success. Ron Webster was also at the club and Alan Durban but not in the squad.
There is a good argument to make to say that as a team we never really took off until Sir Brian signed Willie Carlin from Sheffield Utd part way through the 68/69 season. He provided the feistiness, leadership and midfield control that we could probably do with next season. He was a small and bloodyminded, shop steward of a scouser and we were to replace him with a small and bloodyminded, shop steward of a scot in Archie Gemmill. Put either in our current side and you would see a huge difference.
When we look back we see only success but - and it might appear to be heresy now - there were many who doubted Roy McFarland's abilities, Alan Hinton who couldn't tackle and John O'Hare who was too slow. Kevin was a hero from his debut onwards and the undoubted star of the team. There were certainly many on the terraces who objected to Brian's brashness and that he didn't deliver in his first season what he promised. The 67/68 team produced worse than Tim Ward's teams. Had social media been around there would have been a vigorous Clough Out campaign.
You forget too that these were the days before the internet and worldwide TV - when every single player of almost any age is widely known about - so that Brian and Peter could go and steal Roy from Tranmere under Liverpool's noses; and you forget too that the Transfer Window is a recent thing so that, in those days you could sign anyone at any time. In many ways it made life easier for a manager and less expensive for a club. There were no agents, no cameras outside club gates and no deadline day.
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1 hour ago, IslandExile said:
Aww come on....50th anniversary.... It has to pay homage...
Get us back to winning ways.
That was the last time that we had an England international forward managing us (Nigel, Frank and John Gregory were midfielders), who was a record goalscorer in his own right and whose Derby team flirted with relegation all the way through his first season proper, ending up 19th in the old Division 2. The terraces were not generally in favour of him continuing and his somewhat drawling way of speaking was much imitated and mocked. The following year we won the league at an eventual canter. A year or so after that we couldn’t go into Europe because of various accounts difficulties.
If history is starting to repeat itself we might be on for an exciting few years, on the pitch.
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Just over 30 years ago an event occurred that I think all of you would consider to be of greater import than the current struggles of our beloved football club. In July 1988 the captain of USS Vincennes panicked and let loose 2 surface to air missiles. He brought down an Iranian passenger plane. 290 souls were killed including babes in arms and it is believed, with some justification, that some were conscious as they fell 10,000 feet into the Gulf. Imagine.
Robert Fisk was a proper journalist working for a proper newspaper, The London Times. He didn’t buy the American versions of events (they changed as evidence changed) and he investigated the story as a good journalist does, using his many contacts in the area. He wrote a story that destroyed many of the American lies. When it was published all the points contradicting the American versions of events were missing, taken out by Fisk’s editor. What was left was largely anodyne drivel. Fisk left for the Independent. Their gain.
Our match today is, for various reasons, a big story, played in a febrile off field atmosphere and always was going to be - two big clubs with big traditions fallen on hard times; our manager; a takeover; the financial consequences; and the football ones too. And yet many appear to be surprised by the drivel that is being written about us; and, worse, appear to be believing it; and, worse still, appear to be repeating it, giving it a life of its own. There are negative comments about the tabloids and the Daily Mail and yet, apparently we’re more than prepared to take as gospel what Craig Hope and others are feeding us.
What do we actually know about the takeover and Erik Alonso’s finances? Diddly squat is what. We know Mel has agreed a deal and with whom; we know that’s with the EFL for the owner’s test. That is pretty much it. And that is all anyone actually knows apart from the 3 parties involved (plus their advisors).
All the rest is guesswork and rumour, pure and simple. But there are plenty who might want to disrupt us in this week of all weeks. Mr Chansiri for one. Might he be Craig Hope’s source? Not beyond the bounds of possibility.
If a paper like The Times can distort the truth about the death of 290 people why do we accept the word of hacks whose sole aims are to get clicks on an article, names on the stories and followers on twitter? That’s now a job apparently. We don’t have to help them.
There are times too when not only am I glad that I have no social media presence but I’m also happy not to be a moderator of this board; when I feel so out of sync with my fellow fans that I question my sanity. This is one of them. Imagine having to read all the codswallop that’s being spouted in the name of ‘it’s my opinion therefore I’m entitled to express it’. There are very few, I suspect, that would say much of what they have written on these pages to the faces of the players, the manager, coaching staff, recruitment team or our current owner. There are more than a few contributors to these boards who allegedly espouse treating people with respect, who say they believe that mental health is important (and we have at least two players who have publicly described their own mental health challenges) but who have joined in the general pile on with apparent alacrity. Apparently it’s even worse elsewhere. An opinion is not necessarily correct just because you’re willing to die for it (Oscar Wilde). ‘Chancer’ is the latest adjective being liberally bandied around about a bloke none of us have met and none of us know. What if he isn’t? Why can’t we give him a chance, if he is, eventually, to take us over?
We have no say in who runs the club we support. It is not in ‘our’ gift to choose our next owner whether we like it or not. Never has been. Whether that’s right or wrong is a legitimate point of discussion. In the meantime we have a team to support and a match to win and a future that will take care of itself, win, lose or draw. And I hope it’s the first of those.
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1 minute ago, Mucker1884 said:
So much to be excited about...
Barker's making a come back?
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53 minutes ago, Stive Pesley said:
Remember that this is a two-sided argument after all - you have a right to tell what jokes you like, just as much as someone else has the right to say that they don't find it funny. Works both ways. If you're really complaining that you can't joke about stuff without being told you're not funny, then is your skin really any thinner than the person who you deem to be "over-reacting"?
Is a good point, but is it THE point?
Comedy has always been subjective - some hate McIntyre, millions love him; what I find funny others will not; I wouldn't cross the street to watch Frankie Boyle, others think he's a comedy hero.
The point, I think, is that in days past if you didn't like what a comedian said or found them funny, you didn't watch, didn't laugh or didn't buy a ticket. At most you wrote a stiff letter to the BBC. Nowadays, you write something on social media about being offended and then find 20 other people that you've never met before that think the same, or who daren't disagree with you. Before you know it there's a thousand more from around the world - some of whom will never have seen or heard what has been said but are just reacting to the reports and say they are disgusted. That then gives the appearance that millions of people agree, that the whole world is disgusted and to which comedians and commissioners and politicians and other media personalities (except Piers Morgan) have to react in the only way they know. By banning/not repeating said jokes or comments, which are then effectively censored. You therefore no longer have the right to tell what jokes you like, unless you want public opprobrium or a career on the fringes or become a very 'safe' comedian like Tim Vine.
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He needs to use some of the extra money he might get from being skipper on a longer pair of shorts ?
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1 hour ago, TimRam said:
Better make the most of Only Fools and Horses then as an example. Specially the first few series. I think a lot of what we call classic comedies will be cut to shreds and eventually removed from history altogether.
The constant rewriting of history worries me - whether it's statues of slave traders or TV programmes. We need to remember that Love Thy Neighbour was watched and laughed at by millions (and included - though this is often forgotten or omitted - racist comments against white as well as black people) and that the Black and White Minstrel Show was similarly popular, that Dad's Army and Porridge and 'Allo 'Allo and Fawlty Towers also had elements which wouldn't be scripted nowadays. And don't get me started on 'Are You Being Served'. All got audiences and followings that TV producers today would die for. It matters not a jot that you personally wouldn't laugh at them now or then, what matters is that they were of their time and millions did.
One of the points of history, and the past generally, is to learn from it and move on. But to do that you have to know about it and see it to be able to challenge it and grow. If you bury all these things away and pretend that they never existed then you effectively censor the past and by doing so censor the future.
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2 hours ago, Mucker1884 said:
SNAP!
Absolutely no need for a new thread, when a perfectly titled and appropriate (long running) thread already exists.
The OP to this thread would have fit right in...There’s always the ‘what’s eating you tonight' thread as well
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Off topic @Carl Sagan but you might be interested in an AppleTV film called Fireball, all about meteorites and made by Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer. It’s excellent, and you get a mention ?
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Shaun Barker may have an interesting taste in socks (and clothing in general) but he ain't half good at the matchday pundit role. My only complaint is that he’s sometimes a bit too confident about us seeing out games when we’re 1 goal up. He’s obviously not heard of the commentator's curse. He and Owen are a good pair.
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2 hours ago, RIMBAUD said:
Don’t you mean Keith?
He’s still mulling
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22 hours ago, AndyinLiverpool said:
Here's a bit of fun.
Go back to the league tables of when you were 16 and see whether you, as a 16-year-old, would have moved from the club 4th from bottom of the 2nd tier to the team 4th in the top tier.
I'm still mulling over whether I would have moved from Grimsby Town to Spurs in 1983.
Dear Andy
Have you made your mind up yet? Time’s moving on
best wishes
Jose
- Taribo and AndyinLiverpool
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43 minutes ago, Red Ram said:
So he should have accepted the outcome of an internal disciplinary process which, according to posters on your side of the argument, was found by the tribunal not to have been conducted according to due process?
That only makes any sense if the only two choices available to the panel were to offer reduced wages for the remainder of Keogh's contract or to dismiss him. But by definition they weren't were they becuase that's not what happened to the other playes involved. The panel could have applied similar sanctions to those applied to Lawrence and Bennett (maximum possible fine and suspension from duty).
From what I remember the revised contract offered was a massive reduction in wages - little more than a retainer in relation to what he was on. Given that at that point he had no way of knowing whether he would ever play again he simply wasn't in a position to accept it.
If I had been advising him, yes I would have told him to accept it and for one main reason - money. He's been on a reduced wage (post sacking and at MK Dons), probably even lower than Derby's offer, for at least a year. No bonuses, no nothing. He's probably increased those wages at Huddersfield but I would be surprised if it were anything near to what he was on with us. He is heavily out of pocket. He would have been less out of pocket if he had stayed.
I might also have tried to persuade him that his reputation might have meant something to him, that he owed his employer something (especially after helping to trash his employer's reputation) but maybe that doesn't count for much for those on your side of the argument. I'm old fashioned. More helpfully I might have mentioned free access to medical facilities near his home and people with lots of experience with those injuries and continuity of employment, but perhaps he was happy to accept the risk and uncertainty, the travel inconvenience to St Georges park and the fact that those of us who liked him as a player and appreciated his input to the club feel highly let down by our club captain.
The disciplinary panel had lots of options available to them. They could have found him guilty of absolutely nothing (as I rather suspect that the 'scapegoat' comment suggests Keogh thinks that they should have done); they could have found him guilty of gross misconduct and sacked him outright; or they could have done something in-between, which is what they did. Or tried to do until Keogh refused to accept it and forced their hand because once Keogh made that decision there was no other option available other than to back down. As I understand it the other two players (at least) were similarly found guilty of GM just as Keogh was. That their punishment was different (if it was and I'm not party to the details, perhaps you are) could just be to do with different circumstances in their cases.
What, for example, if Lawrence and Bennett went into the disciplinary full of remorse and with good mitigating circumstances and Keogh hobbled in saying nothing to do with me guv. I was just on the lash with the lads. Not my responsibility; I'm a scapegoat that may not be able to play ever again. If you were chairing the disciplinary panel you might think very differently about their respective punishments - you might conclude (reasonably) that they had done different things, offered different levels of mea culpa, had different levels of responsibility to the club, its reputation and to the other players present. You might then reasonably conclude that the punishments should be different. You might conclude that some level of punishment short of sacking was appropriate given Keogh's service with the club and his commitment on the pitch. So you come up with a punishment that Keogh throws back in your face because he doesn't feel he should be punished at all.
We don't know (I think) whether any other players were disciplined for whatever happened that night but just because everyone was involved in broadly the same incident doesn't mean that all the punishments have to be the same. The disciplinary panel should be considering each case on its merits. Perhaps Tom Huddlestone's punishment was to be demoted from two days as club captain. Why should he not have had the same as Lawrence and Bennett? Or Keogh?
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12 minutes ago, Anon said:
It was very convenient for the club's finances that the disciplinary panel decided on a set fine for Lawrence and Bennett, yet a permanent wage reduction for Keogh. I can't say I'm knowledgeable at all about employment law or football contracts in general, but demanding an employee agree to a wage reduction as part of a disciplinary procedure sounds incredibly dodgy to me.
Well I did just that twice in my career - both in the public sector with trade unions involved (the people were represented). It was accepted on both occasions. Both of them felt they were lucky to still be in a job. Nothing dodgy about it at all.
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1 hour ago, Anon said:
The whole reaction to this debacle from certain Derby fans is absolutely laughable. The club screwed Keogh over there's no way two ways about it. Admitting it doesn't make you any less of a fan, it doesn't mean you now love Keogh or even think he's a half decent footballer, but the facts are as plain as day. Keogh was treated differently than the other players involved in the incident because Derby desperately wanted him off the wage bill whilst he was injured. It's a sensible move by the club, but stop pretending that Keogh is somehow out of line for fighting this.
"But we only sacked him because he couldn't play", then why did the club release that statement about gross misconduct? Getting in a car with a drunk driver and not wearing a seat belt is gross misconduct, but actually being the drunk driver isn't? Then there's the nonsense about him being captain. I don't know how you lot treat captains of any teams you've been in, but if any of mine ever tried to pull rank on me away from a football field I'd have laughed in their faces. Lawrence and Bennett were 25 and 23 respectively at the time. Both plenty old enough to understand how the law works without the intervention of their captain.
No, he wasn't treated differently and he was not screwed over. Lawrence and Bennett's behaviour was subject to internal investigation, so was Keogh. There was an internal disciplinary procedure for all of them individually and punishments meted out. Keogh refused to accept his punishment and the other two accepted theirs and that's why we ended up dismissing him.
There's more than enough on the face of it, to conclude that Keogh was guilty of gross misconduct and so too the others - you do not have to sack someone for GM but you can do. Keogh was a senior player and club captain, in a position of responsibility; a younger player was in one of the cars; the two drivers had drunk during the evening (that much must have been obvious even to another drunk); he got into a drunk drivers' car and failed to put his seatbelt on; the lack of seatbelt contributed to his injury or the severity of it.
What else was the disciplinary panel supposed to do - their punishment (reduced wages, no dismissal) was on the face of it, within the range of reasonable options for a gross misconduct decision. It was turned down. Should the panel at that stage have said 'oh well, that's OK then, we'll just forget it'? Keogh deliberately forced them into a position whereby sacking him was their only option. The other two did not.
I suspect (not ITK) that Keogh refused the punishment because he felt he was not guilty of gross misconduct, that his role as captain meant he had no extra responsibility, that drinking beyond a curfew on a night out was nothing to do with the club, nor the fact that he didn't wear a seatbelt or endangered himself by climbing into a car being driven by someone likely to be over the limit, never mind anything else not in the public domain.
If I'm right he's an idiot, whatever a tribunal may or may not say.
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7 hours ago, David said:
Hosting a bingo night, reckon I’ve nailed the bingo caller look
Who’s on the left?
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On commentary last night Owen said that CKR had become a bit of a cult figure around the club and with fans.
I wouldn’t disagree but it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that our cult figure will come and go without any (many) of us seeing him play in the flesh. He deserves at least one standing ovation from a full Pride Park.
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Hi @HuddersRam. You said that you wanted some feedback in one of your earlier posts so, now I've read it......
The last 100 pages were a struggle, not because of the book but because of my general DCFC mood. The last 5 results and improved performances and mood made me pick it up again and finish it after several weeks gap.
I enjoyed it a great deal and would recommend it to any Rams fan (or general football fan). Thank you for writing it. It must have been a real labour of love at times.
I don't know whether there are any factual errors - all the seasons tend to blur for me - but it served as a really good reminder of some of the things we have gone through over the last few years and put them in some order. There were some proof reading errors (grammar and the like) but they were relatively minor; at times too I had to go back to work out which season we were in, perhaps a few more memory jogs in the prose might have helped, especially in some of the blander seasons. As @RamNut has suggested the Giles Barnes comments were perhaps amongst the most revelatory. An interesting character is Nigel - he obviously generates huge loyalty and significant dislike, perhaps in equal measure.
If I had a couple of questions/comments they would be:
1) why did you construct the story chronologically (not suggesting that was a bad thing to do, just wondered)? Did you consider writing it in a different way, by owner or manager perhaps or by taking a player from each season? The off field stories have been as interesting as the on field events over many of our PP years - the rise and fall of Lionel, the amigos, Gadsby/GSE and Mel as well as all the various managers. There may be a series of books!
2) There were some omissions I thought. Mel for example, Nigel, Jewell, John Vicars or Stephen Pearce (even Sam Rush), or a fan or fans' eye view or a local/national reporter maybe. The players interviewed seemed somewhat random at times (although Bryson runs as a theme throughout many of the years and is heavily featured). That may well be because no one else wanted to talk to you (or were tied up in legal restrictions), or if they did were very circumspect (Burley for example), but, for me, the details that I couldn't know (or had forgotten) are often the most interesting ones - about transfers in or out, contracts or training regimes, relationships with managers and team mates or coming from abroad to a provincial East Midland city, never mind the board room/takeover shenanigans.
I wish you all the best with it and hope it is selling well over Christmas. Thanks again for writing it.
EFL appeal
in Derby County Forum
Posted
It’s an important word is 'could'. It could be over in two weeks.