RodleyRam

4 hours ago, kevinhectoring said:

But I explicitly said that the two criteria most sought after in the perfect owner are dosh and good governance     The fact we want both of those things (and a few more) is good reason to start looking sooner rather than later. We have seen what damage can be caused by a hurried process to find a new owner 

I understand the point but the last 'hurried' sale was from a position of total fragility hence why it went to s*** multiple times. We were a basket case attracting basket cases or a white knight, fortunately we got the latter. There's a fine line between success and failure, boom and bust. I guess I'm happy with us being boring for a bit and being run properly before we seek the next billionaire who gambles the club we love for a shot at the big time.

With DC I would argue we have a long way to go to out ourselves into a position of strength to sell and we should be inwardly focussed by building our own sustainability etc.

Once we are in that place, a buyer can add value. I don't see us being in that place for two years at least and if we are sustainably run and an attractive proposition in our own right then we should have the pick of suitors.

I accept at some point we will sell, I just think openly planning for it right now would be a sign of desperation but that's just my gut response. I think I have just had enough of all that drama, I am happy with the status quo and a period of stability. A future sale should happen because it's the right decision for the club long term rather than something we're desperately seeking to do right now. 

9 hours ago, kevinhectoring said:

DC has been perfect for restoring the culture of the club. We needed that 

His family fortune - low hundreds of millions - might be enough. But it’s low for top club owners and here’s the problem. It’s not a fortune made by him. He’s a second generation custodian of it. So he will not spend with ambition. We saw this last summer. We might see it in January. The stated 5 year plan certainly shows only very modest ambition. I’d think that bar a catastrophic run of results, any move to sack Warne is unlikely simply because of the cost. And when we gain promotion I fear we will not even begin to compete with the parachute brigade - not under DC. 
 

Plenty of fans on here are saying: money doesn’t matter, success is more about player recruitment and good football management. Well of course those things matter too, but history and common sense indicate money certainly matters greatly. ( I think many of those fans might actually be saying they wish it didn’t matter so much; and I’m with them on that.)

The reason focus is needed is that our glory days are behind us: if we languish in this div for long, and we could, we become a div 1 club. Our gates shrink and our grand old club becomes a decrepit grand hotel on the seafront of a fading seaside town. And with the rise of the Asian billionaires, more and more of the clubs we are competing with are owned by seriously wealthy people, who will spend and some of who will be successful.
 

It’s not ‘disingenuous’ to say that many of our fans don’t care about that perfect owner. You have a bundle of posts above this one where people say: why should Clowes look for a wealthy owner when money doesn’t matter ; and why do we need a wealthy owner when all I want is a club to support ?

Who is that perfect owner? I have said that I reckon the owner most likely to bring ambition and good governance would be a US sports franchise owner or possibly a long term US institutional investor (like Birmingham’s owner). An institutional investor with a shorter investment horizon (eg a private equity fund) would be less ideal. That said, there would be Asian and other billionaires out there who could take us to the top, but that’s a much more high risk owner. I certainly think you want a single person or entity in control. 
 

Perhaps some soft marketing of the club is on-going, who knows? Some posters seem to think so
 

Finding the right owner for the long term needs planning and care - it’s a hard thing to do and it matters. I hope someone is getting on with it 

I think you can understand why so many fans don't really want to think about the next owner and will want to avoid an 'ambitious' billionaire who just throws money at the club though. Been there, done that, got the points deduction.

There are as many, if not more, pitfalls of having a club that suddenly has an epic injection of cash. Lots of clubs have landed themselves in a mess as a result of this, and money doesn't necessarily buy success at all, there are as many examples of things going tits up as there are of Champions League trophies.

The whole fabric of the club changes, the culture gets thrown out of the window and decisions are made seemingly based for PR rather than football reasons. You only have to look at Birmingham for an example of that, there are many more where everything that came before gets thrown out of the window just because someone is willing to throw some money around on players.

I don't disagree that DC will want to sell at some point but given that his stated values include integrity and sustainability, I would seriously hope that the eventual sale will be done with utmost care to retain the stability and culture of the club that he will have built from the ground up.

I don't think you should be surprised that loads of us don't really want to engage with any club ownership chat at the moment. We should know more than most how chasing the dream can come crashing down so I for one hope that DC is with us for a good few years before we get back into the circus tent.

Rams 0 - 1 Wycombe

Sucker punch

28 minutes ago, Ian Buxton's Bat said:

It looks like I struck a chord with the opening post and I'm very pleasantly surprised that it kicked of a bit of an 'Arguers Anonymous' therapy session, with several posters being honest and contrite enough to hold their hands up and admit to getting drawn into personal spats.

On the evidence of this thread, most of the members of Arguers Anonymous are not your archetypal keyboard warrior but seem like Rams-mad, articulate, intelligent people who on occasions let themselves go a bit too far. It gives me hope it can become largely self-regulating.

I don't want to leave the forum and I'm reluctant to use 'ignore' as many of the things that irk me are good points made in a poor way - but I'd like it to be a bit more footy focused and a bit more civil and I sort of get the impression that several self-confessed arguers would like the same - without losing the core element of the forum........opinions, debate, humour and camaraderie.

I don't understand computer coding so no idea if I'm asking for a 2 minute fix or 2 years of hard work but could we add something like B4's panda profile pick to the emoji list so that anyone can, very politely, give a bit of a 'could you have made your (often completely valid) point in a less provocative way' nudge?.......i.e. be a bit more B4

I think mostly it's good humoured on here and people step back from the precipice when they need to, not always! I think the worst thing is the same old repeated points and point scoring back and forth but if you really look at it, there are a minority of posters on different sides of the argument who are 'guilty' of this. It's annoying and negative but if you skip past the times when it degenerates into that kind of pettiness, the forum is a really funny, generous place full of decent folk from many walks is life who have the Rams in common. 

I like the idea of the B4 emoji but think we have to be careful that we don't accidentally cause angst by using it as another tool to point score. For me 'be more B4' is about challenging ourselves to pause for a couple of moments and think about whether a different and more positive outlook might shift one's own mindset and in doing so encourage others do do the same. His positivity was infectious and if we all took that outlook into our core just a tiny bit, it would change the atmosphere when things start to get negative.

I think it's a really important OP and fair play for raising it as lots of us think it and disengage from some thing we enjoy when threads descend into tired old squabbles. We are all on the same side at the end of the day, we should remember that.

Thanks for the analysis on this.

I think most of us would say we started slowly and are now accelerating. If we can maintain the kind of form in more recent months, then we should be looking to improve on our average PPG so far. However, whilst many have said it's a weaker league, the gritty relentlessness of L1 will always throw up disappointing results and dips in form. We have to bounce back from disappointment better than last season.

I stand by my pre-season prediction of a play off spot, which I think would be a decent season. I really don't buy into the 'anything less than promotion is a failure' narrative. Anything beyond playoffs is within our capability but I would see as a happy bonus.

Quite a lot of chatter about Warne's comments about players. Are they jokes? Is it a bit of leg pulling? Is it passive aggressive? Does it point to something more toxic? 

Personally I don't see any issue with it but I get that it's not everyone's pint of Bovril. I think it points to a closeness with the players and a confidence and trust that they won't go on strike off the back of some ironic comments. He extracts the urine out of himself as much as anyone else, it's just who he is.

If the players take offense to this, I would be very surprised and I imagine they probably bounce off it as a group.

On to Warne and the improving Derby County... Like most of the pro-Warne camp I've expressed concerns about certain things we were doing that seemed to make little sense. About 5 games ago I was feeling really frustrated and I think I said I wanted to see an improvement over the next 5 games or I would be joining the ranks of serious doubters. 

As it stands we have improved with more consistency and another gear or two to go. I hope we can take that into the next 5 games, which will be tougher tests. We seem to have found different ways to win, a trait which is needed in a good promotion challenge. Hopefully we go into 2024 looking down the table beating off the chasing pack with some strong performances. Oh and let's not capitulate in February like we do every other year...

The last time we were good at recruitment under Nigel, we had almost no non-UK and Ireland based players.

As much as I love the prospect of unearthing exciting talent from the Moroccan Premier League, I just don't think it's particularly feasible at this level unless you invest heavily in scouting.

Probably the area we'll have the most return on investment will be poaching players from others' academies and carefully selecting premier league academy cast offs...

Reckon we'll win this if we stick Djiboutin

COYR - B4's black, white and pink army!

Orient 1 - 1 Rams

Birdy

Why don't they just given us the trophy now ey @David

That kind of misplaced confidence never screwed us over before...

1 hour ago, CongletonRam said:

Probably because the manager who is able to monitor them in training day in day out and get regular reports on their progress doesn't think they're quite ready.

Why beat the manager for this? Do you know something he doesn't?

I don't think you should read into my post anything about 'beating' the manager. Despite some legitimate concerns, I've been broadly supportive of Warne and confident that things are clicking into place.

I like to see our young players given opportunities to get on the pitch. The little I have seen of Weston and Fapatu in particular would suggest that they're ready in the right conditions.

You know, like a game where there isn't much at stake and we've gone 2 - 0 up with 15 mins to go and a high probability of victory. How else are they going to learn and develop?

Perfect opportunity to give the youngsters some game time. I don't quite get why we don't give them some experience

I'm so glad this happened after he left us. We have way too many idiotic incidents involving our players and traffic violations already. 

Rams 2 - 1 Mac 

FRGS Wilson

Only Portsmouth and ourselves winning in the top 6 at this point. If it's stays like this... It'll be a good night.

Really enjoyed reading the doom merchants festering negativity in posts just before JJ scores.

Be more B4 you miserable Bamfords, at least we're not playing in pink.

PV 0 - 2 Rams

FRGS Waggy

Two goals on the break. Scrappy Doo.

20 hours ago, B4’s Sister said:

This will be only the second away match I have been to! Look forward to meeting everyone who will be going. I’ve met a few already. What do we reckon the score will be? Who’s taking a flange 🤣

I'm absolutely loving this role for you Claire. Let's hope winner stays on for a lengthy run!

I'm more of a scrave man personally, I fear my flange days are behind me.

COYR

Rams 2 - 0 Brizzle

FRGS Collins

Such sad news. His posts made me smile and picked us all up on so many occasions.

I hope he and his family know just how much he was loved and by so many.

A true believer, we could all do with being a bit more B4.

Come on Derby, up the football league we go in his honour.

1 hour ago, Eddie said:

It's all about perspective, and whether you are a

person or a 

person.

Vodka or gin?

I don't see how that had much bearing...

Screw it. My last tongue in cheek prediction got full marks.

Rams 4 - 2 Barnsleh

FRGS Hourihane 

38 minutes ago, kevinhectoring said:

First thing I heard him say about Bird was that, when he met him, he was surprised how big he was. Sure, Bird might have thought nothing of it at all. Or he might have thought ‘Jesus he’s telling the world he’s looked at the tapes and thinks I play like a wimp’. Careless personal comment. The McGoldrick comment was the most concerning, because if I recall correctly there was just a suggestion Didzy was faking injury. Did Didzy just shrug it off? Maybe. Did he even hear it, who knows? But: careless, careless, careless.  The description of his conversation with Bird about a possible transfer made me cringe, because Warne managed to give the impression that Bird’s loyalty to the club was paper thin, that he didn’t care whether he stayed or left. ‘Belittle’ is too narrow - I just mean anything that could lead a player to take the hump.  
As I said about 6 posts ago, I think he’s come to understand he needs a clutch between his ego and his brain

Whether fans always hear these comments is not the point. The point is: players in common with most human beings listen very carefully to what their bosses say about them, especially if it’s said in public, and they are often proud, paranoid, prickly and prone to petulance. The best managers know how to use the microphone to motivate their men 

Wow. Way to make a mountain out of a molehill.

How wise of you to completely ignore the overwhelming body of evidence to suggest that man management is one of his better attributes and the multitude of comments from Warne which heap praise on his players, their characters and commitment etc.

He has faults enough without needing to make s*** up!!

I thought Crewe played very well for the kind of performance they set out to deliver. They were hard to break down and made their limited possession count. They made it very difficult for us to convert our possession into clear cut chances, it was a classic cup performance, fair play to them.

However, no-one can say that we didn't dominate the game and deserved at least a draw.

I can see signs that our play is adapting and we are improving but the overall performances need to be more consistent and we need to make sure that we utilise the better players in the squad to best effect. Lots of us have been saying this for some time so hopefully it's starting to click.

I agree with the comments on crosses, they have a role in our game but the movement in the front players needs to create gaps to play the ball through the middle or round the sides as well as crossing from deeper. I assume that Warne likes crosses for percentage purposes with the intention that more players are in the box for knock downs and second balls. I can see the merit but it leaves a lot to chance and I would personally rather we were more creative (which I have seen more of in the last few matches to be fair)

Overall, it was a decent performance and anyone suggesting different want watching the same game that I was. We did not deserve to lose. Hopefully the spirit we showed at the end can propel us forwards.

Rams 4 - 0 Northampton

FRGS Bird

Steven (just coming!) 1 - 1 Rams

Washington