ilkleyram

2 hours ago, i-Ram said:

So do I, but the wife ain’t having it.

Is she worn out?

On 02/11/2023 at 12:05, WystonRam said:

Reading is postponed.

 

https://www.dcfc.co.uk/amp/news/2023/11/reading-away-fixture-postponed-november-2023

Reading ticket sales have presumably been halted as a result of the postponement as they’re no longer available on the website (unless I’m being technologically challenged again)

2 hours ago, Mostyn6 said:

well? did anyone buy a burger?

No but I did overhear the guy in the queue behind me say to his mate : ‘for feck sake don’t buy the cheeseburger if you want to stay well’

I had a steak and ale pie. Ok only. Nowhere near as good as Carlisle

The pies at Carlisle were excellent. And they left the tops on the pop bottles. 

2 hours ago, bcnram said:

She stands out as being the best referee  we have had by a distance. I am pleased to see her progress. To say it is a tick box exercise is strange. 
 

She is certainly the best ref we’ve had this season but there’s still a problem if she gets drawn into the PL world, that she then isn’t available to ref matches further down the pyramid unless it’s a punishment for an error.  So we see a good ref with potential to be a very good ref in what has to date largely been a man’s world, running the line or holding up the numbers whilst holding back Mr Klopp or, worse, sitting in front of a bank of TV screens trying to work out whether the ball hitting a hand is actually handball. Or not.  She might get the main job once in a while and do well, but the rest of us (the majority of professional football teams in this country) have to make do with another EFL numpty trainee in her place.

2 hours ago, Gaspode said:

Almost 30 years ago we were house hunting and went to Willington to look at some new builds off Hall Lane - as we stood outside one of the houses looking down towards the river we were approached by the sales woman and got chatting to her. Being relatively local we were well aware of the issues with flooding in the area so weren't at all serious about buying but I thought I'd ask her about the possibility of floods - "oh, lots of people ask" she said, "in fact people who'd already moved in stand at the end of the road whenever there was heavy rain and watch the river expand" - I suggested that it was quite worrying but she told me not to worry as they would be dredging the river to make sure the houses were safe - it was only when I asked her how often they'd dredge it that she had to urgently rush off back to the show home.....

As part of the new flood defences in the Calder valley, not too far from me, they dredged both the canal and the river. We haven’t really had enough rain to properly test the new defences yet. 

42 minutes ago, On the Ram Page said:

So we play badly and it’s Wayne’s fault - we play well and it’s the players who have taken over, nothing to do with the coaching team and manager!

 

you really have a one track mind - WARNE OUT!

I think we’re going to have to get used to the idea that Wayne isn’t coming back. 

6 hours ago, The Scarlet Pimpernel said:

Going back to the original arguement..............

DCFC are competing in the EFL with the potential to gain access to the Premier League. That is competion pyramid we are in. The best we can achieve is to win the premier league the worst we can do is to be last in league 2 or the fourth tier. This season is only our 4th season ever in the third tier. Our worst ever position in the football pyramid is to be 7th in division 3.

On this basis if we finish below 7th this season it will be the lowest point in the clubs history.

Semantics this may be but ‘lowest league placing’ is more accurate. I would still argue that the three lowest points of our history (in my time) were when Maxwell had to bail us out, when the three amigos were in charge and our recent times in administration. At each of those points there was the real possibility that we wouldn’t have had a club to support and I’d still take 8th in the third tier over that.

7 hours ago, MadAmster said:

The shorter time left on a contract, the lower the fees offered. If BHA come back in January for Cashin, they won't be offering Derby £3M. That's how it works, unfortunately.

Ah but that was BHA without competition for Cash’s services. IF Birmingham (for example) were to bid that amount in January then Brighton would be forced to match it. The competition can be ‘manufactured’ of course.

21 hours ago, angieram said:

We are being encouraged to report the worst offenders to the Club, but they often don't stand anywhere near where they have tickets for, and tickets are regularly re-sold on Twitter so aren't necessarily in the hands of the original purchasers.

I have never seen any stewards challenging the behaviours of abusive fans during matches. They just film it all and keep their distance. 

The rest of us have to put up with it.

I guess that stewards are probably told to keep their distance rather than create a ruckus that could cause even more problems. I would also guess that GDPR regulations prevent sharing film too widely both of which people will know and take advantage of. 
It is - and I don’t have a solution - a problem of too much demand for too low supply and our allocation system. The club tries to reward regular away fans (and mainly does) but in order to guarantee tickets in the future fans with no intention of going have to keep their numbers up. Some of those will be sold on.
Sheffield Wed last season was an example - sold out but on the day there were  at least 200 empty seats around where I was.

We could follow the Leeds example. Whether away ticket staff want to deal with the potential aggro and checks for something that is not their problem would be an issue. We could clear the decks on the system and start again but that would upset the genuine fan. We could attach photo id to the ticket but that requires the away club to monitor it. We could demand proper policing by proper police but that ship has long since sailed. I’m not sure there’s an easy solution. 

It is sadly true that football as a whole has only fundamentally changed after a disaster. A bit sweeping I know. But maybe that’s what is ahead. 
 

We could also go up to bigger grounds or go down and reduce demand but…….!

Louie Sibley. Always seems to me to work reasonably hard and got a good instinct for a shot or a pass but lacks a wider football intelligence that the likes of Will Hughes has, or IMO Max Bird has. There are times when he, for example, fouls someone or gets booked unnecessarily or gets caught out of position, when I think why on earth did you do that?  
I do wonder whether that’s why a number of different managers haven’t picked him regularly because on the face of it he’s got all the attributes to be a good player. Perhaps they don’t yet trust him enough.

1 hour ago, sage said:

Maybe if we just offered alternative views and didn't attack each other it would be better. It's easy to get in long drawn out arguments on the internet, but if we can all try not to cast the first stone, it would make this a better place (read this again with any Carpenters song in the background) 

Perhaps There (should be) a kind of hush all over the forum because For all we know we’re Hurting each other. On the Rainy days and Mondays many of us just seem to want Yesterday once more. It won’t be long before we’re Top of the world again. We’ve only just begun after all. 

2 minutes ago, Curtains said:

To recover. 

Depends on which part of the club you mean. 
The academy 3 to 4 years

The first team 2 to 3 years

Behind the scenes - ticket office/admin/recruitment/groundstaff etc 1 to 2 years

IMO we’re on track in all

2 hours ago, David said:

Just think some social self awareness is needed at times, I've made my voice heard, time to let others have their say kinda thing.

Hard when you're super passionate over a particular viewpoint, guilty of it myself.

The daft thing is that the Warne outers will get their way at some point. It’s 99% certain that he will be sacked. At which point they can say ‘told you so’/‘thank God’/I was right’ whatever 

A poll free and supportive period until that moment would probably help the rest of us. And make this forum as interesting as it used to be. Don’t suppose that’s going to happen though. 

8 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

You trust his judgement on if a player should or shouldn't be given a few minutes of action in the first team?

Yup.  More than my judgement, or yours, or anyone else on this forum. 

None of us have anything to go on other than what we might see during 90 minutes on a football pitch.  I would guess the vast majority of us have no experience of being professional footballers or managers, that we won't know what is happening in any player's personal life (did you know about Mrs Vickers before Saturday, for example?  I didn't.  It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that her illness would have impacted Josh's performance in training or on the pitch), or how they react to a crowd, what their individual performance stats are, whether they're carrying an injury etc etc etc.  Warne and the Academy team have all that and much, much, much more.

It's in his interests to bring academy players through, for reasons I won't repeat.  He knows what he wants and sees the players in training. So, yes I trust his judgement.

A few years ago Cocu got slaughtered on these and other pages for playing Sibley and other youngsters in a cup match down the road.  Giving them experience, sure, but I wonder if it helped them all

I would accept that Warne (and every other manager) has to have half an eye on his continued employment.  Who wants to be sacked? Who doesn't want success?  But why wouldn't he want to 'trust' a player to deliver before he selects him? That's in the player's best interests, in Warne's interests and in our (the fans) interest - we're quick to moan if we think a player doesn't deliver as Max Bird, Jason Knight and others can testify

There are a number of contributors to these pages, genuine fans all I’m pretty sure, whose informed and interesting views I have enjoyed reading over the years but whose opinion of our manager is consistently less than positive, couched always in terms of ‘I want him and the team to do well, but….’  The latest ‘but’ appears to be his use (or non-use) of academy players.

Are we really all so cynical nowadays that we don’t believe what we’re being told in interviews or have we just stopped listening?

Warne has explained how much benefit he will get as manager from an academy player breaking through into the first team.  It’s in his interest for that to happen as it stretches his budget and allows him to spend more elsewhere.  Even if you (mistakenly imo) believe that he’s not ‘interested’ in young players, surely you can understand that he might be keen to extend his financial reach and recruit more widely?

He’s explained - and we have the photos to prove it happens - that players from the academy join in first team training sessions so that he and his staff can look at them but also so that the players themselves get a taste of the requirements of being a first team member.  He’s explained that they have to perform, to make the most of their opportunity.  Hasn't football, at all levels, always been the same?  It’s dog eat dog.  You have to perform all the time, now more than ever. Those who work hard, and not necessarily the most talented, get to have careers.  Twas ever thus

Hasn’t he said that he has to be sure that a young player won’t be destroyed by the experience of playing in the first team?  In these somewhat softer times aren’t we all aware of the mental health of individuals in a very tough work place - David Clowes directly referred to it in relation to Rosenior, for example.  Warne has said that he has seen a player’s career destroyed by being thrown in at the deep end too soon; Will Hughes (for example) was introduced gently - played on the wing/played for a few minutes at the end of a game before he was allowed to play regularly.  I was there at Steve Powell’s full debut v Liverpool.  It wasn’t his actual debut if I recall correctly.  But Steve (like Tom Huddleston) was a freak of football nature - a 16 year old in a man’s body, steeped in football from his father and with the mental strength to go with it.  There’s a reason that boys very rarely play men’s professional football. Shouldn’t we be glad that a senior member of our management team has the long term career prospects of our youngest players at heart rather than short term gain?  If you were a parent of someone coming through wouldn’t you want your son (or daughter) to be looked after?  We’re a tough crowd in a tough business and I don’t want a player destroyed by a poor performance in front of a Pride Park crowd. I want a manager to play someone when he thinks that player is ready, not before, and if he errs on the side of caution then good. Better that than destroying a career.

And what experience do our current academy players have to bring?  It’s not a winning experience, that’s for sure.  And lest anyone thinks I’m criticising, I’m not.  The academy was pillaged to help us have a club to support.  16/17/18 year olds couldn’t cope with under 21 football last season and they’re struggling again this season despite additions, so how are they going to cope with League 1 football? But Warne has described the regular meetings he and his staff have with those in charge of the academy (and recruitment) where they discuss who is ready for the opportunity, initially to train with the first team and then to show what they can do.  Shouldn’t we applaud that approach?

By all means criticise Warne for team selection or substitutions or formations or whatever if you want to but let’s not manufacture a lack of interest in young players coming through our academy as (yet) another stick to beat him with

1 hour ago, Millenniumram said:

You know what the best thing about moving to London is? You can no longer listen to Radio Derby. Bliss.

The even better news is, you can.  Thanks to the clever people at the world wide interwebby thing you go on that and then to the BBC sounds app whotsit, scramble around a bit for local radio stations until you find Radio Derby, press a button or mouse thingy and Bob’s your uncle. Wall to wall Radio Derby.
You do have to slap DCFC a chunk of money if you want to listen to actual RD match commentary though, but even that’s possible, even from London.  Even better you can catch up and replay all those programmes you might have missed because you were doing something pointless. You can even do it in the car or when walking the streets paved with gold, if you are a streetwalker that is.
Hope that helps.

1 minute ago, Caerphilly Ram said:

You missed out some key information, what filling was the pie?! 

Mince. Fantastic it was. I also missed out how pleasant were the people from Carlisle. They even left the bottle tops on the coke bottles because they trusted us not to throw them. Class.

I would like to apologise to what appears to be a good number of my fellow Rams fans on these pages.  I have driven for about 5 hours today, spent £40 on petrol, £25 on a ticket and another £10 odd on sundries like the best pie I’ve had in ages, parking and a programme. The weather was fantastic, the scenery only matched by the Peak District and the ground was a proper old football ground with, from my seat, the wierdest view in football.

Oh, and although it’s hard to gather from these pages, my, our, team won. 2-0 away from home against a team in good form according to their manager, late of this parish, and with some excellent individual performances, an improved overall team performance, in front of a vociferous and supportive away following.

I’ve had a cracking day. Sorry.

50 minutes ago, oodledoodle said:

Top bait, 10/10.

Much better last night, but let's not pretend Lincoln were even half interested in the game. Played a weak team, and never looked interested.

That being said, you can only beat the team in front of you, and the passing and ball retention last night was much better. Great movement down the wings, Ward and Barks looked brilliant. If that's the first time they played together, I can't wait to see what it's like when they get to know each other.

Also, by making this thread, is that you accepting that before last night Warne had been getting it wrong? You've also been desperate for him to change things, and it's not been good enough? Nice to have you on board, took long enough for the penny to drop.

Joe Ward must have been brilliant with Barks last night - so brilliant I never noticed him

5 minutes ago, MackworthRamIsGod said:

Did Warne say he hoped to have someone in before Tuesday or did he tell Ed Dawes to C you next Tuesday?

Maybe an announcement before kick off.

Ed Dawes wasn’t commentating on Saturday. 

1 hour ago, therealhantsram said:

We saw how this would play out just a few weeks ago.

The Sun published a story with such flimsy evidence that they omitted the name of the BBC newsreader in question to avoid being sued.

We got 5 days of blanket coverage, speculation, BBC celebs issuing denials (yet being tainted nonetheless), and some of them pleading with the accused to name themselves to spare other people being falsely named.

It was a witch hunt and it was grim.

On balance I think it's better to simply name the individual accused as The Times have done with Brand.

 

Oh, I agree that it won’t be easy. And it won’t be perfect either. But your example kind of demonstrates my point. The newsreader has done nothing wrong so far as I know, legally. I don’t think he’s been charged with anything. He’s probably broken BBC rules but that’s a different matter. 
If we start from the point of view that both sides have to have their anonymity protected and that’s the law then the media will have to abide by that. Generally it seems to me they do that where the law applies, however reluctantly.

In the newsreader’s case they might (if there was a law of anonymity) have wanted to test whether the law applied in that case - something they often do now especially where wealthy people apply to have their anonymity protected.  So you get ‘premier league footballer in affair scandal’ type headlines. Why couldn’t that apply to Brand (and anyone else) too specifically in sex cases? Why couldn’t the Times and Channel 4 have to go to court before naming Brand? It might have spoiled their programme or reduced sales if the court protected Brand’s identity but that shouldn’t be relevant  

Social media, I would absolutely accept, is a minefield (as David is often reminding us) where the X population generally appear to believe that they have a right to total free speech. But eventually the law will catch up with individuals. We shouldn’t, imo, allow the X contributors to do the courts’ job however unpleasant a case or an individual may be.

Like others before him - Greenwood being just the latest example - Russell Brand is done for except, possibly, on social media.  Which Council or business will hire out their local arena for his stand up show, which employer (BBC/ITV/Sky/BT) will canvass his views or use him, which mainstream media outlet will pay him to write articles or present programmes, which company will employ him as an after dinner speaker?  They will all fight shy of an inevitable backlash if they were to do so. His career is already toast.

And yet.  He has not been found guilty of anything. May not be guilty of anything other than being an odious character making the most of their power like many others, male and female, have done before him.  Perhaps finding four people to tell similar stories wasn't very hard for a very, very promiscuous man (his own words). It was probably a large pool of people to ask. He has been tried and judged by Dispatches and the Sunday Times and found guilty in the court of public opinion.

I still can't see why we can't have, in these cases, anonymity on both sides until guilt is properly established. It protects both sides - how many people are, at this moment, trying to find out who the accusers really are; how much 'fishing' for other accusers are the police currently doing, to add to bonfire; how many people are putting themselves forward as victims who have never actually met Brand; how long will this process of identification and investigation take as others now put themselves forward?

If he's found to be guilty after due process he's fair game.  At that point perhaps others would step forward and have their cases established, or not.  But at the moment in our society in these type of cases guilt rather than innocence is what is presumed.  That should worry us all, imo.

17 minutes ago, Leeds Ram said:

I mean the critical difference between your examples, and the Pearce situation is that no UK politician alive is responsible for slavery or nicking the Elgin marbles. They would be apologising on behalf of the institution, which becomes more complex. Pearce's actions have in the very recent past damaged the institution itself.  Again, I'm not expecting everyone to agree but a degree of contrition about what happened and how it happened i think is not just the right thing to do but would also be cathartic for a lot of the fan base who still feel very aggrieved about what happened. 

I think we’ll probably have to agree to disagree @Leeds Ram.

But perhaps I can say this. The club including Pearce and @Owen87ITK, will (I would guess) have spent hours and hours preparing for the forum and very deliberately aimed to make something of a statement of intent right at the beginning, knowing that SP’s continued involvement was an issue amongst some of the fan base. His comments, which he reverted to when they got the question they were expecting, were clearly rehearsed and (again I guess) were couched in the way they were mainly because of the NDAs in place and because they all want to move on - club, Clowes and SP himself.  So the chances of us getting any more are, I think, remote at best. There’s no appetite for it.

Fwiw I don’t think that SP is particularly confident in an open forum on camera. He comes across as over prepared and nervous, unlike Warne who’s the opposite. In my experience most accountants aren’t often good public speakers, able to talk human and quick enough to find the right words to satisfy an audience. It’s why they’re accountants. A sweeping generalisation I appreciate. As CEO you would ideally want him to be a better public communicator but that’s not, in my view, his skill set. Hopefully in smaller groups amongst the staff he’s leading he is better and more confident.

5 minutes ago, Leeds Ram said:

'He made an effort to come to the fans forum' and deliberately didn't answer the questions about the past. Personally, yes some people will want him out no matter what, and I don't completely blame them, but i think it's obvious to pretty much everyone that an apology and some sort of explanation is what should be given after what happened. 

At the risk of starting some sort of Yorkshire in fighting I don’t want an apology from Stephen Pearce or Mel Morris for that matter. It would be as meaningless (to me) as the government apologising for slavery or nicking the Elgin marbles or any other historic ‘failure’. What happened happened and a ‘sorry’ achieves nothing for me. What’s more important is what happens now and in the future.  Clowes knows the guy and his work and clearly thinks he’s the right person for the job now and that’s his choice not mine. I trust Clowes with the whole club so why not with his choice of CEO?

 I would love an explanation and to know who said and did what, when and to whom but that’s just out of personal curiosity and nosiness.  It’s never going to happen in a month of Sundays. Everyone has signed up to the NDAs and will be worried about legal action if they break them. That suits the club as much as it does all the individuals involved because it prevents all the coals being endlessly raked over and allows club, owner, CEO, EFL, administrator and everyone else to move on. Perhaps we all should too because nothing’s going to change.