Carl Sagan

Drinks break. Very hot.

We don't have enough of an "out ball". Much of the time we look OK playing across the back, but there's no forward option to take the ball and get us up the pitch.

4 minutes ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

We look far more like the top-4 premier league side.

Much the case. Good start, playing "Euros"-style football. Had a spell of pressure including Byrne crossing from the left (after a corner) and picking out Davies unmarked who headed across the goal, but no one was there to finish. 

Very very very early days but there's still a hint of being goal shy about us, unwilling to bust a gut to get in the box or to break the line and charge forward. I was hoping that would be a key thing we'd try to change in pre-season. But 16 minutes in we've looked the better team.

I wrote this and then we concede a goal with Bird giving the ball away in our penalty area after someone else (Buchanan?) gave the ball away moments with a crazy back pass to put us under pressure. The goal from Chong was handball but there's no VAR in the Championship. Very very sloppy.

Build the team around Louie Sibley and look at him set the league alight. Hopefully Jack Stretton to bag lots of goals too. 

[Sadly Rooney won't play either of them]

We cannot go on as we have been. It's a good question but I didn't vote in the poll as the only things that will satisfy me are a transition to acceptable new owners, the club on a decent financial footing and an end to the EFL pursuit of us. 

Football is so much about confidence and momentum. On the field it is possible for us to be fine because we do have some talented players if they step up, but we need for once to get off to a good start. The situation the club finds itself in is so dark, if we don't begin well I don't see us getting out of it.

5 hours ago, Jourdan said:

Baldock in attack? Jagielka at the back? Lawrence as captain? Rooney, Rosenior, and the magic clipboard? A kit that says Bolton Wanderers tribute act?

I can only see promotion and anything less would be a disappointment of immeasurable proportions.

On 14/07/2021 at 18:49, Charlotte Ram said:

https://dealstream.com/d/biz-sale/sports-teams/gl3yb8

Great spot. Even if it's deeply depressing.

17 minutes ago, cosmic said:

I love the comments under that tweet. "Bad news for the working class", like bank accounts and debit cards are a new invention for the elite.

The issue is that if all money is electronic, the Government or the banks can end your access to it or dictate how you're allowed to spend it. That's why cash has its uses and one reason why cryptocurrencies were invented.

No surprise this is happening at Pride Park as the year we've had has accelerated the change, but it makes me think about the notion mentioned elsewhere of specific cryptocurrencies for clubs and if this could be a way of investing in DCFC and the local area.

Given IIRC the official documents around the Derby case mentioned Middlesboro and their representations, I hope the Boro guy officially exempts himself from any formal discussion of our accounts by the League because of having a vested interest. Of course it won't happen because the EFL is clearly not fit for purpose. 

I said in the Morrison thread we were gambling in the last-chance saloon. Now we're going all in.

9 minutes ago, Dean (hick) Saunders said:

====CORNER FLAG====
DCFC Welcomes back Kevin Poole as goalkeeper coach and backup keeper.

Kevin says “I am looking forward to working with David Marshall for next year and pushing him hard for the gloves. Young Roos I think has great potential but is best served with a loan spell which I am confident of arranging with my many contracts in the game”

Shay Given moved on from goalkeeping coach to becoming one of our myriad other coaches, hence having people like Poole in as well, though I thought Jason Pearcey had the top goalkeeping role. I presume Given is still with us.

This shows how completely desperate we are as a club, without a pot to piss in and gambling in the last-chance saloon.

We've been linked with him over the years and I've always been pleased we've never been so at rock bottom we've gone for him. I can no longer say that.

If wishes were wings, pigs would fly. In this case it won't end well.

3 hours ago, G STAR RAM said:

Because football is played on a pitch, not a computer is probably the most realistic answer to this question.

I don't think it is, because the point of coaching penalties is to take the nerves and occasion out of the equation and go through a routine instead. It has seemed to me in recent years that Derby have actually done this well in shootouts. The quality of our pens in the shootouts against Man Utd and Southampton was extraordinary.

Edit: I should add that Southgate has done extraordinarily well in the last two tournaments and exceeded expectations, and England must be among the strong favourites for the World Cup. But I worry we're not maximizing our chances. At least the conditions will dictate he has to use all his subs in Qatar, so he needs to plan better for that from now on. The Eddie Jones mantra of "starters" and "finishers" should be brought into the squad.

2 hours ago, DCFClks said:

The fact he didn't bring players on sooner possibly cost us the game. Italy changed formation and Southgate didn't have an answer. The worst thing is the match played out almost exactly the same as the Croatia semi-final. The game was there for England to win but he decided to try and hold on to a 1-0 for 45mins and it was the wrong decision, I wish it wasn't but it just was.

This is exactly right. At half-time I was pointing out the Croatia comparison. I also remembered the Euro 96 semifinal defeat where Ruud Gullit pointed out that England "scored too early" and it was the same all over again. Of course you want to score at any point, but if that goal come in the first couple of minutes you cannot defend for the rest of the game.

I criticized Rooney heavily last season for never using subs when there were five at his disposal, but the counter argument with some validity was that he had a very weak bench. That does not hold with Southgate. It's a failure of coaching not to use all the players at your disposal in an era when such high athleticism and fitness levels are required. And England had the acknowledged strongest bench in the tournament.

The penalties were also a failure on the coaching side. The sports science is that you gain the best chance of winning the shootout by putting your best penalty takers later in the shootout. We must think Kane is our best penalty taker as he's the designated person during the game, yet he went first. What was Southgate thinking? Also, the best penalty according to the science is blasted into the top corner, which is unsaveable (sp?), like Harry Maguire's. This is what we should have practised for hour after hour over the last month. How come we hit three soft penalties instead, none of them being scored?

I've posted a lot on here about how Elon Musk is working towards a future for Humanity among the stars and is building his Starship factory in Texas. Meanwhile Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos are in a spat about their space tourism businesses, which would take people to the edge of space for up to four minutes, to get a taste of it.

Bezos has a company called Blue Origin (founded before SpaceX but which has never reached orbit with anything) and they have a little rocket called New Shepard that is going to fly the Amazon founder and three others to 105km altitude on 20th July. It's flown 15 times before without people on board for test flights and does look pretty safe.

Desperate to beat him, Branson has moved his own flight in Virgin Galactic forward to today. You can watch this afternoon on https://www.virgingalactic.com/. Branson's rocket has flown only flown three times, but with test pilots. That's since the previous one blew up seven years ago killing one test pilot and leaving the other with horrendous injuries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VSS_Enterprise_crash

Bezos's Blue Origin posted a very bitchy graphic a couple of days ago claiming Branson isn't really going into space:

The problem for both Bezos and Branson is that they have a very short window to make money out of this. SpaceX already flies people to the International Space Station and later this year start sending people on three-day space trips high in orbit, rather than four minutes in low-Earth orbit of the other two. Plus once Starship is ready you'll be able to buy a return ticket to Mars for the same price as the Branson/Bezos flights. Starship will be ready soon, and the launch cadence of the other two companies is so slow they will lose their market before they've had much chance to profit from it. Long before Mars, SpaceX will have regular flights around the Earth and also around the Moon for real space tourists.

Elon Musk would love to go into space, but if something went wrong and he died then SpaceX might not continue its (highly unprofitable) mission to build a Human city on Mars, so he's said he's not prepared to take the risk.

This is quite neat, showing radar imagery from satellites as the eruption has developed. If you follow the link through to the BBC page there's a fuller video:

If there is an (unspoken) agreement that the EFL will accept the new accounts when resubmitted and drop their vendetta against the club, then this is just about an OK price to be paid for that. But if no such agreement is in place, then this is ridiculous. And should have been contested.

I have become comfortably numb. It's the only way of dealing with it.

3 hours ago, Ken Tram said:

I can see why it looks like that - seeking points deductions -and interchangeable fixtures -and being disappointed - and wanting a harsher punishment than justified by the evidence ...

But! How is it too the advantage of the EFL, for a club like Derby to be relegated to League 1?

Do the EFL Board think that English football clubs might benefit from the publicity surrounding a relegation?

Do the EFL Board think that Derby's actions have undermined English football and the other clubs?

A popular narrative is that the EFL Board is acting vindictively because Derby's Board is seen as precocious.

In every organization there is politicking and people make decisions for their own reasons and not for the good of the organization. My take is that there appears a clear hated of Derby within the EFL, perhaps because Mel led the attempt to breakaway on TV rights and has publicly shamed the EFL for their ineptitude when negotiating media deals. It's become irrational. 

No launches for a while because, after a successful high-altitude Starship flight, SpaceX has been preparing for an orbital attempt. For that they have needed to build the orbital launchpad and launch tower, and the first Super Heavy boosters. 

The Mars rocket is fully reusable in two stages, the Super Heavy booster with Starship sitting on top of it. The booster will return to the launch site in Texas and, rather than landing, will be caught by the launch tower!

The first booster (designated Booster 3) has now rolled out to a test pad to check different elements. Here it is en route:

This one won't fly. But Booster 4, I think with Starship SN20 atop of it, will attempt an orbital test flight in the next couple of months. 

You might have heard that Amazon's Jeff Bezos plans to go "to space" on 20th July (and Richard Branson on 11th). Here's the SpaceX rocket to scale alongside Bezos's Blue Origin rocket (and the SpaceX Falcon 9 and Saturn V moon rocket):

When you see what SpaceX is doing versus the Saturn V, and that it will be reusable, and that it is designed to carry 100 tonnes into orbit, the scale of the ambition becomes clearer.

10 hours ago, oldtimeram said:

All this EFL fiasco has done my head in.  Has their decision not to appeal mean that the embargo has now been lifted?

No chance. EFL are determined to see us down to League One and won't consider lifting the embargo until after we resubmit the accounts, but at that point regardless of whether the accounts comply or not they will charge us and claim they do not, and go all out for a 12 point penalty. We will appeal but we know that will take up the first two windows so we will not be able to sign anyone other than loans/free and low wages all season, and then the EFL will determine on an ad hoc basis how many new players we're allowed.

My take is the EFL is clearly not fit for purpose, but that doesn't help us. It does not look good!

Couldn't see this commented elsewhere. Apparently according to The Athletic, Callum Minkley chose not to renew with us because we wouldn't promote him to the senior squad for next season. https://www.derbycounty.news/transfers/report-Derby-youngster-callum-minkley-rejects-contract-offer-will-leave-club/

He's 20 and many will say centre backs develop late, but I don't believe that. We've had a few promising players in that position the last few years, but haven't brought them through. Interesting to see if/where he ends up.

On 06/06/2021 at 11:31, cstand said:

If Derby had a token like BAR would you not not have to buy Etherium first to purchase a Derby token? Also it would have to be stored in a secure wallet with a password which if ever lost the token would be lost for ever so could not be sold or transferred to a family member.?

You don't need to buy Ethereum to buy tokens. The cleverness of the Ethereum blockchain is that it was designed for all this kind of stuff to be built on top of it. It's brilliant to see @loweman2's examples of fan tokens from 40 years ago, and it's a brilliant development that these can now be done through blockchains and decentralized technologies.

You're right that if you lose a hard wallet you have lost your tokens. As cryptos become more commonplace, people are coming to realize the importance of secure wallets and remembering the details (eg the tale of hundreds of millions of pounds worth of Bitcoin in a council dump). I've given various people crypto wallets and designed the security in such a way it won't be forgotten. But if I told you what that was, I'd have to kill you! :D

37 minutes ago, David said:

Young lad, moving to a different country for the first time, not the greatest of situations. Can’t be too hard on him. 

Plus people talk about fine margins. Imagine the fillip had his winning goal in the local Derby stood as it should have done? That could have made all the difference to him, and even to our season.

But David's right it was a tough baptism coming to this Derby side. And then your best mate re-does his ACL and is out of the side.

4 hours ago, Ghost of Clough said:

Bizarre that Marriott's extension was withdrawn by the EFL. Would love to hear more on that one.

Massively surprised with the U23s. I felt Foster had a serious chance of being our first choice keeper in a couple of years, and Shonibare could have been a useful squad option for the first team. I also expected Idem to stay on to compete with Foster as the 3rd choice GK.
Also surprised we've left it so late to tie Festy and Archie to new deals.

Brutal. I feel it's the very minimum that could have been expected, and I thought Shonibare would defo stay on. It's so tricky for keepers because we need some for every team but there's only one place in the main starting lineup and one on the bench. I'm surprised we're discussing a contract with Ravas. Personally I would not offer new contracts to any of the out-of-contract players. A shame when I think Marriott has incredible ability, but there's something wrong. 

2 hours ago, ilkleyram said:

In and amongst all the chatter about prospective first team performance perhaps we ought to spare a thought for those under 23s that aren't having their contracts renewed.  Whenever I've watched them play a feature of the 23s has been their commitment to themselves, the club and their teammates. It's a tough world the football game and being very publicly told that 'you're not good enough' at the age of 20 odd must be very hard, especially at a time when hundreds of others are being told the same thing, when all you've dreamt of being is a footballer. This retained list is the public affirmation of something they've probably known for a while.  I guess it can't be easy for Darren Wassall (particularly given the decision about Ethan) and his team either.

It also adds to the feeling that having an artificial age limit makes it even more ruthless.  Why 23?  Some may not develop as people and footballers until they're 25.  At least with the old reserve team football you could allow someone to 'make it' that little bit later

Very true, and you feel for them all for having come so far. But as we've seen, some will still have a future in the game.  We've picked up players from other clubs and some of these will move in. I do feel for the Wassall household as that must have been a tough discussion. 

But I disagree about 23 being a weird cutoff. That seems late to me nowadays. If you've not made it sufficiently by then it must be very rare to make it by 25.

At least some decisions are being made. We need the EFL appeal resolved very quickly and, following on from that, the ownership. Otherwise we are in trouble. I was going to put a bet on us for relegation a few days ago but the odds aren't published yet. But unless things turnaround, that has to be likely.

Very pleased for Sterling to get an early goal in the tournament as his confidence looked shot before then. Could make all the difference. Walker was dreadful and I find it extraordinary Southgate plays him when we have such good full backs. I'd have Trippier right and Chilwell left, but even Trippier and Shaw would be a massive improvement.

Mount oozes class. Phillips typical dirty Leeds but their players are immune from bookings. We seemed to refuse to play down the right, always looking to come down the left-hand side. And, much like Derby, we don't really know how to play out from the back. There was one crazy moment in the second half when Pickford decided to take a long goal kick, but instead of the fullbacks short and wide, drawing the Croatian players on so the long kick would be a surprise and stretch our opponents, he sent them away upfield and condensed the game!

But a tremendous boost to win the first game and against such strong opponents. A decent performance with room for improvement, which is exactly what you want in the early stages of a long tournament.