Bris Vegas

Why do all commentators constantly fawn over Liverpool? Every game they are involved in it’s always the best atmosphere in the world, or the greatest comeback of the season. No other place like it on earth. I used to hate growing up watching Man Utd win every week. But I don’t recall the same nauseating fawning over them. Maybe I just never really picked up on it like I do now. Or maybe SAF had a point when he was so determined to knock them off their perch.

Right on cue Man Utd get thoroughly dominated against one of the better sides. Newcastle were so much better all over the park. Aside from Fernandes, I struggle to see another Man Utd player of any real quality. The guy is a whiner, but I feel for Fernandes playing as he is playing alongside rubbish. Who would Newcastle actually take from Man Utd’s team? They have their own Bruno. Almiron and Gordon are better than Garnacho and the overrated Rashford. Joelinton is better than McTominay. And don’t even start on United’s back five. Dreadful.

You don’t know which way it will go if Forest bin Cooper. Everyone wants to be in the PL so there is a good chance they could replace him with a top foreign manager who gets them playing some decent stuff. There is also a chance the next manager flops and they go down next season. They won’t get relegated with Cooper. But they’ll play crap football and be between 14th and 17th every season. Is that enough for their owner?

We went 6/6 in the Billy Davies season. McClaren went 7/8 in the 2013/14 season, while winning six on the spin in his return after Nigel Pearson. In 2014/15 and 2015/16 after somewhat slow starts we really hit form in November and topped the league around New Year. Both seasons we beat Ipswich away 1-0 around that time too. Throw in Rowett and Lampard where we also surged up the table and late autumn, early winter has mostly been a good time for us. The only one where I can think of the opposite was under Nigel Clough after Kuqi left.

Villa should win the uefa conference league easily. They have such a big advantage over the rest in terms of resources. Most in that competition are Championship and League One standard. The only real competition comes from the 7th or 8th best teams in France (Lille), Germany (Frankfurt), Spain and Italy (Fiorentina). And then England’s 7th best team blows them out of the water in terms of financial resources. I just realized Spain don’t even have a team in it. Osasuna got knocked out in the playoff rounds. England should have a winner in this competition every year. At this rate somebody like Chelsea or Newcastle will be in it next season.

I’m not denying that the EFL vendetta and points deduction relegated us. But they were consequences of Mel’s shenanigans while he was in charge. The entire mess was created by Mel’s ridiculous spending on overpaid, ageing players with no re-sale value. Even if we had survived the 2021/22 season, we were still in a huge mess and it’s questionable where we would have gone from there. You look at the Championship now and there are fresh sides like Plymouth and Coventry who are bottom six. It’s quite possible we would have gone down in 2022/23 or this season anyway as QPR and Sheffield Wednesday look buried already.

Ruining Another Moderate Saturday

Derby are always brilliant in November and December. Under McClaren three times we had brilliant records before a stumble around February. We were too two under Clement and Rowett until after the new year. We were flying under Lampard until Mount’s injury after the new year. And last season under Warne we went about 18 games unbeaten until we lost at Wycombe or someone like that. If you know Derby, then our current form isn’t a surprise. Expect top two by late December. Expect posts of ‘just give us the title now’ before our customary February slump. This season we will get promoted though. The league is dog awful. Warne needs binning if he can’t get us up this year.

The owner chose to no longer finance the club because he had lost a shed load due to poor recruitment. No owner would take over a club just to put them in admin. Clubs go in admin because owners can’t or won’t keep covering the big losses. And clubs occur big losses due to bloated wage bills and poor recruitment.

Even if they went into admin, Chelsea won’t go down. Nobody can sit here and claim Chelsea’s recruitment has been good. They’ve spent £1bn on new players yet sit midtable having lost at home to Forest.

The cancer arguement could have been replaced with anything. Lost a nan to alzheimers. She smoked a lot. That was likely the root cause. There are consequences to everything and there are root causes. Like the big bang. I'll have my beliefs that Derby's current position stems from Mel's 2015/16 splurge. From that moment, I believe everything he did was a consquence of that summer whether it was fighting the EFL, digging his hands deeper in his pockets to try and cover losses, selling the stadium. One error after another. Despite the end of the season drop off in 2014-15, I still saw Derby with a healthy squad in a strong position. We can end it here. We all have our opinions.

You think we made 6 million on Ince and 4 on Vydra? Do you think we were not paying them while they were here? Derby were relegated because Mel didn't pay the bill. Mel didn't pay the bill because he had burned a big hole in his wallet. Mel had burned a big hole in his wallet through poor recruitment.

The club (well Mel) was losing north of 30 million a year and the team was getting worse. Covid obviously tipped him over the edge but it didn't tip the owners of other clubs over the edge. It tipped Mel over because he spaffed a large chunk of his wealth on crap signings and a bloated wage bill. Bad recruitment is the root of it all. A patient dies of cancer and cancer is the cause of death. But the patient gets cancer because of years of smoking like a chimney. So what was the cause of patient's death? Cancer or smoking? One led to the other which led to the final outcome. Derby's final outcome was caused by relegation which was caused by the points deduction. But what caused the points deduction? Poor recruitment. It all goes back to this.

A bill which was caused by poor recruitment. There is no other way around that. All that you mention came as a result of our owner not footing the bill he created by recruiting poorly. He didn't spaff his money away on anything else. The debts increased because the wage bill soared, and the income received from transfers was being dwarfed by the expenditure on transfers. Look at the position Brentford are in. And they did that without the resources Derby could produce from matchday income. Brentford signed young players like Maupay, Watkins, Konsa, Benrahma, Raya, Mepham, Sawyers, Egan, Woods... Literally over 100 million in profit sales while as a Championship club over four seasons. Derby, meanwhile, made a profit on only about four players in the same period. A period where we signed about 50 new players. And the profits on Ince and Vydra were a couple of million each. Recruitment is what has seen Brentford fly, and what has seen Derby fall.

I should probably have written wouldn't. I don't know how much he lost on Derby County (through his own fault so no sympathy from me there) but I doubt he would have been able to continue losing at the same rate. He put himself in a position where he wouldn't continue. And he found himself in that position due to poor recruitment. You can't spend 25 million on a Championship side in one summer and get worse. That can't happen unless you recruit poorly. That summer kicked it all off. Before then, we had a top six squad on a midtable budget. We went from being in a very positiive position to one verging on reckless gambling in 3 months.

The EFL only enforced said rules because Derby under MM were trying to find loopholes around FFP because we had overspent and had gone beyond the accepted profit and sustainability rules. And the reason we went over is because of bad recruitment. Of course the points deduction got us relegated. But there were a series of events that led to the points deduction. And at the very top of the tree is poor recruitment. All the events lead back to the summer of 2015/16. We had a squad of players with a wage bill of around 18 million per year and had finished 3rd and 8th the previous two years. Many recognised the reason we fell away in 2014/15 was a lack of cover for key positions such as Martin, Thorne/Mascarell/Eustace and out wide to improve on the ageing Ward after injuries. So we decided to then spend 25 million plus that summer on a new GK (Carson), RB/Utility (Baird), CB (Shackell and Pearce), midfield (Butterfield and Johnson, neither being holding midfielders), a wide player (Ince) who was probably the only player identified to fit the role needed, and two ST (Bent and Weimann) when we already had Martin and they were completely different moulds. 9 players signed. 25 million spent. And only one of those actually fit into our team and could be deemed an upgrade. That is woeful recruitment and started the trainwreck which culminated in our relegation to League One.

Because MM couldn't continue to pump money into the club to cover the losses occured by.... Drum roll please.... bad recruitment.

Well that isn't what I'm saying, and having good players doesn't always make a good team. I'm pretty sure we went over this when Nigel Pearson was in charge and was playing Will Hughes out of position. Derby are in League One because of bad recruitment. The factors mentioned are consequences of bad recruitment. Clubs don't go into administration off the back of good recruitment. They go into administration because they have overspent on players who don't perform to the standard needed to justify spending such amounts. Spending 40k a week on players like Darren Bent and Curtis Davies wouldn't be an issue if they fired us to promotion. 40k a week is a modest PL wage. But they made us worse. They performed inferiorly to players who were on $15k a week. And they had no resale value.

Chelsea won't go down unless they get a monster points deduction.

I think the evidence is there. No just with Derby. All over. Teams like Man Utd and Everton are classic cases. They are both underachieving and it is entirely down to their recruitment. Barcelona are like a billion pounds in debt and couldn't afford to retain their greatest ever player. Because of poor recruitment. Liverpool won their first league title in 30+ years. Jurgen Klopp played a major role. But even with Jurgen Klopp, they wouldn't have won it if they hadn't recruited players like Robertson, Salah, Alisson and Van Dijk while moving on Coutinho. Almost every football club finds itself where it is as a result of its recruitment. And that's not just players, but also managers, coaching and the recruitment team itself. Derby's best teams since 2000 coincided when the likes of Simon Hunt, Simon Clough and Darren Wassall were working in recruitment roles in the background.

All of these are direct consequences of poor recruitment. We can point to the 2013-14 playoff final defeat and injuries in 2014-15 to key players as unlucky moments. But even the collapse at the back end of 2014-15 was heavily influenced by poor recruitment. We signed players like Darren Bent who was about as far away from a Chris Martin type and it completely altered the way we played. Bournemouth, meanwhile, signed like-for-like Kenweyne Jones as back-up around that same time because they were smarter with their recruitment.

Recruitment is the primary factor. Obviously coaching plays a part, but we have seen poor managers like Nigel Pearson achieve success with quality players. The reason why Derby are in the 3rd division and not the PL is down to recruitment. All other financial incomings and outgoings are fairly constant. The biggest money movers is transfers in, transfers out and wages. Broadcasting deals, sponsors and matchday revenue play a part of course but they ultimately depend on what division the team is in, which is a reflection of the players on the pitch which is a reflection of recruitment. Derby are in the third division because Mel recruited poorly. The team got worse from 2013/14 almost on a yearly basis and the wage bill rocketed. We went from a side who finished 3rd with a £15m wage bill to a side that finished 6th under Rowett and Lampard with a £40m wage bill. That is down to woeful recruitment. Mel was no longer willing to put money in. We were a poor proposition for potential buyers because aside from a few academy kids we had a squad of players devaluing every year while getting worse. Mel then tried to get around FFP which landed us a points penalty, and then put us in admin, leaving us in a position we couldn’t recover from. All because of poor recruitment. If our recruitment was good under Mel, we’d probably be in the PL now and he’d be looked upon fondly.

Yes we are. We are in League One because of recruitment. It is the most important aspect in football. We got hit with points deductions and Mel put us in admin because of poor recruitment. If you can’t see that, then you have your head buried in the ground.

Derby are in this position because of recruitment. Recruitment is what makes teams either successful or not. Clubs that actually use intricate statistical data such as Brighton and Brentford have exceeded expectations because their recruitment has seen them purchase players with huge potential while selling players for big fees to fund their progress. Clubs like Derby meanwhile just saw somebody like Nick Blackman was scoring goals elsewhere and signed him without any thought of why he is scoring goals, what his best position is and how he can fit in to Derby’s current playing style. We broke a club record fee on a player just because he became available hours previously. He wasn’t even a target. We had no idea where he would fit in. Literally an agent just called Derby and said this player is available, and Derby said yes we will buy him. That is why we are in the third division. No plan on recruitment. Just throwing cash around like it’s confetti. We had 5 years of careful recruitment under Nigel Clough ruined in just one summer by Mel. XG in isolation doesn’t mean much. We beat Port Vale. We had an XG of 0.7. All that matters is we scored, they didn’t, 3 points. However, in terms of the bigger picture, statistical data plays a huge role in modern football.

That sort of thinking is why clubs like Derby are in the 3rd division while clubs like Brighton are playing in Europe.