CROSSWORD

I agree with you mate.  One omission I'd add though is we haven't replaced Huddlestone .  We have no midfielder with any craft. I assume the thinking was Rooney could do some of the job with Bird improving in this regard with Bielik to come back.  Neither has happened as Bird is Butterfield on a bad day and Rooney spent 4 weeks of eating dominos everyday, then Bielik bust his knee. We perhaps have 4 goals from midfield this season.
In January we should have used any available resources to sign a decent midfielder on loan who could score and create allowing Shinnie to do his actual job and a striker with pace.  We wasted the last toss of the coin on quantity over quality.  Mengi hadn't kicked a first team ball. one was coming back from a hernia op, we got a lesser spotted Beningame, Roberts has one goal in 70 games and Boro had seen nothing from him and Gregory couldn't get a kick at Stoke and was the same player we had in Richards.  Gregory has done better than I thought to be fair but has gone the way you'd expect from a striker in his 30's who hasn't played for a year.
 

Mel is just a victim of poor judgement.
I think Mel’s biggest mistake has been trusting the wrong people.
If your people do well, it makes you look good. The people Mel has trusted to oversee things have only made him look bad.
I would say having more football-minded people in the boardroom to offer some perspective would have helped us to avoid this implosion.
I mean no disrespect to our two most recent CEOs, Sam Rush and Stephen Pearce, but from the top down, it sets the tone.
Those two are not football people, they are business and finance people who just happen to work in football.
You only have to watch their interviews for 30 seconds before you start to raise an eyebrow and get an uneasy feeling.
There are not enough people with an appetite for the game driving decisions behind the scenes.
Where are the people who know football and know this division and what it takes to succeed?

I don't thank him at all. He was custodian, he was meant to be looking after the club - he's not done that. His 'ego' is part of what lead to the massive overspend - not had many fans forums lately have we!
He's lost some money, but he still owns the ground - a good lease fee/money for licenses there? And still he isn't willing to put the club first when it comes to selling us. Thanks for nothing Mel.

I really miss Lionel Pickering?

(these are just my thoughts on the matter, which aren't worth any more than anyone else's - i'm not looking to start a political debate on a Derby fans forum!).
I studied a bit about Vox at Uni a few years ago. Obviously, i'm not an expert on Spanish politics, but I can say that his association with them does concern me, and I do think some things are bigger than football. There isn't really an exact UK equivalent - their views are far more extreme than UKIP but they aren't proponents of fascism like the NF or BNP. 
A quick skim of the internet revealed that their leader called for another Reconquista of the Muslim population in Spain in 2019 - for anyone who knows their Spanish history, this is pretty awful. 
I've seen some people point out that there wasn't this much outrage over the Shiekh, which is fair, but I would say this is slightly different in that we know for a fact how Alonso has been involved politically. The Shiekh's history was as unclear as his takeover attempt was.
I've also seen a few 'keep politics out of football', or 'its not his politics that matters' posts. I respect that for some, it is simple to separate the morality of happenings around football from the sport itself. But for me, and presumably others, it isnt that simple and these things matter. The club represents the fans and the city, meaning that in a way the owner does too.
The sad thing is, it really doesn't matter if we are concerned or not. This appears to be going ahead and that's that. All we can hope is that he keeps whatever views he has out of Derby.

Over the coming months I'll be adding over 500 items so far that weve collected to preserve for generations to come. These items are at the hands of the Heratage trust and Derby County collection should they want to use them for future displays for fans to enjoy. Be nice to put them all in a club museum but unfortunately one doesnt exist at the moment. If anyone has any shirts please get in touch, we will be happy to purchase any items we haven't managed to pick up yet and preserve those in our collection as well. We have duplicates we are willing to trade with to fill our collection if a swap is more desirable. Thank you and hope everyone enjoys the photos ??

I was really lucky to get an invite along today to the yard from John O’Hare to meet up with some of the 70s legends who were meeting up to celebrate Roy Macs 70th birthday and the annual Easter visit of Alan Hinton.
i thought I would take the opportunity to take my son along to meet some of the older players who when he is grown up will hopefully be given the status that that Steve Bloomer gets now, at least he will have a few photos to show that he really did meet the men who made us famous and for a brief moment in time perhaps the greatest football team in the world ?
when I got there I was a little embarrassed to find that I was the only member of the general public in attendance and felt a little bit out of place, the classic gatecrasher at the party, fortunately I know a number of them already and was instantly welcomed, I made sure that we sat just out side of the main group to allow them to chat to each other
Every one of them made time to come over and have a sit with us, I had of course taken some stuff to get signed as it was to good an opportunity to miss, after checking that they were ok with it they signed stuff and sat and talked and had photos with my son, he loved it and entered into some great conversation with them all, he was asking them about the odd haircuts that they had on the photos ( he is only eight) he told John Ohare that he should now be called john nohare which I’m not sure if john picked up on or not, he spoke to Alan about his white boots and got me showing Alan photos of his green boots, to a man they sat and chatted away talking about anything and everything, the numbers continue to dwindle, I felt like the man in the middle sharing stories of my recent meets with Colin Boulton, Colin Todd, Frank Wignall, john McGovern, and Peter Daniel, those in attendance (some with their good ladies) were John Ohare, Alan Hinton, Alan Durban, Roy McFarland, Roger Davies, Rod Thomas, Jim Walker and Henry newton, once again it struck me that the club should make more of a fuss of these guys whilst they are with us, let’s not wait twenty year before we finally get round to making up a song for them that we sing and the younger generation doesn’t have a clue what the names Todd, McFarland, Nish, Hector, Hennessy, Boulton, Newton, Gemmill, Davies, McFarland, O’Hare, McGovern, Hinton etc mean to Derby as a city.

Kieftenbeld so glad we cocked that signing.

Will Hughes

It’s still very raw for some of us☹️

Andy Ellis has also asked me to mention Ian Ross of Shieldfield, Newcastle who apparently way back in 1997 had done some research into players who had not received medals who should have so good luck to him and we hope that he has many successes.

fantastic @CROSSWORD, great to see that the old grey matter is stirred a little by some of my posts ! funny about the left foot, when we went up last week Jim was taking shots at my lad (who is 8) and he was smashing the ball at him with the same left foot but perhaps just a bit less gusto !!! from the response on here and twitter he was a well liked player and he really is nice guy still today !

Absolutely blown away by all this,really top notch loweman2 you have my total respect.
My first away game was at Bolton Wanderers and Jim beat four guys before cracking in the winner with his only foot,the left one.
Still remember my older pal grabbing hold of me before i could jump up,we were in the home crowd end,wasnt to bright back then.
Well done again tho made my day sir.

As always guys thanks for all of the positive messages, it is such a shame that he couldn’t have been presented it by his captain at the time on the pitch at the first game of the season as planned but something litigious got in the way and spoiled it but just seeing Jim’s face when I handed it to him was well worth it.
he still works tirelessly now trying to put together a legal case for footballers who have been diagnosed with dementia, he has been working on it for 13 years and studied for a PhD to assist him in his research.
a top top man !
it was Jim who gave me the battered old ball from the 1968 league cup 3rd round replay versus Chelsea which in turn had been presented to him by his then captain Dave Mackay for being the man of the match, it was that game that started the Clough journey real, the night the Baseball Ground shook !
so a favour for a favour !