StaffsRam

2 hours ago, Crewton said:

"A figure of 120.2m euros (£104m) was estimated after "an in-depth analysis" by a legal expert"

Probably the same guy who valued our ground the same as Morecambe's - did he base the estimate on Mbappe's value?

Literally a racing snake...

F*** me, it feels like I've aged 20 years during that second half!

Huge result. Not necessarily for the opposition or the performance, but the situation being what it is it's all about the results now and a win, and a clean sheet, in this game, is huge. Well done lads! 😎

2 hours ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

Quite simple then.  Withdraw the clubs from the competition.  

Agree. 

I get the fixture congestion line that's always trotted out with this kind of thing, but there are far better solutions than this. Why not increase the Premier League squad lists from 25 to say, 30, and make them actually play some of the vast amounts of talent that the Premier League clubs hoover up from the lower leagues?

As a point of reference, re fixtures - Man City played 61 games in total last year. Winning the treble. In 71-72 we won the league, and neither the FA Cup, or League Cup, and had no European impediments, and we played 60 games. 

Always found it really annoying that in the 88/89 season review video they missed his goal against Wimbledon 😡

It wouldn't be half as bad if it wasn't so utterly predictable. Open up a 7-point gap to 3rd? f*** that, let's phone it in and keep things interesting instead. Every f****** time. 

Mentally weak, and tactically clueless is not a great combination.

25 minutes ago, Bob The Badger said:

He was ok, but not much more. He was as likely to hit one over the Ossie End roof as into the net, and his control could be atrocious at times.

His record of 50 goals in 188 games was hardly prolific, and any legendary status he has now (which is debatable) is more down to his attitude, work rate and clear fondness for Derby.

H was the anti-Kitson who had a higher goal per-game rate and was more skilful, but was sulky and lazy.

We've had some fantastic sides that contrived not to get promoted over the years, but the best is a toss-up between the Johnson/Gabbiadini/Kitson side and the Mac I side. A crying shame that neither was tested in the top flight. 

As far as J/G/K go, I've followed Derby since around '87 and it's probably in my top 3 most-exciting forward lines during that time, along with Saunders/Goddard and Wanchope/Baiano/Sturridge. J/G/K seemed to complement each over quite nicely.

1 hour ago, VulcanRam said:

"Palace are absolutely aghast, they cannot understand it...and Nigel Martyn knew the dummies in front of him had let him down" is etched on my brain forever, it's my favourite line from commentary of all time.

"And Wanchope treated the Manchester United defense with absolute contempt" is mine I think 😎

Having only just discovered the saga of this thread I can only say welcome back Ed, and FFS, I think I'd prefer hearing Ed on commentary than reading some of the sh** we post here sometimes. 

Also, good luck to Sally, hadn't realized she'd left RD. Always thought she was one of the better presenters on RD tbh.

Re matchday commentary, I think those of us who grew up with Graham Richards have been spoiled somewhat.

2 minutes ago, Steve Buckley’s Dog said:

I think the EFL will consider this carefully and think about whether a similar size club, such as Morecambe, could reasonably afford his wages and base their decision on that. 

They probably don't want to draw Smoggy's ire. No doubt if Boro fail to make the playoffs then he'd complain to the EFL that Gayle would have gone to a Championship club and scored a boat-load of goals against their championship rivals....

1 hour ago, Ram-Alf said:

Look no further than here 😡

Had to look that up in our dictionary. Says "C**t"?

If it is blocked by the clowns at the EFL then I'd be demanding a full rationale as to why.

- We have whatever we got in the Bird deal

- They were happy enough for us to sign a striker on deadline day

- Presumably Collins' injury is covered by insurance

So, WHAT exactly is the EFL's problem with this? Other than to blatantly screw us over one last time while they can?

Tbf, it wouldn’t be like the EFL to pass up any chance to be a bunch of c***s. Especially when it comes to us.

Not vindictive at all the EFL….🙄

2 minutes ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

Also said a couple of other League 1 clubs are looking at him.  Then says any striker not signed up by start of Feb is no ones first choice and he only has two options.  That should secure it if the EFL want us to renegotiate.

Well one of them will be Port Vale so we can pretty much rule them out.... 🙂

At least it's been educational. 

Who else knew it took paint 45 minutes to dry....?

9 minutes ago, Elwood P Dowd said:

I would prefer we got Tom Bombadil in, just look at the advantages

Probably for the best, Ol' Steve is off giving Chunk a hand getting to the Pirate ship today anyway....

29 minutes ago, jcidaho said:

It'll be a bit like getting into Mordor.

Give Steve Cooper a shout, he helped get Frodo and Sam in...

4 minutes ago, Barney1991 said:

Problem is with our current manager it doesn’t matter how good the academy players are he will not use them to improve. The efl trophy was a great time to get them some competitive football yet we still constantly use the older generation. Like with previous recruitment I have no idea what the actual plan is 

Agree. This goes all the way back to the philosophy in appointing Warne, and our competing priorities at the time - Going up at the earliest opportunity vs Rebuilding the club for the future. Those goals aren't necessarily compatible in the short term and in appointing Warne we effectively gave him free rein to get us up at all costs. If it works, great. If it doesn't then we're effectively wasted two years.

1 minute ago, eddielewis said:

Which is why I think the sort of think the set up we kind of have with Warne greatly influencing the recruitment is kind of old fashioned. If you look at the modern examples of successful living within their means Luton, Brighton, Brentford (theres more examples these are the most successful) they have all had a common link in which the recruitment is taken away from the manager nearly entirely. They have had managers come and go and it's not fazed them one bit. They have never had replace a whole XI because the new manager can't work with them. Managers kind come third now with philosophy - players - coach just because they usually last less than the players nowadays.

What happens to the recruitment when we lose Warne be it a sacking or moving to another club. Do we hire another Manager that plays the same as Warne or do we go another route and have to sign players to match that Managers style. I just don't think our recruitment set up is future proofed.

I think DC was caught between a rock and a hard place, and that manifests itself in our general approach - Warne was appointed with a singular goal - get us out of this league and back into the Champ. Warne has a track record of being able to do that within narrow confines. I think DC has given Warne enough rope on the assumption that he'd know what to do with it. 

The problem is that the goal of getting out of the league at the earliest opportunity is at odds with rebuilding the club organically. DC pitched his tent and chose his poison when he appointed Warne. Now, we just have to hope it was the right way. There's definite benefit in getting us up, but if he doesn't then we're no further forward than we were two years ago.

1 minute ago, Barney1991 said:

That’s where our summer window should have been. Getting players in at the right age to improve through coaching and sell with a profit to reinvest. Apart from bird or cashin we don’t have any saleable assets to sell and invest the money so we are reliant on clowes dipping into his pocket 

Going to take a while to fix that. If we're not recruiting players to profit from at some point then it puts even more onus on the Academy working and feeding talent through. There's some great prospects in the youth ranks at the moment but we're still rebuilding, even at that level, so it'll be a while before we see a constant line of players coming through. Even then, we need to work them into the squad, and then the team, to start ramping up their value. Players like Brown, Fapetu, Weston etc are the furthest forward but they're not ready yet. 

The club was saved but in many ways we're still having to start again from somewhere just north of "scratch".

3 minutes ago, ramit said:

On the other hand, if we do go up this season, short contracts on players not quite at Championship level is a good thing.

I think if we went up this season then we'd have a rebuild job on our hands over the summer either way.

Hearing that the recruitment team are focused on the summer window - hope they're covering both eventualities when identifying their targets. Knowing our luck, we'll get promoted and then spend half the summer having to re-assess when it becomes clear that we'd planned for another season in League One...

Just now, TomTom92 said:

The deal works for all parties. The issue is when was the transfer completed?

I believe it was in the evening and then we asked for the announcement to be held off on the proviso we brought in a striker to soften the blow. If i'm wrong and the monies didn't transfer until past 11 then out of spite i'd have cancelled the deal and let them face a battle for his signature. However i have no evidence but i reckon i'm not far off with my theory.

If we were aware of Bristol's interest before yesterday, which we obviously were, then we should probably have laid down the law - "You have until midnight on the 30th to get this done or it isn't happening, we'll take our chances at tribunal in the summer".

That being said, even if the monies were transferred at 2259, we could have just done the same with any club we'd agreed a deal for a striker with.

I think the issue is that the deal happening on the last day mean't that most if not all of our targets had already moved elsewhere. Then we were left scrambling around and because we'd made it public knowledge that we were desperate for a striker certain other club(s) tried to take advantage.

I think the only things we could really have done much differently would have been to prioritize a striker over the other two roles and used whatever £££ we did have in the pot to secure one. And, we definitely shouldn't have let Brown go out on loan until we'd got someone else signed and sealed. Brown might not be ready for regular first team action, but in the event of Collins being unavailable and neither Waggy or Wash being back then he'd have been a better prospect than playing someone out of position.

8 minutes ago, YouRams said:

People forget it's not just a football move it's their life too. Still a young lad moving to a nice city, much better night life than Derby and his mates there. Derbys turning into a bigger **** hole year by year, people will blame Warne for not attracting players but I'm sure the city has a big part to play in it too.

Unfortunately for Derby we're in a "Switzerland" situation.

Nottingham to the north. Leicester to the south. Stoke to the west. It's like living in the nicest house in 1945 Hiroshima...

3 minutes ago, Spanish said:

So by that we sold him now because we think we would get less in the summer?  Obviously Bristol disagree.  Surely they would only do that if they think they would have had to fight off competition in the summer.  I always thought there was no way to accurately predict what the independent tribunal would assess the training compensation to be

Or they may have thought that there'd be more competition for him in the summer. Probably clear to them yesterday that no one else was in for him so they saw a chance to get their man, signed, sealed and delivered now rather than face the cr*pshoot in the summer.

31 minutes ago, TomTom92 said:

Okay the Bird money going in to the summer pot. But the league next season will be stronger. 

All 3 relegated teams will be up there, 5 of the current top 8 will be up there, Wrexham with their wonga and then the likes of Wigan and Reading if they get their acts together. IMO any funds would've been better spent yesterday at least partly to see if we can go up and avoid the royal rumble of next season. 

Given the number of players out of contract in the summer we're going to have another rebuild job on our hands. With that comes the "they need time to gel" thing - If we don't go up this season there's probably a sub-conscious admission that we won't challenge next season either way.