jono

It’s such a strange thing, the whole sense of being a fan. Why do we do it.
I’ve told this tale before but it’s worth telling because this post makes a good point.
I never much liked Football as a kid, sure I knocked a ball in the garden but I liked cars, engines and motor sport … because that was what my Dad was in to.
My Grandad was a football man. He took my younger brother to Old Trafford every week.. then one day when I was about 15-16 my brother was ill .. I went instead. I was sold and in love way before kickoff, 2nd division  .. but that noise, the passion, the songs .. Then I lived through a time for the next 5 or 6 years when going to home games .. the win rate was like 70% . God I was on a role .. this was fun. Granddad got older, season tickets got expensive, girlfriends came along and I lost football ( Then 20 years on I moved to Derby.. sure I checked the papers, watched the TV, loved the treble season but it was as a plastic half fan. Not a glory hunter, I was a long time fan after all wasn’t I ? 
Odd game at pride park over the next 15 years and then Season ticket on a whim in 2014 .. Talk about born again. What had I been missing ! .. This was what I remembered football was all about. Thanks Mac ! 
Thing is I always made a once a year visit back to OT .. but it got worse and worse every time I went. Didn’t know the players, didn’t “feel” it. It was like an expensive Macdonalds .. so artificial, “match day experience” portion controlled, branded. 
 
I never understood what “triumph and disaster” meant until DCFC came a long .. god I love you, thank you Derby, now I really know ? .. league 1 league 2 .. whatever .. don’t care. It’s magic and exactly what I felt 50+ years ago. I see the same faces every game, they don’t know me, I don’t know them, but we know each other and we want the same thing. We wake up on Sunday after a win with a little smirk on our face, we get a little flutter when we set off for the ground on Saturday, you nod at the guys sitting near you even though you don’t know their names, only have that one thing in common. you laugh cry  banter and it means something .You can’t do that in the higher reaches of the prem .. it’s an artificial  money machine with football as the wall paper using our PIN numbers to make it work. Fans of the big clubs are a product to be milked. Fans of clubs like Derby are football and what it was always meant to be. It won’t die .. it will simply move down the leagues while the premier league becomes an investment commodity  like pork bellies or soya bean futures..good luck to them, I am not buying.
 
 

It’s such a strange thing, the whole sense of being a fan. Why do we do it.
I’ve told this tale before but it’s worth telling because this post makes a good point.
I never much liked Football as a kid, sure I knocked a ball in the garden but I liked cars, engines and motor sport … because that was what my Dad was in to.
My Grandad was a football man. He took my younger brother to Old Trafford every week.. then one day when I was about 15-16 my brother was ill .. I went instead. I was sold and in love way before kickoff, 2nd division  .. but that noise, the passion, the songs .. Then I lived through a time for the next 5 or 6 years when going to home games .. the win rate was like 70% . God I was on a role .. this was fun. Granddad got older, season tickets got expensive, girlfriends came along and I lost football ( Then 20 years on I moved to Derby.. sure I checked the papers, watched the TV, loved the treble season but it was as a plastic half fan. Not a glory hunter, I was a long time fan after all wasn’t I ? 
Odd game at pride park over the next 15 years and then Season ticket on a whim in 2014 .. Talk about born again. What had I been missing ! .. This was what I remembered football was all about. Thanks Mac ! 
Thing is I always made a once a year visit back to OT .. but it got worse and worse every time I went. Didn’t know the players, didn’t “feel” it. It was like an expensive Macdonalds .. so artificial, “match day experience” portion controlled, branded. 
 
I never understood what “triumph and disaster” meant until DCFC came a long .. god I love you, thank you Derby, now I really know ? .. league 1 league 2 .. whatever .. don’t care. It’s magic and exactly what I felt 50+ years ago. I see the same faces every game, they don’t know me, I don’t know them, but we know each other and we want the same thing. We wake up on Sunday after a win with a little smirk on our face, we get a little flutter when we set off for the ground on Saturday, you nod at the guys sitting near you even though you don’t know their names, only have that one thing in common. you laugh cry  banter and it means something .You can’t do that in the higher reaches of the prem .. it’s an artificial  money machine with football as the wall paper using our PIN numbers to make it work. Fans of the big clubs are a product to be milked. Fans of clubs like Derby are football and what it was always meant to be. It won’t die .. it will simply move down the leagues while the premier league becomes an investment commodity  like pork bellies or soya bean futures..good luck to them, I am not buying.
 
 

It’s such a strange thing, the whole sense of being a fan. Why do we do it.
I’ve told this tale before but it’s worth telling because this post makes a good point.
I never much liked Football as a kid, sure I knocked a ball in the garden but I liked cars, engines and motor sport … because that was what my Dad was in to.
My Grandad was a football man. He took my younger brother to Old Trafford every week.. then one day when I was about 15-16 my brother was ill .. I went instead. I was sold and in love way before kickoff, 2nd division  .. but that noise, the passion, the songs .. Then I lived through a time for the next 5 or 6 years when going to home games .. the win rate was like 70% . God I was on a role .. this was fun. Granddad got older, season tickets got expensive, girlfriends came along and I lost football ( Then 20 years on I moved to Derby.. sure I checked the papers, watched the TV, loved the treble season but it was as a plastic half fan. Not a glory hunter, I was a long time fan after all wasn’t I ? 
Odd game at pride park over the next 15 years and then Season ticket on a whim in 2014 .. Talk about born again. What had I been missing ! .. This was what I remembered football was all about. Thanks Mac ! 
Thing is I always made a once a year visit back to OT .. but it got worse and worse every time I went. Didn’t know the players, didn’t “feel” it. It was like an expensive Macdonalds .. so artificial, “match day experience” portion controlled, branded. 
 
I never understood what “triumph and disaster” meant until DCFC came a long .. god I love you, thank you Derby, now I really know ? .. league 1 league 2 .. whatever .. don’t care. It’s magic and exactly what I felt 50+ years ago. I see the same faces every game, they don’t know me, I don’t know them, but we know each other and we want the same thing. We wake up on Sunday after a win with a little smirk on our face, we get a little flutter when we set off for the ground on Saturday, you nod at the guys sitting near you even though you don’t know their names, only have that one thing in common. you laugh cry  banter and it means something .You can’t do that in the higher reaches of the prem .. it’s an artificial  money machine with football as the wall paper using our PIN numbers to make it work. Fans of the big clubs are a product to be milked. Fans of clubs like Derby are football and what it was always meant to be. It won’t die .. it will simply move down the leagues while the premier league becomes an investment commodity  like pork bellies or soya bean futures..good luck to them, I am not buying.
 
 

Do you have kids?  The future depends on whether they will still want to support a local team though not much think and a lot of thin.  I suspect that will not be the case and the powers in charge will get what they want with a smaller number of better supported teams.  Lower leagues will be used as feeder clubs and I do fear promotion and relegation will be scrapped

This is what will kill small and medium sized clubs such as Derby in the end.
I come from Heanor and when I was at school (80s/90s) the vast majority of my classmates who were interested in football supported either Derby or Forest with the odd 'glory hunter' or unless they came from elsewhere. You supported your local team because it's where you came from and it's what your family and friends did.
That has completely changed now. The younger fan base is being lost to more glamorous, better promoted/more visible and richer 'Super Clubs' both from the Prem and abroad. It won't be long before that starts being reflected in game attendance. Full Houses, even for Forest, could soon be a thing of the past.

That’s the thing. I live here and what happens to the entity that is DCFC as a league club of a certain level is, in extremis,  of little import. League 1, League 2 there will always be a business of some sort carrying the name and playing football. So I’ll turn up, personal finances permitting obviously. 
 
Of course I want to see us in the press, on TV playing big names and making the right sort of headlines but if we can maybe half fill a decent stadium for a sporting contest, show some skill, passion and score some goals .. the rest is icing. It’s a game ! 

I will never ever ever support anyone else Derby only team for me.

No offence & obviously things are far from rosy at the minute but seen a few of these posts recently & its doing my head in. To deal with the two suggestions;
1. Only cash-rich/existing Premiership teams can compete anymore
Well, we thought that for much of 2000-2015 and then Leicester happened. And Leeds rose from the dead. And Brentford's shrewd model won them promotion. And Swansea and Wigan won major trophies. In a divisional system progress is always possible & but like it ever was, it needs consistently good decision making, good appointments to manage the football club as a whole & a long term plan. Not the short term 'boom or bust'/celebrity chasing/chuck a load of cash at it nonsense we've specialised in for all bar 2010-14
2. Derby will cease to exist so what do you do then
There will always be a club in Derby...always. Even if the absolute worst case scenario happened which I think is so unlikely as not to worry about, there are the examples of Glasgow Rangers, Wimbledon, Napoli & Fiorentina to look at. Bury will return in time too. The point here is that the fans are the club, not its legal entity
This is a one club city & a city that is passionate about football. There 100% would be a phoenix club & in time it'd be seen as a continuation of the old club - the idea we'd even consider supporting the bindippers for a second makes me vom in my mouth

Negative, finger pointing, scape goat making, blame game, headless, thoughtless, toys from pram attitude and totally without vision. I am not talking about Joz, As I am sure you will have gathered. 

For crying out loud … get off his back. He made a mistake, so did Sibley
 
 

Use the toilet, it's more sanitary. 

I’d replace Tom Lawrence with Jennifer Lawrence. Unlikely to be any major change in performance levels, or results, but shirt swapping at full time would cheer me up.

over to you B4 , get negotiating mate

If it isn't behind a paywall it isn't worth reading is a good rule-of-thumb. I spend more on news than I ever did when it was physically printed. 
The only exception being the Financial Times, which bizarrely for a financial paper has become as left as the Guardian, severely disappointing as a long term subscriber so that got canned as effectively unreadable. Balance and giving space for journalists in both sides of an argument is what I want to read, not propaganda, left or right.

Sadly the internet has killed a lot of genuine journalism and is slowly killing serious newspapers. I’m not anti tech. I subscribe to the times online, but to get things “free” we have sacrificed a lot of integrity and  a lot of depth. It doesn’t matter if it’s banner headlines, or click bait as long as there is a real story revealed behind them. .. Printing costs money, journalists cost money .. The purveyors of journals have had to re think. They have limited income and to keep it have decided to chase “stories” that earn them millions of micro payments. Those stories don’t need intellect and research, or truth for that matter. 
 
I am hugely sad that the amazing communication tool we have in the net is over run by mouthy Ill educated morons. There are so many and they are so loud that rational voices struggle to be heard and those wanting to tell the truth can’t get paid for their endeavours 
This is an ill formed argument, probably anti democratic but in essence the funding methods for news on the net means that the “angry mob” has the biggest say in its content .. 

Negative, finger pointing, scape goat making, blame game, headless, thoughtless, toys from pram attitude and totally without vision. I am not talking about Joz, As I am sure you will have gathered. 

I’m afraid so too. It’s already started on the Joz thread. Ed Dawes kept harping on about the error .. that man positively relishes bad news. 
 
But for the errors that could have been a reasonably comfortable 0-1 away win and we would have been full of ourselves. We were better than them and shot ourselves in the foot. That’s not the manager 

And that’s the reality. It was a game of football. A usually alert player made an error, as others did during the game. This somehow crystallises in to promising young player being subject to character assassination. 
 
I’m dropping off the forum for a day or two  because I find the bratty childish, nasty finger pointing so distasteful and destructive  I can’t be bothered to comment further. … So see you all Thursday/Friday next week, hopefully the adhd kids will be in bed by then. 
 

And that’s the reality. It was a game of football. A usually alert player made an error, as others did during the game. This somehow crystallises in to promising young player being subject to character assassination. 
 
I’m dropping off the forum for a day or two  because I find the bratty childish, nasty finger pointing so distasteful and destructive  I can’t be bothered to comment further. … So see you all Thursday/Friday next week, hopefully the adhd kids will be in bed by then. 
 

And that’s the reality. It was a game of football. A usually alert player made an error, as others did during the game. This somehow crystallises in to promising young player being subject to character assassination. 
 
I’m dropping off the forum for a day or two  because I find the bratty childish, nasty finger pointing so distasteful and destructive  I can’t be bothered to comment further. … So see you all Thursday/Friday next week, hopefully the adhd kids will be in bed by then. 
 

And that’s the reality. It was a game of football. A usually alert player made an error, as others did during the game. This somehow crystallises in to promising young player being subject to character assassination. 
 
I’m dropping off the forum for a day or two  because I find the bratty childish, nasty finger pointing so distasteful and destructive  I can’t be bothered to comment further. … So see you all Thursday/Friday next week, hopefully the adhd kids will be in bed by then. 
 

And that’s the reality. It was a game of football. A usually alert player made an error, as others did during the game. This somehow crystallises in to promising young player being subject to character assassination. 
 
I’m dropping off the forum for a day or two  because I find the bratty childish, nasty finger pointing so distasteful and destructive  I can’t be bothered to comment further. … So see you all Thursday/Friday next week, hopefully the adhd kids will be in bed by then. 
 

This sort of thing baffles me. Some players can make a mistake and it’s hardly mentioned, others are hounded and told to get out of the club. If you swapped Byrne and Joz around for the first goal, Joz would still be getting the blame for it. Both failed to stay alert to where the Posh player was and both at fault. Others were at fault for the 2nd goal. Yet, it all comes down to Joz. Before that moment, I thought he did well, he had some good bits of possession, took players on successfully and he looked better with his control, which is usually a point of frustration with me about him. But he switches off (along with others) and he gets this, which is a huge overreaction 

I hope that Kamil settles back down into the squad in the next few games after his Euro commitments and that he, Wayne and the coaches can sort out any problems that might be affecting his performance.  He's a good player and a likeable guy and I hope he stays at Derby and becomes an indispensable member of the team. If he is unhappy at Derby and the answer is not within our powers to solve, then I guess he will decide to leave, but hopefully that won't be the case. 

Because you've picked your scapegoat, you can't see what you're willfully not trying to look at.