duncanjwitham

Except he didn’t say that at all.  He was asked about making the playoffs and responded to that by saying we’re just focussing on Blackburn. The same old “focus on the next game” stuff that every manager everywhere says. At no point did he say we’re focussing on the Blackburn game over the Man Utd one.

Are you allowed to have an opinion? Yes
Is everyone else allowed to tell you your opinion is nonsense? Yes
(That's a general 'you', not referring to anyone specific in this thread.)

Are you allowed to have an opinion? Yes
Is everyone else allowed to tell you your opinion is nonsense? Yes
(That's a general 'you', not referring to anyone specific in this thread.)

Except he didn’t say that at all.  He was asked about making the playoffs and responded to that by saying we’re just focussing on Blackburn. The same old “focus on the next game” stuff that every manager everywhere says. At no point did he say we’re focussing on the Blackburn game over the Man Utd one.

Those 4 have 126 international caps between them...

Except he didn’t say that at all.  He was asked about making the playoffs and responded to that by saying we’re just focussing on Blackburn. The same old “focus on the next game” stuff that every manager everywhere says. At no point did he say we’re focussing on the Blackburn game over the Man Utd one.

Except he didn’t say that at all.  He was asked about making the playoffs and responded to that by saying we’re just focussing on Blackburn. The same old “focus on the next game” stuff that every manager everywhere says. At no point did he say we’re focussing on the Blackburn game over the Man Utd one.

Changed your mind? 😄

Changed your mind? 😄

Changed your mind? 😄

I suppose it depends what happened.  Maybe if we just told them we were selling it, and didn't mention either way who it was being sold to, and the EFL gave advice assuming it was to a 3rd party, then we could argue they never asked the question so we never answered it.  They'd then just argue their advice was invalid so we failed P&S. 
I think it's pretty unlikely anyway - the club statement says we discussed the rationale for the sale with the EFL, and the rationale has supposedly always been Mel owning the stadium and using it as a concert venue etc.  And that only make sense if Mel is the buyer.

I think that bolded bit is the key bit, based on my very, very limited knowledge, and what I can google etc (so massive pinch of salt with this etc etc).  The value of the stadium isn't what it's 'worth' (in the sense of what my house is worth).  It's what it would cost us to get an equivalent, modern stadium built to carry on the normal functioning of our business (i.e. playing football matches).  If the cost of building new stadiums has gone up since the stadium was last valued, then the value of Pride Park has gone up too.  And certainly the costs being banded about for other stadiums suggest £80m isn't crazy.

As much as anything, I suspect it’s the desire to just be doing something (anything) to keep fit.  You go from training everyday and being in good shape all the time, to basically sitting on your backside for 6 months (because your knee won’t physically allow you to run or kick a ball or whatever).  So you go to the gym and do weights every day, because you can do that without putting strain on your knee.

As much as anything, I suspect it’s the desire to just be doing something (anything) to keep fit.  You go from training everyday and being in good shape all the time, to basically sitting on your backside for 6 months (because your knee won’t physically allow you to run or kick a ball or whatever).  So you go to the gym and do weights every day, because you can do that without putting strain on your knee.

He's much more effective when teams come at us, as he's got space in behind to make runs etc.  Most teams in the league try to stop us playing, so sit deep and spoil etc, Marriott gets isolated with no service and no space.  Playoffs by definition are against the better teams, and the better teams are more likely to come at us, so Marriott is more effective.
In general, I think Marriott is a type of player that is very hard to use effectively in modern football.  He can't really play up front on his own, but you can't afford to just play 2 central midfielders, as almost everyone else is playing 3 and you get over-run.  So you maybe play 2 up front and try have a central midfielder playing out wide (like Jason Knight has been) tucking in, or you play a 433 with someone like Waghorn as a sort of winger drifting in to support Marriott, but you're unbalanced down that side.  Or you play a 442 diamond, but that leaves your fullbacks exposed.  Or you play Marriott up front alone and have a midfielder pushed as far forward as possible to support him, but then you're maybe light in midfield.
Whatever you do, you'll have to break something else in your team to get Marriott in there.  If he' s scoring most weeks it might be worth it.  If he's getting 2 in 15 (or whatever it is this season), he's a liability.

The biggest worry is quite possibly that he spends too much time in the gym doing weights and bulks up too much, making him even less mobile than he is now.  I'm sure I remember one manager (possibly Clough about Miles Addison) saying they had to actively stop him going to the gym so often.

You normally have to wait for the swelling to go down before you can get a full picture, and we may well not know for sure until the surgeon actually has a look.  Plus, we haven't had any press conferences yet this week, with not having a mid-week game, so I suspect we'll hear something more in the buildup to the game tomorrow night.

Or he's playing for the team that gives the ball away in midfield the most, maximising his opportunities to win it back. 

Flake off, twix.

Flake off, twix.

So we get rid of Bielik, Evans, Huddlestone and Bird.  If you're playing a flat 442, then you need proper wingers, so Lawrence, Josefzoon and Bennett can go too.  You're going to struggle to get really attacking midfielders into a flat 442, so Rooney, Holmes and Sibley can go too.  The entire academy are playing some variant of 3 in the middle, playing out from the back, so most of the midfielders can go from there too.  And we need to probably sign at least 8 new players (4 central midfielders, 4 wingers).  So once we've done all of that, we can finally get a striker that's scored less than 1 in 5 in his Derby career into the team?  Sounds like a great plan.

He's much more effective when teams come at us, as he's got space in behind to make runs etc.  Most teams in the league try to stop us playing, so sit deep and spoil etc, Marriott gets isolated with no service and no space.  Playoffs by definition are against the better teams, and the better teams are more likely to come at us, so Marriott is more effective.
In general, I think Marriott is a type of player that is very hard to use effectively in modern football.  He can't really play up front on his own, but you can't afford to just play 2 central midfielders, as almost everyone else is playing 3 and you get over-run.  So you maybe play 2 up front and try have a central midfielder playing out wide (like Jason Knight has been) tucking in, or you play a 433 with someone like Waghorn as a sort of winger drifting in to support Marriott, but you're unbalanced down that side.  Or you play a 442 diamond, but that leaves your fullbacks exposed.  Or you play Marriott up front alone and have a midfielder pushed as far forward as possible to support him, but then you're maybe light in midfield.
Whatever you do, you'll have to break something else in your team to get Marriott in there.  If he' s scoring most weeks it might be worth it.  If he's getting 2 in 15 (or whatever it is this season), he's a liability.

He's much more effective when teams come at us, as he's got space in behind to make runs etc.  Most teams in the league try to stop us playing, so sit deep and spoil etc, Marriott gets isolated with no service and no space.  Playoffs by definition are against the better teams, and the better teams are more likely to come at us, so Marriott is more effective.
In general, I think Marriott is a type of player that is very hard to use effectively in modern football.  He can't really play up front on his own, but you can't afford to just play 2 central midfielders, as almost everyone else is playing 3 and you get over-run.  So you maybe play 2 up front and try have a central midfielder playing out wide (like Jason Knight has been) tucking in, or you play a 433 with someone like Waghorn as a sort of winger drifting in to support Marriott, but you're unbalanced down that side.  Or you play a 442 diamond, but that leaves your fullbacks exposed.  Or you play Marriott up front alone and have a midfielder pushed as far forward as possible to support him, but then you're maybe light in midfield.
Whatever you do, you'll have to break something else in your team to get Marriott in there.  If he' s scoring most weeks it might be worth it.  If he's getting 2 in 15 (or whatever it is this season), he's a liability.

So we get rid of Bielik, Evans, Huddlestone and Bird.  If you're playing a flat 442, then you need proper wingers, so Lawrence, Josefzoon and Bennett can go too.  You're going to struggle to get really attacking midfielders into a flat 442, so Rooney, Holmes and Sibley can go too.  The entire academy are playing some variant of 3 in the middle, playing out from the back, so most of the midfielders can go from there too.  And we need to probably sign at least 8 new players (4 central midfielders, 4 wingers).  So once we've done all of that, we can finally get a striker that's scored less than 1 in 5 in his Derby career into the team?  Sounds like a great plan.

The big issue here, is that selling your stadium is a perfectly reasonable thing to do in some cases.  We presumably sold the BBG at the point we moved into Pride Park, for example.  There are probably other good reasons too.  So you have to have some mechanism of accounting for it, otherwise anybody that sold their stadium would get an immediate points deduction, as the stadium disappearing off their books would just leave a massive hole that they could never hope to cover from elsewhere.
Morris has certainly implied that he's happier with the stadium in this position - it provides a certain safety net in that if the club were ever sold, we wouldn't end up like Coventry, with the stadium sold out from under us by a dodgy owner etc.  So who's to say he wasn't planning to do this sale at some point anyway?  Now I've no doubt he chose to do it that season because of FFP, but there's nothing remotely immoral about choosing to do it at a certain point because it maximises the benefits for everybody.