CheshRam

Better than expected to be honest.
We all know what state the squad was in back at the start of July without repeating it, the recruits were better than I initially expected yet I still couldn’t buy into the idea we would walk League 1.
I thought we would be around 17th, 18th now and hopefully starting to look like a team as we near Christmas, best case scenario pushing for a play off place.
Being Derby County, having 2 league titles in the cabinet with an FA cup and 30,000 seater stadium doesn’t count for anything in this league, all my expectations have been based on the situation and the time it takes to build a team. You can sign 22 players in a matter of weeks, ask Cooper, yet building a team on and off the pitch takes time.
To be sat 7th, level on points with 6th, 7pts off top is incredible really in my opinion and if this is the start of the journey, I think we may not be down here for as long as I first feared.

We were nearly without a club 6 or 7 weeks ago. To see us perform to an acceptable level in the first 3 games is superb. We are doing fine. Every game is a challenge. Rosenoir is dragging this club and side out the gutter. Let the snowball get bigger...we are competative..there is the start. 

Absolutely. That ^. 48 hours is a long time in football. It’s tremendous that we’ve attracted 12 signings given where we were 2 weeks ago. If it wasn’t for DC, we’d still be in Admin, and the scrap merchants would be parking their vans in MM’s space outside the front entrance and kicking the Dave McKay statue to assess its scrap value. Seriously. 
Suddenly expectations are ramping up - & there’s the danger. What we need to do is ask what has seen us suddenly attract new life blood and realise it’s the collective unity & positivity and when we’re 0-2 down to OUFC at half-time, re-surface that collective spirit that made the football world think “wow - why the positivity in the midst of melt-down?!”. 
 
The answer is unconditional support. Let’s keep that lesson alive. Remember the calls for invading the pitch? Trashing Middlesbrough? Setting fire to EFL HQ in Preston? Utterly futile and negative. Collective positive support will build belief. Not high expectations followed by disapproval if we don’t achieve it in 10 games. 

I’ve tried multiple times to get three new STs. Each time all is good until after entering card details it says “Payment process was not completed. Click here to try again”. Tried different cards each time but nothing showing on accounts and no email receipt from club. 

Pleased for all of us, but especially pleased for B4...

Let's go out and buy those season tickets as that's the best way to say thank you David Clowes.

DC is the man who has stepped up to save Derby County, providing a short term loan to the club and taking the ground from MM's hands. Let's forget about MA now, he had his chance...
 

The Curtis Davies stance is interesting. During the season I always thought he was respectful to Wayne but more bought into Rosenior. That isn’t me rewriting history and is definitely something I always picked up on. I get the wipe the slate clean mentality but I think there is some continuity value of using these two as a driving force of what was and what could be

Just for the record, I don't know one single Derby fan who uses the term "County", when referring to our football club.
Indeed, from over 4 decades of discussions, banter, and general chit-chat on the subject, I'd venture to say that the vast majority literally hate the term!
Other than that, your posts and opinions are most welcome.  ?

Quick bit of research yields the following:
The combined cash at bank value for all businesses where DAVID CLOWES holds a current appointment equals £30m, a combined total current assets value of £536m with a total current liabilities of £137m and a total current net worth of £346m. My guess would be that while David is the front man, the new owners will effectively be the Clowes family as a whole.
For those already worrying that he / they have insufficient net worth to run a club like Derby, consider the relative wealth of Brentford owner Matthew Benham, a tiny fraction of the Clowes fortune. Consider too that Benham had to borrow £700k to fund the majority shareholding he took when he bought Brentford in 2012. Like Clowes, Benham too, is a lifelong fan of the club he has now established in the Premiership. Not all 'fan-owners' then are of Morris' ilk, so let's be balanced in our thinking. Some may say Benham is an outlier and an anomaly but the facts do not bear out this opinion. My view is rather that he simply adopted a model by which even clubs with modest fan bases can operate without losses AND enjoy success. For interest's sake, some net worth figures for a few Premiership club owners, correct as of 10/2021:
Brentford – Matthew Benham (£3m)
Norwich - Delia Smith and Michael Wynn-Jones (£23m)
Burnley – Mike Garlick (£62m)
Watford – Gino Pozzo (£93m)
Leeds – Andrea Radrizzani (£344m)
If Clowes is successful in his bid, then let's then give the man a chance to show that he intends to run the club in the way it could and should be run. There is absolutely no reason that DCFC can not break even within a few years and then turn a profit from then on. Look at the 30K +++ crowds that turned up towards the end of a post-Covid season with the team nigh on certain to be relegated. There are few clubs in the entire league that would top those numbers and the willingness of the fans to get behind the club, aligned to a measured and analytical approach to recruitment, can prove to be the cornerstones upon which a resurgent Derby County can be built. Our support was the absolute envy of the League last season, despite 3 years of ever gathering gloom and ill conceived hostility from outsiders who chose to hate before they thought. Let's not forget that. Equally, let's be respectful to and supportive of the players who ran through walls for us, even those who now choose move to pastures new. We should be, and I believe most are, grateful for what was a herculean effort from a team where a good few were earning a fraction of the wages they could command elsewhere and all played week in, week out under immense levels of pressure and uncertainty. They gave us all they had and IMO, they now owe us nothing.
Let's also look out for each other; I've tried to remain calm and upbeat throughout the last couple of years as have most, but the strain of the last few months has understandably stretched nerves to breaking point. A lot of us have expressed anger and lashed out and I'm one of them, but the truth is that lashing out at those around the process, or worse still, at other fans, serves literally no purpose. I should know better.
As we now look to the future then, akin to most fans, I suspect, I remain concerned that this may prove yet another false dawn, but this does have a rather different feel about it. We will know by this time next week whether the deal has legs, at which point we can hopefully once again begin to dream about a more positive future for the club, the fans and the wider community. In essence, the healing process can begin. Of course I am hugely biased in my view, but it's something I strongly believe; there is something quite unique and special about this club of ours, even in the darkest of times. They say that it's always darkest before the dawn and I'm sure I can see some narrow slithers of light ahead and this for the first time in several years. Perhaps a bright and beautiful new dawn will follow, perhaps something less than that, but let's try to be present, upbeat and supportive and not simply look to others. We have a huge role to play if we choose to accept it and these next few years could be some of the best in long while if we temper our expectations and rediscover the unity and passion we showed when times were hardest.

Great news. He’s a local business person and supporter who has got a business brain (unlike MM who basically got lucky). He’ll know the Gadsby and Kirkland clans through property interests and should provide us with a much more sure-footed if unspectacular future. I’d settle for a while without any media attention.

Yes I agree. I always felt MM got lucky and didn’t know how to turn a fiver! A proper business brain will have his feet on the floor imo.

Great news. He’s a local business person and supporter who has got a business brain (unlike MM who basically got lucky). He’ll know the Gadsby and Kirkland clans through property interests and should provide us with a much more sure-footed if unspectacular future. I’d settle for a while without any media attention.

This is good news.  If he’s successfully let’s hope he doesn’t let his heart rule his head and puts the right people around him.  I think there’s a difference between MM and DC.  MM has chased the fast buck and got a bit lucky in the IT world.  We saw that in how he ran the club.  DC has built his wealth through progress over time.  I hope he does the same here.
His wealth will still be a lot in L1 terms.  And it’s not all about how much you spend, it’s how you spend it and there’s no finer example than our club.  If his plan is a reset, stick to a plan with no hiring and firing cos the day ends in a Y, aim to get back in the Championship and then after 2 - 3 years sell to someone who can take it on to the next level that sounds very sensible.  It’s what Steve Morgan did at Wolves.

Great news. He’s a local business person and supporter who has got a business brain (unlike MM who basically got lucky). He’ll know the Gadsby and Kirkland clans through property interests and should provide us with a much more sure-footed if unspectacular future. I’d settle for a while without any media attention.

Great news. He’s a local business person and supporter who has got a business brain (unlike MM who basically got lucky). He’ll know the Gadsby and Kirkland clans through property interests and should provide us with a much more sure-footed if unspectacular future. I’d settle for a while without any media attention.

Great news. He’s a local business person and supporter who has got a business brain (unlike MM who basically got lucky). He’ll know the Gadsby and Kirkland clans through property interests and should provide us with a much more sure-footed if unspectacular future. I’d settle for a while without any media attention.

Great news. He’s a local business person and supporter who has got a business brain (unlike MM who basically got lucky). He’ll know the Gadsby and Kirkland clans through property interests and should provide us with a much more sure-footed if unspectacular future. I’d settle for a while without any media attention.

What's really bugging me, an i know it's going over old ground, but when the Boro and Wycombe 'claims' were cited as a major stumbling block in the attempts to sell the club, the EFL refused to get involved to try and mediate a way through.  Now that the new season approaches they are all over it like a rash, claiming they are determined to help us survive, well where were you two faced gits when we needed you before?  

And Delboy Dynamite tries to get on there too.

He gets about 1 in 3 right. Peter Paper and Stephen Scissors are peer comparisons.

Good questions and I would suspect that the EFL don’t know the answers. They want to release the fixture list in two weeks time - that means it has to be ready to go in about 10 days time.  They will have to make a number of quick decisions in that time, prime amongst them do they let us continue or not.  If they let us continue they will first have to be sure that we have a ground, enough money to see us through the whole season and a competitive squad ie not a bunch of 16 year olds. At the moment the money is the problem - there's more time to sort out the others
They could do three fixture lists - one with us in league 1, one in league 2 and one with us not in it at all.  I can’t imagine they really want to do anything other than the first because if they don’t include us then they have to make all sorts of other decisions that will affect the planning of other clubs and they haven’t really got time to do that - they know that any decision other than us being in L1 might be legally challenged creating even more problems. So the first absolute minimum is for us to have an owner or owners with enough money to see us through the season to the already agreed business plan, and a ground.
In EFL eyes, enough money means that the owner plus business plan can pay creditors - football ones to agreed schedules and others to whatever they separately agree.  Presumably some agreements had already been reached with CK.  CK going means that potentially those agreements are open for negotiation again - a new owner might prefer a 25% deal, for example; HMRC might decide that the 50% deal for CK will be 80% for MA.  We can, apparently, start another season still in administration and the fixture list can therefore go ahead whilst negotiations with creditors continue but I would guess that the EFL will only allow that to happen if they are confident about the money being there to fulfill the full season (and the ground) -  they will adapt their rules to allow us to sign players because they have to for us to be competitive. It would be much easier for them and their fixture lists if we stayed in business.
The fixture list pressure helps us I think - it effectively creates a decision point by which the deal has to be done. Or not. And in order to allow the fixture lists to be announced with confidence the EFL have to help, or remove us from the league altogether.  They might well not like us, they might well want us to go away as a problem but politically and practically it would be much better for the EFL if we stayed in business and in L1, even if they have to work out a way of bending some of their rules in the short term to allow that to happen. The only thing the EFL have done consistently well is bend their rules or make up new ones. Perhaps those skills might help us now.

It's like the fat player-manager has come wheezing down from the stand, subbed himself on and taken the captains armband for the last 3 minutes of normal time....... 

My big concern is that because of the way that Quantuma are dealing with this, and the way that all sides seem to be manipulating the media, whoever eventually becomes our owner will walk into a situation where half of the supporter base will be against them.
You only have to look on this forum to look how entrenched the different sides are. Ashley and Kirchner have almost been cast as good against evil, where neither is actually the case.
We need to accept that, quantuma apart, all sides are good and whichever ownership group take over, they have saved our club.
Don't turn this into Brexit 2

Angry emoji face if u hate the Efl...