Betty Swollocks

First of all I hope he stays. He’s a good player. He might go to another championship club for better pay, but in my opinion, no where, except possibly that one hat trick performance eons ago, has he shown anything to suggest he is saleable to a premier league club. 

If only football was played by stats, you'd be right. However whenever watching the game, it's clear to see, when playing in his preferred position, he goes missing for large parts of the game. Bird is involved a lot more and can play all 3 positions in midfield.
I remember when Mount first came to us, one poster had him as our 3rd best midfielder, behind Bradley Johnson, it may have been missed by some, but you can tell when a player has that something special wherever they play on the pitch. Even at grassroots, it only takes a few games to know, Sibley has had over 100 games and is not consistent enough, otherwise he'd have gone by now, someone would have taken the plunge.
But we shall see, in a couple of months, if he has the potential some believe, there will be a host of clubs knocking on his agents door, he is still young and someone when first bursting on the scene I would have put money on making it to a very high level. 

Of course he’s more productive than bird as you mention, he plays a lot further forward. He obviously has ability but do you agree he struggles to get involved in games at times?
the other issue I think is that when has a poor game is almost impossible to leave on as is like playing with ten.
i like him as a player, he gets shots off and has quality on the ball. But he’s not quick, not particularly strong either. Maybe this wasn’t highlighted as much in academy football but feel there is a large enough body of work from mens football to use that as the sample now.

If we sign Cole we’re in big trouble. Fellas not good enough. Had 1 purple patch at start of the season and did hardly anything for the last 5 months. 

Well said. 
He isn't Mel Morris and we need to stop beating him with same old moans and groans.
 
 

Finding the constant moaning about Pearce quite tiresome to be honest. 
 
Think people need to move on or at the very least adopt the ‘if you haven’t got anything nice to say don’t say it all’ approach.

Let’s be honest , we all have mates who are “ Massive Rams fans “, with plenty of money - who only turn up to games when there is a free ticket going or watch games on their dodgy stick . If they don’t put their hands in their pockets at some point we will never progress.

I don't think the budget will change much, but I think we'll be changing tact from high earners on a free (to fit in with the 'business plan'), to lower earners that cost a transfer fee...

I hated them signing Carroll for another 6 months, getting 4 loans and changing their manager whilst under restriction that they purposefully broke just after we drew with them.  Meanwhile we lost a 40 yr old on 5 k a week and Shinnie who was sold to pay his wages killing off a revival of 10 points in 4 games.  I'll lose no sleep.   

Any player who is a top player at League 1 level will be frustrating. You could even say the same for many quality players in the Championship.
Some of our best attacking players over recent years - Wilson, Mount, Russell, Ward, Ince, Martin, Vydra, Lawrence - fall into that bracket for various reasons.
Mendez-Laing and Wilson have days when they are incredibly frustrating too and nothing comes off, let’s not forget, but you do notice when they are in the team and when they are not.
Many looked back at January last season and said why didn’t we make more of an effort to strengthen the squad and avoid burnout. Many looked at the summer and said why weren’t we more proactive in nailing down our targets.
It seems to me the club are trying to learn lessons. CBT is clearly a long term target and someone we have been tracking for 6 months at the very least, so it’s not a snap judgement either.
A good League 1 player that is in demand would ordinarily cost anywhere from £1 million to as much as £5 million. In exceptional cases, like a really prolific forward, even more.
£500,000 may seem a lot based on the restrictions we have become accustomed to, but in real terms, it’s small fry if you want to get a player who is performing well at this level and has the potential to scale up into the Championship.

Savage is a really interesting case. Jewell didn't do his homework and signed Savage to do stuff that even Savage admits he wasn't capable of at his best. Of course Savage could play, you don't make that many PL appearances otherwise, but he was mainly a ball winner and protection for more talented players. Jewell seemed to think he was signing a poundland Pirlo. Maybe it was the hair?
I do appreciate that Savage still had the hunger to take a wage cut and prove himself at Derby. There's plenty of players, like Anya, who would've sat in the reserves and seen out that fat contract.

We’re remembering it differently. He was a massive wind up merchant but his ability on the ball was still a step up compared to the rest of the team. 

Where does this come from? 

Savage rubbed people up the wrong way but to reduce a player who spent a career as long as he did at the top level to running around a lot. Easily more technically gifted than anyone else in our side when Clough brought him back in from The cold. 

He’s played 28 times ain’t he? We’re only in January. 
 
Averaging 55 minutes an appearance so not just 5-10 minutes here or there. 

Totally agree. I want to see us start building for the future, no more stop gap signings

He joined Rotherham in January 2023 until the end of the championship season….while Paul Warne was managing, erm….Derby County.
It’s a rumour but turning our noses up at a player joining from a premier league club just because he played for Rotherham last year seems strange to me 

Neither can you !!

I'm I alone in not being too bothered about getting into the Premier League? As it stands, you can't challenge for the title without billions, and the idea of every season being a relegation battle doesn't fill me with joy. Brighton have an appealing model, focussing on buying young talent, developing them and selling on, but Southampton have shown how hard that plan is to maintain.  And the idea of becoming a consortium club making money for some faceless investment group fills me with dread.
For the time being, I just want to see sustainability, a thriving academy, and a strong community presence, and I get the impression that's the current focus. Championship football will come sooner or later.

I don't think we need to worry about this for now though its fun to speculate I suppose. We need to put one foot in front of the other and see where it takes us. My personal hope is that Mr Clowes enjoys his project and at some point gets his money back and then some. That will happen naturally I think when we get to the position of challenging for promotion to the Prem. I say 'when' because we are one of the biggest clubs outside of the Prem and its the natural order of things. Its just a question of how long, it could be 2 years it could be 10. In terms of Mr Clowes planning, I think that will evolve as we evolve. We just don't know if he would want to carry on owning the club if somebody made him a really good offer, but my guess is he would sell provided he felt it was also in the clubs interest   

Derby supporting global superstar you say?! 🤔…..
 

I have heard that Clowes is looking for investment and in talks with 1 that I know of. A couple of American investors looking to get into football and turn Derby into the ‘next Wrexham’ with a certain Derby supporting global superstar as the face of the club. Clowes will not Sell unless he is involved in the running of the club still. 

Like B4 I liked Craig Ramage personally,  not the brightest and obviously said some dodgy stuff in the end but liked his passion over some of the other boring commentators. Don't mind Steele though tbf.

Graham Richards had a vocabulary to die for and a great turn of phrase.
Ed Dawes and RD do an excellent job for local radio and don’t deserve the vile abuse they get.
Turn the radio off if you have a problem.

Rather have Ed than Dave Fletcher .
Ed is a Derby fan 
Nothing wrong with Ed Dawes 

Personal opinion is that Ed Dawes is exactly how I’d be as a commentator because I’m a fan and in the moment my head is often led by my heart/my emotions. 
 
Think he doesn’t deserve half the criticism he gets from here and actually bbc radio derby have managed to spoil us in terms of the quality we’ve had at local level. 
 
Again he was pushing for the hard answers and working behind the scenes to find out what was going wrong whilst many other fans were sucking up to Kirchner because we were desperate. He didn’t let that desperation stop him getting to the bottom of Kirchner’s bollox.