AutoWindscreens

You beat me to it!

I think we might be giving too much weight to the 'interchangeable fixtures' statement. Given the timing of the announcement of the punishment and the release of fixtures so close to it, the EFL are just covering the bases.
There is an appeal period built in to the decision and, to take advantage of that they either had to plan for a relegation contingency or hold back the entire fixture release for both the Championship and League One.
Just because they have -sensibly - covered the bases does not mean they intend to appeal.

There's still a good possibility that the EFL don't appeal.
They got the judgment yesterday. Presumably they argued for a points deduction, and that is why they had already developed the option of interchangeable fixture lists.
They have the option of an appeal and right now they are thinking of it. If you don't get what you want from a judgment, your first public statement is that you are considering the judgment and considering an appeal. No point in committing yourself either way.
But it doesn't mean that they will appeal, because that will depend on deciding there is a good chance of showing that the DC was too lenient, or got something wrong. When you're talking about punishments, the DC will have a reasonably wide range of possible responses within which the Appeal Panel could not say they were wrong. It may well be that their advice will be that the DC could not really be said to have got it wrong, even if they disagree with it. 
The appeal provisions say: "the Appeal ... shall be limited to a consideration of whether the decision being appealed was in error and the burden of establishing the decision was in error shall rest with the appellant; and ... in the case of appeal against sanction, the grounds are that the original sanction was too severe or too lenient having regard to all the circumstances."
So I actually doubt that in the end the EFL will appeal.
Wishful thinking maybe!

There's still a good possibility that the EFL don't appeal.
They got the judgment yesterday. Presumably they argued for a points deduction, and that is why they had already developed the option of interchangeable fixture lists.
They have the option of an appeal and right now they are thinking of it. If you don't get what you want from a judgment, your first public statement is that you are considering the judgment and considering an appeal. No point in committing yourself either way.
But it doesn't mean that they will appeal, because that will depend on deciding there is a good chance of showing that the DC was too lenient, or got something wrong. When you're talking about punishments, the DC will have a reasonably wide range of possible responses within which the Appeal Panel could not say they were wrong. It may well be that their advice will be that the DC could not really be said to have got it wrong, even if they disagree with it. 
The appeal provisions say: "the Appeal ... shall be limited to a consideration of whether the decision being appealed was in error and the burden of establishing the decision was in error shall rest with the appellant; and ... in the case of appeal against sanction, the grounds are that the original sanction was too severe or too lenient having regard to all the circumstances."
So I actually doubt that in the end the EFL will appeal.
Wishful thinking maybe!

There's still a good possibility that the EFL don't appeal.
They got the judgment yesterday. Presumably they argued for a points deduction, and that is why they had already developed the option of interchangeable fixture lists.
They have the option of an appeal and right now they are thinking of it. If you don't get what you want from a judgment, your first public statement is that you are considering the judgment and considering an appeal. No point in committing yourself either way.
But it doesn't mean that they will appeal, because that will depend on deciding there is a good chance of showing that the DC was too lenient, or got something wrong. When you're talking about punishments, the DC will have a reasonably wide range of possible responses within which the Appeal Panel could not say they were wrong. It may well be that their advice will be that the DC could not really be said to have got it wrong, even if they disagree with it. 
The appeal provisions say: "the Appeal ... shall be limited to a consideration of whether the decision being appealed was in error and the burden of establishing the decision was in error shall rest with the appellant; and ... in the case of appeal against sanction, the grounds are that the original sanction was too severe or too lenient having regard to all the circumstances."
So I actually doubt that in the end the EFL will appeal.
Wishful thinking maybe!

Hey! There's a queue, you know? Get in line.

A lunatic with delusions of being a football manager, and, crucially, a resemblence to a potato?

Have we finally unmasked Barry the Ram? ?

Can we make it "New Improved"? I think that would make everyone feel better.

I sometimes wonder if you actually know anything about football at all!
So that's five players totally out of position... six if you count New, who has only played there 3 times in his entire career, and he's been a pro for 18 years!
I know this is Derby County, and I know this is Wayne Rooney, but even they wouldn't be so useless as to put that bloody team out!
... Having said that, I do like the idea of New playing wide left.  Now that does excite me!  

Brentford's model will be fine for them in the Prem where they have more money to spend. They are planning to spend big money this season. I have no doubt Brentford are smart enough.
What I mean is it will be much harder for a club at Champioship level to find a cheap (i.e. cheap for a Champ budget) foreign player using stats - if they are cheap it's because they are unknown and if they are unknown they won't have the visa points. It is harder for an imitator now to follow the Brentford model from the Championship.

Brentford's model will be fine for them in the Prem where they have more money to spend. They are planning to spend big money this season. I have no doubt Brentford are smart enough.
What I mean is it will be much harder for a club at Champioship level to find a cheap (i.e. cheap for a Champ budget) foreign player using stats - if they are cheap it's because they are unknown and if they are unknown they won't have the visa points. It is harder for an imitator now to follow the Brentford model from the Championship.

on Wendy's problems
As revealed by The Star, Wednesday can still go about signing players on a free transfer and on non-fee loan deals in order to make up a squad of 23 ‘established players’.
 

I can't resist...
Cantona a bad character??? The very opposite.
 
 

Derbyshire! Duck yeah!
Or should that be,
Derbyshire! Yes me duck?
 
 

I don't really disagree with a lot of the points you've made in this. Not all that surprised to see this post after that interview and those Owen Bradley tweets today, but fair is fair. 
He was dealt an awful hand for his first spell in management. He was getting results when Bielik was in the team. He is likely to be able to acquire some pretty decent signings, be that loan or permanent, much akin to Lampard when he was here. I also don't think it's worth dredging up Cocu anymore in regards to Rooney. His time has come and gone now. And expectations will not be wild and disproportionate next season. Or at least, they won't be from me anyway. Mid-table would be just fine.
But does he deserve this job? Does he deserve it?
Based on his 30+ games in charge so far? No. 
Did he deserve it in the first place? I would say no. But that's come and gone now.
Has he kept his job other than anything other to do with the fact that his name is Wayne Rooney and that we are absolutely skint? I don't think so. If his name was Micheal Tonge he would of been shown the door months ago. Well, let's be honest, he wouldn't have even gotten the job in the first place. 
So where do we go from here?
Let's be brutally honest...95% of the fanbase could vote in any poll anywhere you like and it wouldn't matter a jot. He isn't going anywhere. Not under Mel, and certainly not under any new consortium that he may or may not be courting himself.
So therefore, we sort of have to get behind him, don't we? He is going to be here whether we like it or not. Whether he deserves it or not. I personally can't stomach him, the cult of personality he brings with him, nor can I bare watching this club turning into Wayne Rooney FC, which it has been since the day Mel signed him. I don't want to see him as the manager of this football team. But he is.
So, I guess, in essence, I agree with you. A huge part of my initial problem with his appointment was that it wasn't appropriate to hire a rookie in that season, considering the way it had gone. I think I was proved right on that.
But a new season is a chance for a fresh start. He will get a few months, and that will be more than he deserves.

And surely that startling admission (among others) should have worried any Rams fan. First of all it goes without saying that every team is trying to get the points. However, openly admitting that there was no consistent game plan for the majority of a season is surely almost unprecedented by a manager.  That there is a strong positive correlation between a team knowing what it's supposed to be doing every week and results is surely not a controversial statement. 
It's hardly any wonder we saw player's performance go backwards. They were being asked to prepare differently and play differently for every single match. 
We are really lucky we stayed up at all. 

You'll get no push back on that statement......

I think the big thing for me is, the club clearly knew they were doing something a bit unusual. So if I was them, I'd be documenting the hell out of it.  There would be spreadsheets for every player with the values we'd plugged in to get the final figures, with printed and dated copies, the rationale for any oddities (player X is valued at £Ym on transfermarkt but we think he's worth £Zm because...) and so on.  If the club can't produce that, then they've either been sloppy with their record-keeping (bad), they never had a process and made up figures to fit what we needed for the accounts (very bad), or they never did this process at all and invented it post hoc to cover their backsides (very, very bad).  Obviously I hope it's just sloppy record-keeping, but it's an open goal for social-media speculation.

I wasn't sure about this fella in the beginning, but I'm starting to warm to him.

Is it ok for me not to be in favour of either possible outcome?

I hope that means we can consign this photo to history

Just what I've heard. I don't claim to be in the know. 
I've heard this and will pass it on. And what I've heard is Alonso is not taking over this football club.
I have absolutely no idea who is. But it's not going to be Alonso.

With a capital L

The thing that really annoys me, is that at the point he took over, we were a pretty solid, well-run club.  We'd spent a good 5 years getting our house in order under Clough.  Some of the football wasn't the best, but we'd made steady improvements.  I was happy to buy into being a bit rubbish for a while because I could see progress was being made, on and off the field.  And at the end of it, we'd got a young, hungry squad with a lot of good players in it.  The wage bill was relatively sensible for a club our size.  McClaren had then come in and kicked things on a bit without really breaking anything, and you could see a real chance of getting up and staying up.
The spending splurge and rash of managerial appointments when Mel took over ruined every single bit of that progress.  So not only have we wasted the last 5 years under Mel, we've also wasted all of the progress we made in the previous 5 years as well.  Whether we stay up or go down, it feels like we need another 5 years of getting our house in order, and I really don't know if I can be bothered to sit through that again at the moment.