TuffLuff

To make a somewhat semi serious point though, the stupidity of all this is that on Sunday and yesterday Coventry deserved all the plaudits for the game they made of it at Wembley. Also Leeds vs Boro was another very good game of football last night and deserves credit (with a bit of damnation over both sides defending as well)! But what are the top of football discussions at the minute? Antony celebrations, VAR decisions, pep moaning of fixture congestion’s and Forest losing the plot. If you want to know what is wrong with the premier league, it’s that they all live in a microcosm where they think we should all care about all these little things that shouldn’t matter over actual games of football.

I know someone every few weeks will bring up the Moment of Truth podcast up, but I started listening to it again Saturday morning after only listening to the first couple episodes when Warne joined us, and it’s maybe a really good moment in time to listen to it because there’s plenty to be taken from it about Warne and our coaching staff.

Percy showing his arse

John-Jules was in and around a promotion winning Ipswich side last year. More players we have around who’ve been in these situations before the better. He’s unlikely to play but can’t really see a negative as to having him around the place for a few weeks.

Just had a thought with this, but I presume the 1000 games includes the ‘red button’ midweek games for the championship? Id presume for UK watchers, if we were in League 1 we might still be able to watch on RamsTV in the week, but if we got promoted then Sky have the rights to those games? Can’t remember if this was the case a couple of seasons back or whether you could choose between sky and RamsTV, but yeah I don’t think you’ll see too many changes to what there is now tbh.

One thing I thought on Saturday, but when you have Bradley in you essentially have a leaders with experience in every part of your spine when you consider Smith and Collins. It makes a huge difference especially when NML is your team captain.

Some fans will always find it impossible to enjoy the moment, im annoyed about last night but you’ve got to embrace the ups and downs because it’ll be gone in a couple of weeks. As well unfortunately the hangover of Mel’s tenure still has its implications. We got into a decent position and everyone gets twitchy that it’ll be bottled because it’s not perfect. I find it quite funny that I see people whinging about Warne in a league we haven’t even got to. What makes you think about that and then think it’s worth posting on here or Twitter or whatever?

Sorry would usually agree, but that performance with three games to go…they deserve a bit of a kicking because there’s no excuses. It’s not about the result, it’s the performance.

I’m usually one trying to be rational about these things, but that performance at this time of the season bordered disgusting for me. Lazy passing, headless running, poor touches…and that was just Kane Wilson who gave one of the worst performances I’ve seen in a derby shirt this season. Don’t like singling out players for criticism, rarely do it, but for all his ‘Jack the lad’ persona not enough quality shines through when it matters. Within the context of the season and where we are, it was shockingly bad. I could have wax lyrical for hours about how good Derby were last week and every inch of praise was deserved. They lost all that goodwill tonight. I’ve got very little more I can say, it’s not that they haven’t won but the attitude/performance for where we are in the season was so below par.

Whilst it’s not worth going back and listening to a whole day worth of audio, it was a very impressive stint from Radio Derby and I really enjoyed it as something different. Lots of interesting bits with Eric Steele with the kit man etc, but also a pretty interesting kind of round table with Colin Gibson, Tom Loakes and Ed Dawes about the media side of things (including having to hide Marriott in the back of Gibbo’s car when he signed). Owen Bradley spoke well about RamsTV, a few interviews on the academy etc etc. It was just good radio tbh, and I hope people didn’t purposefully miss out because they talked themselves into thinking it was a distraction or whatever they were whinging about beforehand. I do find it quite funny that there were 9 pages on here before Monday and just after a page since it was broadcast. FWIW, the most important thing to come out of it is that it’s sured up the club’s relationship with Radio Derby. I might be wrong but I did sense it was all quite frosty under Mel’s tenure and there has probably been a bit of hangover in the 2-3 years since. I’m sure it’s not that any bridge mending was needed, but things like Warne doing a couple of interviews with presenters away from Dom and Ed are good because it brings a different perspective to Warne. Hopefully it means there will be more stuff like this was in the future. Great job by everyone involved!

Think this is a good point by Punjabi rams. It’s not necessarily the point we should be happy about it’s the level of confidence we played with. We looked like a promotion side against the best side in the league. We kept our shape and had a focus and a bit of swagger without it looking like we were playing above ourselves. We were willing ourselves to get a result. Although we’ve been consistent I don’t think we’ve looked assured, and that’s why we’ve had our Warne out/in debates and so much fluff surrounding the club this season. Last night was a step up for me, we looked a top side and I dare say even under Mac1 we didn’t look like ‘top 2’. There’s still a long way to go, and it’s not all wrapped up, but it’s been a long while since I could sense that confidence from a derby side on the pitch. That’s not me saying promotion is secured or anything like that, I just thought last night was a big step forward in the right direction performance wise.

Firstly, what an enjoyable game of football. Was a pleasure to see Derby as a part of that and matched a very good team at the top. Pompey will win this league, we can take confidence from our performance tonight into the last four matches. My only gripe, with my derby bias, is that I felt they got a few favourable decisions in that 10-15 minutes before they scored which helped peg us back into our own half and made us get deeper and deeper. But also, we didn’t help ourselves and seemed less and less comfortable. You didn’t think with 30 mins to go we could defend like we were and hold out because we were loosing shape too often and not getting the ball into their half for any length of time. Aside that, I can’t tell you one player who I thought played poorly and Warne got his tactics spot on. I can’t put it simpler. I’ve said a few times, one thing Warne has done really well this season is that every player has contributed to a key moment this season. Tonight was Joe Ward’s turn, he’s a big game player and he showed it tonight. Still think Blackett-Taylor may yet still get his before the season is out. Thought it was Adams best game, another who thrives to the occasion. Smith is maybe our most underrated player. Finally, four great goals. I don’t think we can analyse the ones we conceaded too much and neither can pompey with ours. Both sides have a bit of a weakness at full back and both sides were able to take advantage.

You can question, as a head of a supporters group, why you’ve been invited to a LIV-Pro event by him in the first place and whether it’s appropriate to accept that offer. Presumably this is the same LIV-Pro event where Kirchner was stepped by Dan Roan for not yet producing the funds for the takeover?

What I think its a different debate for a different day, but I think many legitimised Kirchner for their own means rather than the long term health of DCFC, whether out of desperation or incompetency. I don’t think it’s a case of going OTT against anyone involved, but there’s probably lessons to be learnt that there is maybe a bit more due diligence needed over someone who has no paper trail and says he made his money through crypto. That’s the issue with the article, it’s alright saying ‘look at this wrongun’ and MM or Preston saying ‘we knew he was a wrongun’ but they didn’t raise any concerns at a time when they could. Yes there is an issue of football clubs that are going into the wrong persons hands, but part of that is those that help legitimise those people and push them through in the first place. Saying they didn’t know absolves the EFL, Cook, Stretford, Quantama and a whole lot of others who caused a lot more mess for Derby County.

I don’t think it’s about taking the blame because that indicates that someone wasn’t working with good intentions, and I think at that point almost everyone was. It wasn’t one person/organisations fault what was happening with Kirchner, but you have to accept some responsibility for how it went wrong. That’s what becomes apparent to me when reading that article, they have spoken to a lot of people and none seemingly took any responsibility, the writers didnt question them on it and they didn’t cotton on to the idea that they all played a part in getting Kirchner so far down the line. The people don’t take responsibility and the writers don’t make them take responsibility when it’s obvious when reading that they should. My point about Preston isn’t that they did anything wrong particularly, but more that its similar to what is being said by @therealhantsram about MM, it’s ok for people to say they smelt a rat with Kirchner but at the time they didn’t raise any alarm bells with the EFL. It should be in Preston’s interest as much as Morris’ interest to declare to the EFL that they had doubts over Kirchner’s suitability. A Preston source calls Kirchner a tyre kicker in the article, well again they contributed to that tyre kicking when it came to Derby County! The article again, in my opinion, kinda shows an issue that helped Kirchner get further down the line but doesn’t delve further into the significance of it. Or both the Preston source and MM’s source are saving face which should be rebutted in print, because they were both willing to try and sell to him! The article brings up a lot of issues but doesn’t give them any significance essentially.

Yes I thought the MM bit was most interesting, I do hope we do end up hearing a bit more from his side. Although the idea he was sceptical yet still willingness to work with Kirchner to agree a sale of his club seems a bit of a stretch to me. I’ve got to be honest I just don’t think it’s a great article though. There’s a pretty obvious ‘joining of dots’ here that isn’t addressed in that whether its the supporters groups, MM, Garry Cook, The EFL, the Administrators or Stretford , none of them take responsibility for what they nearly did to Derby County. No one goes ‘we got this wrong and we added to the months of limbo for Derby County fans who didn’t know whether they would have a club by the of the season’, and I think it borders on disgraceful from those who fell for Kirchner hook, line and sinker and they all seemingly pop up in this article without much criticism. It’s also poor that the article has no reference to the fans and what we were going through because of Kirchner’s actions I also find it poor that supposedly Preston’s board are unsure about Kirchner but seemingly do not raise any alarm bells to the EFL. If you want to see a part of what’s wrong with football then I think that’s a good example. Like most football journalism today, it about scratches the surface on a subject but there is zero depth.

Good post, and if I may say it’s the type of content I’m here for and we don’t see enough on here! What id say is that I think over the course of a season you are somewhat expected to drop points away from home where teams fancy their chances of an upset. Also you can expect a bit of leggyness/mental exhaustion after a big win like the Bolton one, it’s a really difficult league to find consistency in and I’d say all teams have suffered from that and hence it’s so close at the top. What’s becoming more of an issue I think is the points dropped at home. There’s been atleast 6-9 points, and that’s being kind, that we dropped. A better home record and you can excuse a trip like Saturday as one of those days and move on.

Finally in the company he deserves

https://theathletic.com/5361931/2024/03/25/golf-football-chris-kirchner-derby-fraud/?source=user_shared_article Does anybody still have an account and want to give the general gist of this article? Is there anything new in it?

The one thing I’ll say re:Hourihane is that it did surprise me to see him get so much flack for a performance where I thought he was one of our more ok players, compared to Adams and NML who I thought kept losing the ball in key positions. Or say someone like Wilson who put in a lot of crosses but a lot fell to the heads of their defenders. It may have been an issue with how they were set up. Waghorn kept coming deep, NML was too central at times and in Thompsons space etc, which probably comes with having to play an unsettled side due to injuries. I get the Hourihane criticisms and given out enough of them over the last two seasons, but I didn’t think after Saturday he quite deserves the criticism he got over a few others. To think, I clicked on this to see if there was a video of Bradley’s incident!

They have no idea who they are signing these days…

Hourihane has made a career out of scoring important goals out of nothing, or at least providing assists. We are at a time of the season we need someone who can score important goals out of nothing and we are a side with depleted attacking options. Warne has managed Hourihane well this season and there’s enough time for him to provide more than he already has.

Bit of fun, but they put up a quote attributed to ‘fan of socialism’ Brian Clough yesterday as a tribute on his birthday. I mean I’m not saying there is a capitalist agenda behind doing this but you can see for yourself here: Anyway, they have had a special guest at the City Ground today…

As someone who isn’t much of a traveller then I’d recommend the overnight trains from Paris to the south of France. It’s relatively straight forward and gets you to Carcassonne for a good time in the morning. As an interesting city/town around there I really loved Narbonne, which wasn’t overly touristy but had a really good food places and an indoor market. It borders a national park too but we didn’t venture out as we were car-less. But it is doable and maybe a bit different if you want a ‘steady’ break