Dordogne-Ram

Yay, I’m going to this!! After a brain haemorrhage and then lockdown I thought I’d never get to PP again. However, I’ve recovered really well over the summer, especially worked hard to improve physically and my partner is letting my son take me to the match - he’s much more worried than I am!
So, Rams, I’d appreciate a good performance and a win - though whatever happens I’ll feel like a winner just getting there.

Living quite near to Kingsmeadow (where Chelsea play their games and rather unsportingly booted out the local team Kingstonians...) I went along to this.    We were quite unlucky to lose, playing better than we did the other night against Charlton. Everybody turned in a decent 6 or 7 out of 10 performances, with the exception of Liam Thompson, who was the best player on the pitch, at least for the first 75 mins.   He outshone both of those perennial Chelsea stars of the future Lewis Baker and George McEachran.
The sending off changed the game - it was a clear red, so we can't feel cheated.  After that the most we could hope for was to hang on for 0 - 0.  Some random thoughts:
Harrison Foulkes is a tidy keeper, but also unfortunately a tiny one.  He seemed barely visible when their player took the penalty, although Mart Poom standing on the crossbar would have struggled to reach it. We were quite, erm, 'professional' in breaking up Chelsea's potential attacks with carefully timed fouls Jack Stretton certainly likes mixing it with the defenders, often leaving something in there on challenges Ossie Aghitese, who I've always thought looks like he's making up the numbers at u23 level, had a strong second-half performance & so hopefully he's beginning to find his feet Luke Plange looks like a decent asset. Given their resources, I was quite surprised how mundane Chelsea where.  Most of their players seemed a long way of potential Premier league standard.  

? I do get very serious about certain  things. It’s the way I am made. Things like this get my goat and I turn full on grumpy old goat. ? 
In the end the EFL is a democratic body elected by its members and supposed to represent its electorate in a just manner.
The best recognised democratic process always has 3 key elements 
Legislature
Executive
Judiciary 
The legislature is the EFL: it’s electorate .. it’s members……  It makes the laws on their behalf.
The executive enforces the laws .. it’s the police … or officers appointed by the executive with suitable terms of reference.
The judiciary  becomes involved when laws(rules) are breached
It is an absolute fundamental that the legislature and the executive do not meddle with, put pressure on or interfere with the judiciary …That is the way to a failed state, government tapping up judges, leaning on them blah blah  .. By commenting publicly they put tacit pressure on the judiciary .. Offside EFL.  …. If you don’t like the judgment then you should have made different laws that were better put together, less open to interpretation. If the EFL didn’t like a judgment then it’s only action should be to modify the law for the future. That is the only mandate it has….. So, They were “regretful”  or “disappointed” .. in that case the fault lies entirely at their door. The words of the  law were their responsibility. By commenting they simply show that they drew bad laws 
Pompous Jono lecture over … (Thank you Norman Ilett my long dead History teacher .. you were a grumpy odd bod but taught with clarity, balance and honesty ) 
 

It shows the Efl trying to max out on penalties … trying to relegate wendies if they possibly could. So no it doesn’t show they have it in for us at all.
but it shows the fundamental conflicted issue  Efl has .. being regulator of clubs as well as acting for the interests of the clubs .
 
it is supposed to act for the interests of all clubs , including us and Sheffield Wednesday by the way. But plainly isn’t .. it just panders to the mob rule and tries to max out on penalties every time.

With all the strife and aggro about DCFC's situation and the angst over our 'fate', with points deductions and relegation possibly on the horizon, it's as well to check back to reality, with a fine young footballer, Bournemouth's David Brooks, now diagnosed with lymph cancer.
 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/58903956
Here's wishing Brooks a successful outcome and with best wishes from Rams fans.
 

Hey roony I know maybe you dont read these forums I want to let you know that everything done this club I want to thankyou personal you have gone beyond call of duty but you have probably save our club Derby county with out you I would hate to think what state be in now with out your help keep fighting roony things will get better I promise you that.

He's certainly been the one positive in all of this and has totally changed my opinion of him as a person.
He's also done a better job managing the team this season than he did last.

I have to say my respect for Rooney has steadily risen this season.  I just love the never say die he has instilled.
If he stays, and we achieve the miracle of getting the deduction to a manageable level, he has the attitude to keep us up even with a thread bare squad. 
Think of it, we beat the odds, p*** off Gibson, irritate the nay-sayers in the press and he becomes a legend, all in one fell swoop. ?

The problem here is that most of the people who've formed an opinion of us know very little about what's actually gone on, and are basing their views on sensationalist headlines, untrue and/or misleading write-ups telling only half the story, and what they read on that poo stain of the internet known as Twitter.
All they read is that we've broken some rule or other, that's enough to condemn us. Never mind that we've only broken a rule because the terms of engagement have changed, or that ultimately it's boiled down to one person's opinion overruling multiple others on a technicality.
I think it's summed up by your line about us being viewed as seeking an unfair advantage, we simply haven't - we've sought a competitive advantage, which isn't the same thing at all.
A lot of our actions have been an attempt to even out the genuinely unfair advantage gained by teams in receipt of parachute payments, that gained by those who've blatantly set out to make a mockery of spending limits - clubs like Villa who basically just bought every single sought-after midfielder in the division at one stage - or that gained by a club like Wolves signing Champions League quality players & managers from a closed market (and as such at well below market value) while deferring a massive chunk of their wages until such a point they achieve the inevitable promotion signing those players/that manager would bring. Throw in those with owners of two clubs in separate counties trading between themselves for good measure.
We've doubtless gone too far with it, of course, hence ending up in this position. Nobody is saying we're blameless or that Mel Morris hasn't well and truly messed it up, but an unfair advantage, really? It's nonsense.
In saying "The EFL and its constituent clubs currently view your club with so much suspicion" you make it sound like there are far more clubs who are emotionally / morally invested in our situation than there really are.
The only people to really speak up are Boro, Wycombe & Rotherham. There's little evidence that there's a whole host of clubs baying for some sort of justice - plenty of evidence of fans of other clubs doing so, but they're mostly hypocrites who've forgotten their own club's past misdeeds.
Nobody really seemed to have a problem with us until one chairman went running to them to complain about us after we pipped his team to a play-off spot (because our £4m striker gave us an advantage over them that their £15m striker didn't give them over us!).
Without that and the Kieran Maguire writing letters to the EFL about our amortisation policy it's debatable whether or not the EFL would ever even have opened a case against us.

I used to visit one of your boards "Back Henry Street" the distaine for the Oystons especialy K Oyston and his Son, Who at the drop of a hat would send a Solicitors letter for "slander" the Solicitor being someone who wasn't actually a Solicitor, There was open warfare against the Oystons and rightly so even to get one of your games abandoned when tennis balls thrown and then fans storming the pitch,,,one in a wheelchair.
As for our missgivings...you need to fact check your post, We were found guilty of a minor offence where a £100,000 fine was imposed, We're still waiting for the ELF who by the looks are on that Boat to China and waiting for imo us to climb the table only for them to hit us with another points penalty.
Just to remind you of the EFLs culpability...they let the Oystons milk Blackpool FC out of millions of £s while they stood and let you burn, Let Bury be sold for £1 to a sharleton, Closed their eyes to what happened to Wigan with a fictitious sale, Fed Macclesfield to the Lions, Capitulated to Anderson who was Boltons major shareholder when he was talking about liquidating them.
Sympathy we're not looking for, That seige mentality is now set in stone by the majority who pay or those who watch from afar.
 

It's even worse than that.  The only grounds for appeal are if the panel made a mistake in the way they adjudicated the case, so the EFL are actually expressing their disappointment that they're appointed panel didn't sufficiently screw up to make them do it all again.  They are actually disappointed that the panel made the correct decision.

As to why the Efl are picking on Derby , the simple answer is they aren’t. 
 
they made a similar mess of Bury .. the best that can be said about that is that it was a swift end for Bury rather than a death by a thousand cuts .
 
whatever your views on Mel Morris , ( which I don’t share by the way) the first objection is why should the club suffer for the wrongdoing of the owner? Precisely the issue that As you say true football fans would understand regardless of who they support… which is why Derby fans sympathised with you over oyston.
 
but despite my first statement I think Derby fans feel aggrieved that the club are wrongly accused of things that were perfectly fine ( eg stadium sale) , things like amortisation are minor things at worst that Efl wanted points deduction .. and relegation .., for yet the independent panel thought only a fine was appropriate . 
 
so at every turn Efl seem to want to beat us up and max out on punishments. 
 
all for what? A professional disagreement between accountants over amortisation policy, and a disagreement between another set of accountants over what has caused our latest financial problems? Is it COVID or our historic overspending? 
 
why should the club , and the fans be punished for any of this?

I can see how it might look to an outsider, but I'm simply applying logic to the catalogue of things that the EFL have said and done since the whole saga started with Gibson announcing he was intending to sue Derby and the EFL, 2 days before the 2019 play-off final. I can't blame either of them for the decision to start the game with Mason Bennett instead of an in-form Jack Marriott (thanks Frankie!), but since that day it's been clear that they want to destroy Derby, by hook or by crook, because it suits their agenda to a T. It's worth reminding all visitors to this forum that no EFL (or other) rules were broken in respect of the stadium sale or the method of player amortisation adopted. The EFL finally nailed us on a technicality, for which the punishment will far exceed the 'breach'. It's worth remembering that, while clubs like DCFC and SWFC are regarded as 'cheats' who "deserve everything they get", successful cheats happily ply their trade in the Premier League, raking in hundreds of millions of pounds, and face no sanction in the event of their relegation back to the EFL, not even the cancellation of their Parachute Payments!! It's perverse.
I note your general good wishes and don't want it to sound like I'm berating you, but there really is more to this than the EFL simply "upholding the rules" - it's highly political and it will have implications for other clubs whose fans are currently sticking the boot into DCFC at every opportunity, though they don't realise it yet.
 

You're starting to annoy me now with your pious outside observations, which are neither accurate nor timely.
Nothing happening in Blackpool?

I think you are being disingenuous here about the EFL. They said they regretted . were disappointed etc about our punishment.. they had been pushing for a penalty points deduction and pushing for that deduction to be be applied retrospectively to the season gone... which would have relegated us, of course as we only dodged relegation by one point.
Yet previously, they wanted to apply the points deduction not retrospectively to us for the 2019-20 season as that would have had no effect on our season. But they did want to apply the points deduction retrospectively to 2019-20 for Sheffield Wednesday as that would have relegated then in that season. Fortunately for Wendies, the LAP was having none of that .. EFL arbitraging to get maximum penalty it possibly can..  stance from EFL rightly called out by the LAP as disgraceful. So Wendies avoided a retrospective punishment.. although it was  temporary stay of execution of course, they were relegated in 2020/1 anyway.
It is not reasonable in anyway for EFL to be expressing sentiments, spinning lines to the media and briefing them against the Rams... and worse.. leaking selectively to the press stories that ultimately prove to be untrue.
Nor should they be seeking to give maximum punishments they can get away with , especially to clubs in distress, and especially when any fault lies with the owners (in fact now former owners) , not with the club itself. 
 
 
 

That's not strictly true... They went as far as saying that it was regrettable that they could not sanction us further, on the advice of their own counsel.
Not sure why you are arguing otherwise to be honest, we all read it at the time ?‍♂️

 

Boulton and Poom both better than Shilts. 
For Derby anyrode.

Happy birthday Charlie - my wife says I only remember her birthday as it's the same day as his ? it's really the other way round though but what a player, one of my all time favourites ?
 

Still 9th. Doesn't matter when they were, and in the Sky-PL age we've challenged and been regulars in European competitions before him.
It wasn't, Benitez galvanised the club, offered hope and is a top class manager. Look at what he's achieving with Everton having only spent £2m(?). Ashley had the chance to kick on, without spending big and willingly chose not to. 
Perhaps, but when an owner skims off the top to the point where it's to the detriment of the club it's not good. It's only paper talk and I know you'll take almost anyone with the club almost on it's knees but I hope that it isn't Ashley. I don't know if there's anyone else in the running, I hope there is. Someone better.
Anyway, I truly wish you, others on this board and the whole of DCFC nothing but the best, assuming I forget my login details, which I probably will. You should come through this, too much of a standing in the game to not. I hope. 
 

Plus an ongoing embargo and EFL hardballing us over an "acceptable business plan". 
Don't expect the new owner will be able to do anything other than keep us ticking over to start with. We want them in quick, before we lose our young players. Boy, are we going to need them.

Looks like Pauline Latham MP has actually written a letter to the Culture Secretary and requested a meeting with the EFL

 
 

And yet despite everything, the EFL seem to be only too willing to increase the likelihood of liquidation by piling on the highest points deduction they can get, without seemingly taking any account of all the "reasonable doubt" that they are even right about their opinion that FRS has even been breeched at all. On top of that the Club has been punished by delay, by Covid, by embargo, by the draconian measures around squad size and wage caps.........all of this is being ignored in the pursuit of making an example of one Club, at the behest(in part) of the Chairman of another Club.
In addition, although as we all know, other Clubs have been able to "cut a deal" with HMRC, but under new rules, DCFC will be denied this option, BUT STILL, the EFL will not budge......even though Parry himself has already recognised, that amortisation should not be taken into account in P and S calculations, BUT still they plough on.....
Is it any wonder, that as a Club, we feel just slightly persecuted?

Good shout

Fozzy always give 100 percent what been throught Derby stuck by him now he is sticking by Derby now.

You do not seem as positive these days Carl. We must enjoy the wonderful team spirit that Wayne has engendered. Long time since our team worked so hard. Focus on the games and just ignore the rest of it which we cannot alter. We have the best fans in this league. The whole of the country has noticed our plight and our response to it. COYR