jono

People get sacked for being unable to do their job ... even when it's not their fault ... let alone when it is.
I do feel very sorry for Richard Keogh because it must be horrible to get sacked.
I hope that he can take comfort from having enjoyed a career involving international football, earning astronomical sums, and regularly having his name chanted by thousands in adoration. (I'm not being sarcastic!)
Going forwards, there are many jobs that he can do to earn a living with a gammy leg - and many people do start new careers in their 30s.
And, if he is sad about leaving the team, he can still be part of the wider-team, and get a season ticket, and stand (or sit) side-by-side with the other fans.

Respectfully disagree. It was a club organised night out, the club laid on taxis to get them all home safely & their profession is defined by their physical fitness and conditioning. And he as captain, is a leader there.
I'm not trying to be a puritan, I've done some pretty dumb things when younger & especially when leathered. But I've never earnt £25k per week or captained a Championship level football club. And that's the point really - the money is there to compensate for the sacrifices elsewhere i.e social life & lack of privacy. These lads are professional athletes & getting drunk at any time is just unacceptable, let alone the actions of that night.

and sad though it is .. 1.2 million per year = a full 40 year working life’s income for an average wage earner. 3k a week / £ 156,000 per year is MD / senior Director level in any normal successful commercial company. None of this should matter .. we are all worth what the market is prepared to pay us in a chosen sphere, but it does when you can’t do your job 
 
we still don’t honestly know if he was offered anything though. It’s all gossip 
 
what a mess .. just shaking my head in bewilderment 

and sad though it is .. 1.2 million per year = a full 40 year working life’s income for an average wage earner. 3k a week / £ 156,000 per year is MD / senior Director level in any normal successful commercial company. None of this should matter .. we are all worth what the market is prepared to pay us in a chosen sphere, but it does when you can’t do your job 
 
we still don’t honestly know if he was offered anything though. It’s all gossip 
 
what a mess .. just shaking my head in bewilderment 

and sad though it is .. 1.2 million per year = a full 40 year working life’s income for an average wage earner. 3k a week / £ 156,000 per year is MD / senior Director level in any normal successful commercial company. None of this should matter .. we are all worth what the market is prepared to pay us in a chosen sphere, but it does when you can’t do your job 
 
we still don’t honestly know if he was offered anything though. It’s all gossip 
 
what a mess .. just shaking my head in bewilderment 

Based on the club taking a hardline on Keogh?
Counter-argument could go that any serious player with ambition wouldn't want to join a club that werent prepared to confront unacceptable drinking & associated misbehaviour.

By who?
 

The staff weren't invited. That's how unpopular they are!

In an effort to make it really clear for people but also stripping away any emotion from it. From a purely legal perspective...
Lawrence / Bennett: Personal gross misconduct but can still capably fulfil their professional contract.
Keogh: Personal gross misconduct that made him physically incapable of fulfilling his professional contract.

I can come up with a list of better players too. But none of them have played for Derby for years. 
As Davies and Clarke and Bielik love to display that it's not just Keogh with a mistake in him.
And of course there was Barker, Buxton, Shotton, Whitbread, Albentosa, Keane, Leacock, Davis.... how come every club has a better CB than Keogh but we can't buy one? 
But anyway, Nesta was better than Keogh. I'm not witnessing an irrelevant argument and standing back. 
Jaap Stam!!!

If he had accepted in good faith his revised contract offer he would still be at the club. Do you think it wrong the club have taken the view they shouldn't have to pay out £100,000 a month to their employee after he rendered himself unable to perform due to alleged drunkenness? In my view he was lucky to receive an offer at all and I have been a massive Keogh fan.

...and don't get me started on "could of..." or using a "zee" when the English word ends in "...ised"!  
 
You and me both, @R@M... You and me both!
 

After about 6 years I am finally understanding this forum and possibly the wider general Rams fan.....why over 50% don’t seem capable of separating criminal law from (civil) contract law is beyond belief....even after it has been explained dozens of times on this thread! Although by pure definition, 49.9% of the population are of below average intelligence. 
It doesn’t matter who likes what player, us, Mel, PCoc, we the public will only know what the actual ‘gross misconduct’ is, if the details are released. We will only know if Mason and Tom could have been sacked if details of the internal report are released. I would suggest a law student, HR manager or anyone with an idea for business could garner (with the facts) whether the latter has any bearing on the former. 
 

Tell me, anyone, has the club actually made any official statement on Keogh being sacked? Can’t see anything on the website.  Isn’t it the case that the only statement has come via the DET?  May there be some misreporting here?
I recall that when Bennett and Lawrence were dealt with by the club, it was stressed that the action taken was the maximum that could be done in line with their contracts. The fact that they were fit and able to fulfil their duties as football players being key, particularly if we wind forward to Keogh.  He is being treated differently in my view only because he himself cannot fulfil his contract - there are obligations on both sides within a contract.
I don’t think there is any point commenting further without the full facts. 

Each case is judged on it's own merit, L and B were punished to how the Courts and DCFC saw fit, Keogh likewise.
As for Twitter, Todays gossip is tomorrows chip paper

Without getting into a debate about their footballing abilities, who would have suffered by sacking Lawrence and Bennett? Not them. Another club somewhere would have signed them and their footballing careers, on exorbitant salaries, would have carried on. The club probably did as much as they could in terms of punishing them.

Perhaps the new revised offer by the club was seen as a "Gesture of goodwill", him being the captain/long time servant/nigh on ever-present etc.
There are limits as to just how good one's will can stretch, of course!

The optics on this are pretty bad, the club will look like the bad guys on this unless they come out and give the reason, why which they may never do. 
To many people especially those on the outside this just looks like Keogh being treated more harshly than the other two and with no reason to believe otherwise you can kind of understand that viewpoint.

How would @Bristol City have handled it? Myself, I think the Club have handled it correctly. They have been put in an invidious position; the crux is that Keogh is no longer able to fulfill his contract due to self-inflicted injury; was offered a reduced contract which he declined leaving the Club with no alternative. 
It’s all straightforward if the facts are adhered to.
The Club have been badly let down by certain players and I feel sorry for Mel Morris. 
The whole thing is tough on Keogh too but he is the architect of his own downfall I’m afraid. 
 

30 pages of conjecture. People have become experts on misconduct proceedings, law, and clearly have access to the collision report as well as any internal fact finding the club conducted because there’s so much stated on here about what should and shouldn’t have happened. 
it’s bound to happen as we know he’s been sacked and we have only a few “club statement” lines. Therefore as fans we want/need to discuss it but a lot of people are coming up with verdicts with less information than the club has and chastising the club for what has happened. Hopefully in 14 days time we will hear more and can take a better standpoint on the situation. Until then I’ll reserve judgement. 
 
It’s like a conversation I had with my brother in law when the drink drive story came out. He called them a disgrace and that they should be sacked, he’s a spurs fan.  I asked him if Lloris was sacked? He laughed and said he was barely drunk and these two we next level drunk and are a lot worse. After the court hearing it transpires that neither of them blew near Lloris’s reading which was over twice the limit. Point is people judge from bits of information when they should wait for more facts. 

SILENCE IN COURT!  

There will be no grounds for appeal. The insurance against injury will be a key component of a players contract.  It's the clubs protection against being saddled with the salary of a highly paid player with a long term injury. Within the players contract will be a series of stipulations about what they can and can't do in line with the insurance policy. A set of conditions if you will. Players will sign up to them in their own contract in order to protect the club. Exclusions to cover will be in there...things like bungee jumping, skiing, riding a motorbike. All activities that are considered to have a higher than normal risk of injury if participated in. There will also undoubtedly be a clause for knowingly and wilfully putting themselves at risk such as getting in car with people know to be intoxicated. 
Now put aside the drink driving incident and assume Keogh went off on a family holiday skiing and bust all his knee. Should the club be saddled with the cost for his indiscretions. No because it was very clear what they can and can't do. It will have been very very very clear in the contract he signed that agreed to pay him £25k per week. He broke the terms of his contract resulting in additional none insured costs to Derby of salary, medical and rehabilitation costs.
Whilst the other clowns were very lucky not have injured themselves and incurred the same wrath I expect that it is almost impossible to link drink driving out of the work place to 'gross misconduct' as they weren't at work.
It's an unfortunate consequence of an abhorrent incident on all parts.
Had they sacked the other two I suspect they would be in court for unfair dismissal. However Keogh appears to be a clear incident of gross misconduct that would be stipulated in his contract. 
In my opinion they have been generous in offering him reduced terms to stay on. The good will would appear to be there yet no reciprocated. He has been paid the best part of £7million by this club over the last few years. To be permitted to stay on half a million pounds per year when you have clearly breached your contract can only be considered generous.
The whole incident is shameful. The handling has been poor - in particularly the statement on the outcome - although I don't think I have seen anything official from DCFC as yet.
The full story never gets revealed as it is bound by confidentiality clauses and so newspapers, ITK's and other players will attempt to fill in the blanks. Some with truth. Some fallacy.
His actions represent gross misconduct based on his contract and his inability to perform his job due to his own poor decisions. That couldn't be clearer.

I think 90% of the people on this forum cannot understand gross negligence.  It will also be why the club will suffer another backlash publicly.  We've already seen comments from Arter and Hendrick who are in public profile positions criticizing. Good job they are not paying the 1.7 million from their own pocket.

The people on here banging on about consistency bothers me a little - unless they know all of the facts, in which case please let us know.
There are many factors which mean consistency is over ruled at many different levels.
My 6 month old dog shat on the kitchen floor and chewed through the phone cable the other day - got away with a mild ticking off, if my 12 year old dog had done it .....
My 18 year old took my car without asking, my 12 year old took my car without asking.
A murderer who shows remorse, pleads guilty and promises not to do it again tends to get a lighter sentence than someone who pleads not guilty, and swears that the DNA was planted, he wasn't there, it was his brother .... That is the rule of UK law, which has developed over 100's of years.
To me Lawrence and Bennett have both gone down the "we will take whatever punishment is thrown at us!" "we did wrong line". Whereas Alfie Keogh is in complete denial and will not even compromise with a pay cut while not being able to fulfill his duties.
If I had done what he has and my employer offered me a quarter of my wage to stay at home until retirement I would snatch their hands off. 
 
And then apologize for snatching their hands off.

I love the way Jeff Hendrick spells through how he would say it!