Andrew3000

A massive thanks to you all for your advice and support, it's been much appreciated.
I've had issues for about 3 or 4 years now but it's really escalated since I moved back to the UK.
My doctor referred me to We are With You a year or so ago and i have been attending meetings online (sporadically) but had stopped seeing my caseworker through sheer complacency.
And that's my problem. I stop, have zero problem stopping for a few weeks and then think I've got it cracked and I haven't. I never will have, but reminding myself that when I'm not even arsed about not drinking seems really tough.
And then I have a terrible nights sleep or have some super stressful stuff going on work-wise and Vodka seems like a brilliant idea and I can just have it once and I'll be ok. But it's never one. I mean literally NEVER. And it's progressive. I got to my mid-50s managing my intake well and knowing when to stop, now I've hit 60 those days have gone 
Coincidentally my caseworker texted me this morning for the first. time in months and asked if I wanted to book something, so I have.
I'm also seeing an addiction specialist privately and I've blocked out the time to attend at least 2 meetings per week.
So, I know what I need to do and I'll get there, it's just two steps forward and one back at the moment.
Thanks again to all of you

Thank you all so much and I may take you up on that @Archied

Bob , I’m an alcoholic too , I’ve not drunk in over 25 years
advice ? get yourself to AA you will get great people around you and believe me you can not only stop drinking you can find real happiness in not drinking , at the first stage your at that seems impossible we can’t picture ever being able to live and enjoy life without a few drinks ( it never is for us ) but believe me life gets better every day 
please please pm any time if you need help , advice or an ear 

Apology not accepted as it's not needed.

Isn’t this supposed to be a thread about some chap called Adam Idah, rather than the “Magicman hates Dobbin for not being a 30 goal a year striker at the age of 19 playing his first season in League football on loan to a League 1 team who hardly have the pick of the best young players in the country anymore and who is actually doing quite well by any rational and objective standard and giving any consideration to context” thread? 
 

I'm going
 
 
 
... to really enjoy watching this on the telly.
It's what winter Friday nights are all about.  Might even partake in a nice warming schooner of sherry. 
?

Young kid still learning?

Couldnt travel up tonight but really enjoyed that.  Seemed good vibe between the fans. Loved interviews at the end. BBC team seemed to enjoy it also and how match was played plus supportive of what the club is trying to do. Real change for us to not be hated all match. 
Pleased for team and some great goals. Think Warne's approach probably so different from cocu, rooney and rosenior  who all seemed men of few words but seems as if Warne bonding with players now to me from reactions on pitch. Stearman also came across well. All did us proud tonight
???

Me neither. And then to include Bardell as well. 

Put a packet of crisps in the fridge

Don’t know about anybody else but I obviously love links like these. It’s so much more satisfying watching a player signed for pittance develop than just signing another bang average multimillionaire.

Thommo coming on to get slated for a useless 3 minute performance..

Rooney getting a bit of a baptism of fire here in a real makeshift back line.
Good luck to him I hope he does well!

Warne completely given up of Stearman then……can’t say I blame him though. 

"Evangelos Marinakis near a burning down bakery whilst eating cake, as Steve Cooper watches on, gleefully"

Willie Nelson is the most painful hold in wrestling.

I wasn't going to say anything about the match as I am so late to the witch-hunt, having not had much of a phone signal in my little Devon hideaway. 
But I do think there's been some unnecessary hysteria on here over this result, mostly from people who only viewed it on TV and are therefore heavily influenced by the one-eyed narrative on ITV.
Due to the heavy rain the day before and that morning, the pitch was in a shocking state, the players warmed up in the corner in front of us and were slipping all over the place. It churned up the very corner of the pitch where Mendez-Laing makes his runs. His first run after kick-off you could hear the squish squelch with every step. I'm surprised he kept his boots on! 
The wind was swirling on and off as the showers rolled in, it was so difficult to predict, which is why Wildsmith wasn't making the halfway line with one kick to be promptly followed by a hoof into touch. He was also being abused by two of our own brain-dead fans.
People said Collins wasn't doing his job  of holding the ball, but he was being bear-hugged by their centre half all game. Likewise Dobbin and Osula, who nearly lost his shirt to a player on one occasion with no foul given. Funny how the ref missed all those but managed to 'see' Cashin's tug from fully thirty yards away and not even realising which player had committed the offence. 
I thought the Torquay crowd were fantastic, noisy and belligerent,  they definitely influenced the referee to give everything their way. 
Yet despite all that, I thought we'd been clinical enough to win the game until Cashin's unfortunate lapse of judgement. For those laying into him and suddenly calling him out as a bad player, he is in the League One team of the season, has barely put a foot wrong and has shown a responsibility for results that many senior players could learn from. There'll be no-one feeling worse about what he did than Cash himself.
The weather was at its worst after the sending off. The rain and wind were relentless, Warne took off our strongest player (no doubt thinking of tomorrow night) and didn't immediately strengthen our defensive midfield. I'm not sure it would have mattered anyway with the aerial onslaught that followed. When he did decide to act he brought on ball playing Hourihane and ratter Tommo over the head it and kick it style of Rooney - not his most astute substitutions, imo.
Even then we looked like we'd held on for the win until right at the death when the ref miraculously found that extra few seconds to allow them to create one last chance for their fairytale draw. Not good for a beleaguered Derby County squad but another win for the TV narrative. 
I thought our lads on that pitch were warriors on Sunday, and applauded every last one of them off the pitch. The invasion just before the finish was scary and the Torquay fan who squared up to Roberts right in front of us wants banning for life. Instead the BBC were putting out tweets celebrating the magic of the cup sparking pitch invasions with laughing emojis.
There is some bloody hypocrisy in football and I don't have to buy into it. You can choose for yourselves.

Summary
Thanks to you for your Player Ratings for the Rovers game last Saturday; 34 of you took the time and the trouble to provide your figures & I salute you for it. 34 is the highest number of raters thus far. It was a very memorable game for the first-half hatrick and a blistering display of full-bloodied attacking play by David McGoldrick.  The highest compliment I can think of is to say it was Hector-esque; those of us who had the privilege of seeing Kevin Hector play on the mud will also see the similarities - great mobility, superb speed of thought and instinctive finishing. It really was that good. It is no surprise then to see that McGoldrick topped the average rating by a country mile with a score of 9.37. 8 raters gave him a perfect score of 10, and his lowest rating was 9.00. 
The average aggregate rating was 87.4 - the highest of the season thus far. Mendez-Laing was 2nd highest with 8.20 - our most consistently highest rated player of the season so far. Collins chipped in with an impressive score of 8.14 as for once the front line outscored midfield and defense. It was all about that intensity of play from the start which blew an on-form Rovers side away.   Average player rating was 7.08 (mode 7.0). 6 players scored above this average and 8 players below. The red dotted line on the graph shows the cut-off. 
Thanks again for your time and effort and your comments in the ratings which I really enjoy reading. It always makes me realize just how very knowledgeable Derby County fans are. We are gathering a big database of scores through this process and I will start to provide some additional kinds of analysis at the season's mid-point.

Thing about Roberts is that he is consistent. For me a bit of an unsung hero in the current set up. Hope he stays. 

So after going straight to bed ready for 3 am start to Wednesday, then a 15 hour day at work (who'd be an HGV driver, eh?) I finally arrived at the keyboard at 9.00 pm!
What a match last night! Loads to enjoy, and loads to moan about - if you must! We all knew that we had to continue with the revelation of Saturday's performance, but I had my doubts, with the spectre of 3 at the back looming, and depleted energy levels after Saturday, but after a slight wobble early on, we carried on as before. It was a different gameplay, but the energy, the pressing and the desire to move the ball quickly were still there. And in reality, I was very happy with the performance, apart from the final pass, move or shot. I think the penalty misses left their mark, and made us want to rush and snatch at our shots, and to force our chances. But very quickly we have gone from being unable to string more than a couple of passes together to dictating and even dominating the play at times in two matches now. The training is evidently beginning to take root in the players, and we are beginning to see the player's natural abilities.
It is likely that McGoldrick was suffering from his exertions at the weekend, and never really got into his stride, lovely as it is! Dobbin had probably his best match yet, but actually produced very little, so some work on end product is needed - maybe his concentration is all on his running and dribbling, so he needs to  learn how to spot the next move, once he has got into those dangerous positions.
And with a complete break from tradition, I though the ref was pretty good last night. I know he missed the NLM penalty, and didn't book anyone for handball for the 2nd penalty (he actually ha no idea who'd done it!), and failed woefully to control the time wasting. But overall he got most things right, and wasn't playing the part of the showman. Sadly, that's it for the season. Back to the usual dross in the middle from now on!
So we've gone from a squad of 5 players, to the fear of hoofball, to embarrassingly poor football to what we have seen for the last two matches, which is quite some progress. So despite not getting the win our play deserved ( and didn't deserve after missing the spot kicks), I am happy with where we are, because we now are getting an idea of where we might be going.
Right: Who's up for the cup?

Good all round midfield performance last night , keep it up Louie lad