The Key Club King

43 minutes ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

That's true, but I could imagine if DCFC die there might be application to change that, or dispense with until such time as a football club can play there (e.g. changing the use to multipurpose entertainment venue)

 

Pride Park without a football club playing in it would be a huge loss making liability on whoever owns it. Attracting a nomadic rugby club to a disinterested Derby public might be the best thing that could be done with it. 

30 minutes ago, Kooklaram said:

The silence from MSM sports news regarding the whole situation is what makes it more frightening.

This is one of the saddest things about the whole situation. The sports headlines are about Premier League covid game cancellations whilst a founding member of the league could have its existence cancelled. 

If it isn't Premier League, you may as well not exist. 

Anyway, I've got more important things to be concerned about such as Paul Pogba's contract extension. 

8 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

And if we get a better business approach maybe we can sell some players for 'market value' rather than giving them away? Bring back the Seth Johnson type fee deals! ?

We could do with this approach in buying players without a doubt as we've paid a lot for players we end up not being able to give away. I would say that we have generally sold players for decent money in the past 15 years or so as few players have gone on to show they are worth more than we got for them, with Ince and Vydra being standout sales. 

1 minute ago, Jimbo Ram said:

Festy is a young lad, already decent enough Championship player with loads of potential to improve. I think in 3 years he could well be a Premiership player…..

I very much hope you are right and I am wrong. 

18 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

You weren't saying that in your original post. 'Not seemingly knowing what he is doing when attacking' is what you said.

I disagree. However I did not qualify it with whether I thought he'd be a Prem player or better in the future like you've just added.

I think anybody who plays professionally has some idea of what they are doing so I would not take that comment literally. Having skill and making the right choices with it are very different things. 

The OP had mentioned about whether we think our youngsters will establish themselves at Championship level or not and I think it's worth commenting on where we think they'll end up. I suspect that Ebosele will be League 1/2 level. I would also say that any academy product that makes a career as a professional footballer at any level is very successful as most do not. 

11 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

This view is very annoying, he is a skilful football with lots of pace. Too many only see the pace and think the rest is luck.

He is clearly not without skill but using it effectively and making the right choices is what sets quality players apart. He does regularly run into players but he also goes past many and draws fouls and players towards him. I suspect he lacks the composure and decision making ability to make it at the very top as an attacking player. I very much hope I'm wrong and we can argue the toss on this but only time will tell how good he will be. I'll meet you back here in 7 years time and we will see who is right!

Good discussion as we have a tendency to go overboard hyping youth products. I'll qualify my opinion by saying I fully support them all and for those I have doubts I desperately hope to be proved wrong. I will also say I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about and neither does anybody reading this. 

Ebosele - Very exciting to watch. Has the uncanny knack of coming out with the ball despite not seemingly knowing what he is doing when attacking. Think he will be a full-back in future as he defends well and is a great additional attacking threat.

Thompson - Very tidy and energetic. Think he'll be a solid Championship player. 

Plange - Too soon to tell.

Cashin - Even less evidence to go on. Reckless challenge reminds me of Jamie Hanson though. 

Williams - Looks limited going forward, very one-footed, decent defensively. At 18 though I suspect he has been fast-tracked as there is more than meets the eye.

36 minutes ago, Eatonram said:

If his wages aren't affordable how would sacking him and paying up his contract be affordable?

It wouldn't be. We have to hope he gets poached like Lampard and we get a fee and did not have to pay him off (unlikely) or hope that he realises that his wage is unaffordable to a League One club in desperate circumstances and either leaves or takes an enormous pay cut. The ball is totally in his court.   

1 hour ago, Crewton said:

Like others have said, those vultures are not Football Creditors until their claim is validated. If the EFL truly are saying "they have a case" they are going against their own rules and are setting themselves up for a counter claim if a new owner with the chops to do it thinks its worthwhile. 

So much for remaining neutral in inter-club disputes ?

I think it's the validation process that is the problem in terms of delaying the whole process. They will not win against us in court but to delay the sale of the club will do untold damage. I assume that is why the admins are having to negotiate with them. 

2 minutes ago, kash_a_ram_a_ding_dong said:

B)tell them to baalocks or we will never see the end of such opportunistic,speculative claims from every dodgy punter out there.

We can say that, but MFC and WW are positioning themselves as footballer creditors and as long as they are considered this then a package for all creditors cannot be agreed. A case to dismiss this would take far longer than it would take to come out of administration. This is delay tactics that jeopardises our club for no gain at all to anyone other than the egos of other chairman getting one over Mel. As much as I dislike Mel, I struggle to believe that even he would stoop as low to do what Gibson is doing. 

27 minutes ago, Coconut's Beard said:

Except when put under any real pressure when almost without exception he turned into a 3/10.

I liked him as a player in general, but he was made out to be far more important than he was. 

I wouldn't have wanted him for one second towards the end of last season or this, regardless of his passing and even at his peak.

We'd have been better off with a more perfunctory backline as many other had without sacrificing their attacking ability, as soon as the protection of having some of the best teams around him disappeared he reverted to Calamity Keogh.

The trade off really wasn't that beneficial.

I understand that everyone has varying opinions on players and most of us fans don't really know what we are talking about, so I tend to go with manager's opinions. All the managers whilst Keogh was at Derby had him as first choice centre-half and often as captain too. We were a pretty good and very well funded (over-funded as it turned out) team during this period. I personally thought Keogh was a high-level Championship player but can see why others would put him below this level to some extent. However, "Calamity Keogh" and 3/10 every time he was put "under any real pressure" is revisionist character assassination nonsense and totally underserved. If he was as poor as you say why would he be picked ahead of Davies "who bailed him out many times"?

I assume 8 successive managers just didn't have the vision you have to spot such an awful player in plain sight. 

20 minutes ago, Jimbo Ram said:

Nonsense….

Nowadays either a player has to be the worst of all time or (and this is far worse) a club legend. I would argue that there should be only 10 players who get either status. The last legend was Igor, the last worst player is.... Actually I may have to expand that category to include the entirety of the 11 point squad. 

2 hours ago, Dean (hick) Saunders said:

If we can keep Jags & Davies (and there legs have another year left in them) then we should be reasonably tight at the back and then should mean a couple of goals per game should see us winning frequently.

Agree that it won’t be easy to find the two goals, but hopefully we will be a reasonably attractive proposition for quality prem loans..

There are a lot of opportunities there but it will be a big rebuild and we obviously don't know the budget. The major positive is that the wage bill will be far lower than other big clubs have had on relegation to League One. Only Bielik and Jozwiak will be highly paid and I would expect both to leave. Rooney is the main problem with wages and I think we may have to test his loyalty and principles by saying you can stay on if you take an enormous wage cut or you can leave for free. The ball is entirely in his court with this though. 

Assuming we are in League One next year, I would make it a racing certainty that we will not get out in the first year. Players like Bird and Knight will be sold as they have value and frankly we would be holding them back through no fault of their own. Many others are out of contract and will leave for nothing or be sold in January for a tiny fee. We have many youngsters of a decent standard but statistically few of these are likely to be League One standard. That's not a criticism, but more often than not youngsters who look good in the academy and are on the verge of the first team rarely stay at Championship level. 

Notwithstanding these issues, even if we had the same squad as either last season or this season, I would not fancy us to get out of League One. We have been one of the poorest performing teams in the country since soon after the pandemic and I would imagine we are one of the most toothless going forward. 

Given the size of the city and the support we have, it's a given that there would be a phoenix club and it would be the same people going as those that are going now. Weirdly, part of me really likes the idea of starting again at a low level and the sense of community, pride and defiance that this would bring.

A bit like starting over on Championship Manager 01/02 having spent 20 years guiding Scunthorpe to Champions League glory. Completed it, mate.  

8 hours ago, Big Trav said:

I’ll pay for the taxi fare 

You may have to as the club can't afford to.

Good luck to him if he moves. Has had some terrible stick over the years but he is currently just about the best we have. He is a fantastic backup option for a well-funded club and if he's lucky he could get the dream Scott Carson role of being paid really well to travel all over Europe, mingle with some of the best players in football, but without the pressure of actually playing the game.

On 29/11/2021 at 15:19, ramsbottom said:

I can't imagine any footballer signing a contract if that was put in front of them ? Thing is, what alternatives are there??  The story says they need to come up with some, but don't mention any possibles...

I really want to hear what the alternatives are. Taking away parachute payments will certainly have the effect of making it far harder to stay in the Premier League after promotion as the jump in class is hard enough already, but without being able to commit to longer contracts with existing or new players promoted clubs are pretty much doomed. This would create a far more closed shop than exists currently where it is not that difficult to get promoted (we just make it look really, really hard). 

Predicting the success of young players is an absolute minefield. Reading between the lines on players' progression through the academy, the "buzz" generated, and how soon they break into the first team, it's good to look back on our youth products and imagine how good you think they will become. Here's what I thought:

Hughes looked like the best player on the pitch on his debut. I thought he would be a higher level Premier League player and play for England. He has done OK but not as well as I thought. For years our perception of us selling players off on the cheap was based on us valuing Hughes at £20m and selling him for £7m or whatever it was. In turned out to be about the right price.

Hendrick had far less buzz in the youth ranks to my mind and his breakthrough seemed a bit of a surprise when it happened. I was delighted when we got £11m for him but he has had a very good career and justified the price tag at Burnley. 

Bogle seemed like a raw product but very difficult to handle going forward. I think that many though he was underpriced when he was sold too. I never made my mind up how good he may be and I still haven't yet. Still occassionally looks awesome. My current suspicions are that we may have sold him at his peak value.

There are obviously many more than this, but from the current crop I think Knight will have a similar career to Hendrick in the Premier League and I think Bird will be even better than him. Early days with the others, but I don't see Premier League ability, and that should not be taken as an insult. Any player that goes through the academy and goes on to play professionally in the EFL at any level can consider themselves a great success. And I think we will be churning out quite a few professional players over the next few years.

10 hours ago, sunnyhill60 said:

Tripe!

Covid has been the reason for my limited visits to Pride Park, despite having a season ticket. Most of the season ticket holders I have sat with for over 20 years have not been back. They were not moaners or grumblers so keep your bilious judgments to yourself. I'm just hoping they are still alive!

I'd agree that it is not the moaners or grumblers that have disappeared. Our games this season have largely been in a good atmosphere because we have done well and our expectations are lower. This will quickly turn around if we start losing 3 nil at home to Barnsley.

As for Covid, I appreciate that is your reason and it will be the same with others, but this is not reflected at nearly all other clubs. This makes me think that Covid is just a tiny part of it for those that are missing and that it is mostly for other reasons. 

1 hour ago, angieram said:

I think covid has an effect in that it has broken the pattern of regular attendance for many fans. Very few of the people who sat round us have returned since the break. I'm sure they aren't all victims of the virus, but once you get out of the habit of attending you might question why you were still doing it.

Have to say new faces are drifting in to our stand and they are noisier and more engaged with the football - it's fun! 

This is exactly it. It's not the virus itself, it's the habit that's been broken. Some people seem to think they have better things to do than watch a regularly disappointing, average championship team. 

I know I don't! 

I think this is a sore subject for us as we collectively have banged on about having so many fans in the stadium and now we have fewer than Forest and Boro it makes those statements look silly. 

Given that attendances haven't been affected much elsewhere my best guess is that people aren't coming because we aren't that good. At the BBG is was always like this. 

It's a shame really as nearly all the home games have been pretty entertaining this year.

Rooney has said in the past that he instructs the team to play it out from the back and that he knows they will occasionally make mistakes and that he will take the flack for it. 

I'd file this one under "it seems like a daft idea but the manager thinks it's a good idea and I'd hope they know more about the game than I do". 

I understand the debate around Roos but when fans mock and jeer their own keeper at the game it's the dumbest, most counter-productive thing I can think of doing. When a mistake is made, that is when a keeper needs supporting the most. 

Body language and price tags are so important in peoples' perception of players but it can often lead to false impressions. The best way to judge a player's ability is on appearances, whether multiple managers play them, who is interested in them when they might leave, and what other players say about them. Tom is generally first choice under God knows how many managers he has played under and there is a lot of clubs sniffing around him now. Making him captain seemingly makes little sense, yet the spirit of the team has been the best I've seen it for several years. Now this may be a coincidence, but if Davies/Shinnie/Jagielka were captain we would be lauding their leadership skills.

Steve McManaman had terrible body language and was widely disliked when playing for England yet he is one of few British players that were very successful abroad in the past 30 years. Probably our second best export in that time behind Gareth Bale.