SSD

That Coventry Vs Man Utd could have gone down as one of the greatest semi finals in FA Cup history. 3-0 down and Cov brought it back to 3-3. They scored in the final minutes of extra time but VAR ruined it by disallowing the goal due because the Coventry lad had bigger sized boots. To rub salt in the wounds, Man Utd win the shootout and proceed to taunt the Coventry players. Zero respect.
It summed up modern elite football for me and why I don't watch Premier League football anymore. VAR making a mess of the those precious moments and then the footballers / managers who get paid absolute fortunes to moan about playing too many matches. If you don't want to play because you are tired, sod off and let some young talent have a game. These financially abundant teams have so many resources to deal with multiple matches yet have the nerve to pile on the FA (who themselves are a disgrace) to scrap the replays, because poor old £300k a week Bruno ran 1k less according to a huge team of data analytics. 
The European competitions, many Premier League teams don't play their best players until after Christmas anyway. And then none of them play in the League cup until the winter and then no FA Cup until January. But they're very happy to go on the Asia tours and fly around everywhere all summer because they've got sponsors to please.
Go and play in your European Super League and open the competitions up to football clubs who genuinely want to play domestic football.

That Coventry Vs Man Utd could have gone down as one of the greatest semi finals in FA Cup history. 3-0 down and Cov brought it back to 3-3. They scored in the final minutes of extra time but VAR ruined it by disallowing the goal due because the Coventry lad had bigger sized boots. To rub salt in the wounds, Man Utd win the shootout and proceed to taunt the Coventry players. Zero respect.
It summed up modern elite football for me and why I don't watch Premier League football anymore. VAR making a mess of the those precious moments and then the footballers / managers who get paid absolute fortunes to moan about playing too many matches. If you don't want to play because you are tired, sod off and let some young talent have a game. These financially abundant teams have so many resources to deal with multiple matches yet have the nerve to pile on the FA (who themselves are a disgrace) to scrap the replays, because poor old £300k a week Bruno ran 1k less according to a huge team of data analytics. 
The European competitions, many Premier League teams don't play their best players until after Christmas anyway. And then none of them play in the League cup until the winter and then no FA Cup until January. But they're very happy to go on the Asia tours and fly around everywhere all summer because they've got sponsors to please.
Go and play in your European Super League and open the competitions up to football clubs who genuinely want to play domestic football.

I absolutely loath the Premier League and in particular the so called ‘big 6’. I would love for them to all just f*** off to a Euro Super League where they play each other 6 times a season for their target audience in Asia and leave the rest of us to enjoy English football as it once was. For a start, all money would be distributed fairly, there would be no ‘Premier League’; just Division’s 1 to 4, the FA Cup become the showpiece event played on the Saturday after the season finishes at 3pm at Wembley (no semi finals at Wembley) with replays. If the ‘big 6’ decided they wanted back in they would all have to start at the bottom of the pyramid and have restrictions on how much they could spend on players/wages. If they didn’t like it they could all f*** off again and play each other a 6 team mini league or something. I couldn’t care less about them or their fans. They have robbed football of its competitiveness and it’s money for too many years. 
As for the latest disgrace around the FA Cup replays I really hope that EFL clubs boycott next seasons competition en masse. A concerted boycott would ruin the FA’s finances and they’d back down in the face of it. Whether clubs have the balls to go for it is a different matter. 
 

I know he might cringe at the thought, I'd get a big flag with him front and centre.
Absolute hero.

That Coventry Vs Man Utd could have gone down as one of the greatest semi finals in FA Cup history. 3-0 down and Cov brought it back to 3-3. They scored in the final minutes of extra time but VAR ruined it by disallowing the goal due because the Coventry lad had bigger sized boots. To rub salt in the wounds, Man Utd win the shootout and proceed to taunt the Coventry players. Zero respect.
It summed up modern elite football for me and why I don't watch Premier League football anymore. VAR making a mess of the those precious moments and then the footballers / managers who get paid absolute fortunes to moan about playing too many matches. If you don't want to play because you are tired, sod off and let some young talent have a game. These financially abundant teams have so many resources to deal with multiple matches yet have the nerve to pile on the FA (who themselves are a disgrace) to scrap the replays, because poor old £300k a week Bruno ran 1k less according to a huge team of data analytics. 
The European competitions, many Premier League teams don't play their best players until after Christmas anyway. And then none of them play in the League cup until the winter and then no FA Cup until January. But they're very happy to go on the Asia tours and fly around everywhere all summer because they've got sponsors to please.
Go and play in your European Super League and open the competitions up to football clubs who genuinely want to play domestic football.

That Coventry Vs Man Utd could have gone down as one of the greatest semi finals in FA Cup history. 3-0 down and Cov brought it back to 3-3. They scored in the final minutes of extra time but VAR ruined it by disallowing the goal due because the Coventry lad had bigger sized boots. To rub salt in the wounds, Man Utd win the shootout and proceed to taunt the Coventry players. Zero respect.
It summed up modern elite football for me and why I don't watch Premier League football anymore. VAR making a mess of the those precious moments and then the footballers / managers who get paid absolute fortunes to moan about playing too many matches. If you don't want to play because you are tired, sod off and let some young talent have a game. These financially abundant teams have so many resources to deal with multiple matches yet have the nerve to pile on the FA (who themselves are a disgrace) to scrap the replays, because poor old £300k a week Bruno ran 1k less according to a huge team of data analytics. 
The European competitions, many Premier League teams don't play their best players until after Christmas anyway. And then none of them play in the League cup until the winter and then no FA Cup until January. But they're very happy to go on the Asia tours and fly around everywhere all summer because they've got sponsors to please.
Go and play in your European Super League and open the competitions up to football clubs who genuinely want to play domestic football.

That Coventry Vs Man Utd could have gone down as one of the greatest semi finals in FA Cup history. 3-0 down and Cov brought it back to 3-3. They scored in the final minutes of extra time but VAR ruined it by disallowing the goal due because the Coventry lad had bigger sized boots. To rub salt in the wounds, Man Utd win the shootout and proceed to taunt the Coventry players. Zero respect.
It summed up modern elite football for me and why I don't watch Premier League football anymore. VAR making a mess of the those precious moments and then the footballers / managers who get paid absolute fortunes to moan about playing too many matches. If you don't want to play because you are tired, sod off and let some young talent have a game. These financially abundant teams have so many resources to deal with multiple matches yet have the nerve to pile on the FA (who themselves are a disgrace) to scrap the replays, because poor old £300k a week Bruno ran 1k less according to a huge team of data analytics. 
The European competitions, many Premier League teams don't play their best players until after Christmas anyway. And then none of them play in the League cup until the winter and then no FA Cup until January. But they're very happy to go on the Asia tours and fly around everywhere all summer because they've got sponsors to please.
Go and play in your European Super League and open the competitions up to football clubs who genuinely want to play domestic football.

Good old Nigel! 
 

This is another example of why my love for the game becomes a little more tarnished.
I’m proud of the fact that I have become an old-fashioned bitter football fan and I have no idea of what is happening in the first division, nor do I have any idea on who is still in Europe.  I don’t even know what the format of the European competitions are nowadays, and I really don’t care.  It’s all predicated on greed for the biggest clubs and every rule appears to be geared towards maintaining an “elite”.
I looked at the England squad not so long ago, and it had a number of players who I had never heard of.
I love Derby County and not much more, to be honest.
I love the fact that in the lower divisions, there are probably 16 or so teams at the start of the season who think that, if things go well, this could be their year.  However, that gap is becoming wider and wider each year due to the top echelons being governed by greed.
The fact that so many teams are going so close to the wire and getting points deductions is down to fear of slipping off the gravy train therefore eye watering amounts of money creates eye watering amounts of greed.
For me, a top level footballer should earn a maximum of what a CEO or a doctor would earn.  Why should they be earning that sort of money a week?  And why shouldn’t they get another job after they have retired?
Anyway, the FA Cup used to be a flagship event that everyone used to watch.  Everyone who is around my age will have seen Coventry Vs Tottenham and can probably list a good number of players from each side that day - they were very special occasions.  Now, the competition is dying a death of a thousand cuts, where it’s now just an irritant to the big teams, who will inevitably win it.  I don’t even know who is the current holder, but I think it is monopolised by of a tiny handful of teams.
Anyway, apologies for my rant.

I don't like the smell of the town.
I don't like their online fanbase who despise Derby despite their match attending fanbase being largely made up of Derby fans that couldn't get an away ticket that weekend.
I don't like that love in, especially when we have had to compete with them in the same division over multiple seasons, our fans are effectively helping fund opposition with ticket sales.
I don't like the thought process that because Im a Derby fan I should automatically like, wish their club well or show interest in them. I have zero connection to the town, we have other clubs in Derbyshire that we could help fund that are much lower in the football pyramid.
I don't like their badge or kits, they look more befitting of a Sunday league side than a professional Football League outfit.
I don't like BBC Radio Derby having to cover a Staffordshire team, the coverage should be shared over with Stoke.

Forest having the cheek to criticise Stuart Atwell. What goes around comes around.... 16 years later.

They've beaten you to it...
 

Forest having the cheek to criticise Stuart Atwell. What goes around comes around.... 16 years later.

He's my hero. Saved our club and looks like undoing the bulk of the damage endured under MM in only his second season as owner. Deserves all the plaudits he gets in spades IMO.

Forest having the cheek to criticise Stuart Atwell. What goes around comes around.... 16 years later.

Forest having the cheek to criticise Stuart Atwell. What goes around comes around.... 16 years later.

Forest having the cheek to criticise Stuart Atwell. What goes around comes around.... 16 years later.

As I woke up tired and hungover this morning, I had a thought. While it's always great hearing stories about the glory days of the 70s, the iconic 80s and the fun 90s, there's a whole generation of Derby fans who have only ever known disappointment. I myself had my first season ticket in the 2006/07 Billy Davies season, but I was too young to properly appreciate it.
Since then, it's been a mix of hope, heartbreak and 'nearly' moments. Our generation of supporters have witnessed other clubs' fans celebrating siuccess (sometimes at our expense), but we find it difficult to fathom what it would actually feel like for Derby to ever get over the line.
Yesterday, as I walked back back to the bus with my arm round my mate's shoulder, belting Derby songs at the top of our voices, I had the first taste of what it might feel like to experience success as a Derby fan. This morning, I started making preparations for post-game jaegerbombs and cigars next weekend. And thinking about how I'll be raising a glass to the lad that we all miss. 
We're not over the line yet. But I'm well into dreaming territory. And for us fans who aren't old enough to know glory, it's going to be oh so sweet.
Up the Rams.

I'll be celebrating but my emotions will be more relief that we're out of this absolute pit of a division.

I'll be celebrating but my emotions will be more relief that we're out of this absolute pit of a division.

I'll be celebrating but my emotions will be more relief that we're out of this absolute pit of a division.

I'll be celebrating but my emotions will be more relief that we're out of this absolute pit of a division.

Watching the Bolton game.
 

Watching the Bolton game.
 

Watching the Bolton game.