Dordogne-Ram

Plenty to pick through about that performance, but I'm really enjoying the us against them mentality that's being born out of adversity. I think Rooney has used it to his advantage. 
The performance was no classic, but the young players seemed to develop an entire year within 90 minutes. Watson, in particular, started with a few miss passes but then was pulling the strings towards the end of the game. Ebosele is far from a polished footballer, but my word - he has a go. All I see is the Michail Antonio that was at Reading all those years ago. If he can follow a similar trajectory that would be great. 
Hutchinson has a lot of technical ability. Similar to Bird in a lot of ways. I thought Brown showed a bit of promise, although I'd like to see him with Davies rather than Forsyth. Sibley is just unbelievably talented, but I wish we got him on the ball a bit more. The ability as soon as he touches the ball just jumps off the screen. The first touch, the way he quickly changes the direction of the ball. We need to develop him because he's got a special talent in a role that we need a special talent. 
Ravel showing a lot of maturity and that's probably down to the team mentality. He has a real chance here and what a start. It's the best possible start for him and he will no doubt start again on Saturday. 
The first 30 minutes were a rough watch, but after that we blossomed and a lot of the younger players deserve a lot of credit. It was on their shoulders and they showed a lot tonight. I'm really looking forward to Saturday now - I want to see what we can do this season! 

He's a general purpose traditional british midfielder.
He's not a defesnive midfielder, a creative midfielder, a wide midfielder or a transitional midfielder, he's just that general purpose box to box man who does a lot of stuff without being great at anything, but he's dogged and determined and we're going to need that this season. Anyone who doesn't see that is kidding themselves.
Is he going to be a key part of the next grat promotion chasng side? probably not. Is he vital to this rams side? yes.

but we were losing most games last season and he consistently looked one of, if not our best player. 

Actually disagree there, Buxton was a pretty good distributor of the ball. 

We shouldn't even be entertaining this. He was great last season, and in a relegation dog fight, he is the exact player you need. Bags of character and commitment to the cause. 

Very rarely post anything, but felt the need to chime in here.
Thanks for everything you do @David running this place and representing forum members.
As a ram living away from Derby, the forum really is the lifeline that keeps me connected to the club and up to date with the latest goings on - I’m sure many other longer distance rams fans would say the same.
No need to apologise & remember there’s lots of Derby fans & forum users (even the very quiet ones!) right behind you!
Up the Rams 

I've been away for a couple of days and so I'm 17 hours behind! Just wanted to post something before I read the replies from the wonderful forum fans, although I think I already know what they are saying. ? Thanks for your post and thanks for the detailed explanation, all of which is perfectly understandable. Not sure how you could improve on handling things better in the future. I thought you handled things fine this time round and not your fault that it was not all plain sailing due to things beyond your control. Certainly not your fault or DCFC. Really sad that you have had to put up with unwarranted crap. Totally out of order and undeserved comments, lacking understanding, moderation and common decency. Ignore! I don't respect those who are  abusive and I ignore their opinions which are more a reflection on themselves than those they choose to criticize. Keep well, David and thanks for this forum which is enjoyed by so many! 
 

@David nothing to apologise for, the longer the silence went on for, the more difficult the situation for you personally became apparent.
Although an infrequent poster on here, the value of the forum over my 10 years or so  of membership has been incalculable to me, and apart from the BBC match reports, is my ONLY way of keeping in touch with news of the Rams. 
In that context, I and many others on here owe you an immense debt of gratitude - long may it continue .
Athol

@David nothing to apologise for, the longer the silence went on for, the more difficult the situation for you personally became apparent.
Although an infrequent poster on here, the value of the forum over my 10 years or so  of membership has been incalculable to me, and apart from the BBC match reports, is my ONLY way of keeping in touch with news of the Rams. 
In that context, I and many others on here owe you an immense debt of gratitude - long may it continue .
Athol

Personally I don't think serving ads from the club counts as being affiliated or connected with the advertiser - But then I've spent over a decade now working in advertising so have a somewhat jaded viewpoint on it
Just because the supermarkets advertise on ITV doesn't mean they have any influence on what ITN News says, does or publishes - same with us
I think David and the Mods generally just don't like posting anything which would get the site sued - whether potential libel by anonymous posters for which the site would bear responsibility - or statements/information from the club that was under an NDA for whatever reason - I think both of those are very fair and I support the Mods in their approach ?‍♂️

@David nothing to apologise for, the longer the silence went on for, the more difficult the situation for you personally became apparent.
Although an infrequent poster on here, the value of the forum over my 10 years or so  of membership has been incalculable to me, and apart from the BBC match reports, is my ONLY way of keeping in touch with news of the Rams. 
In that context, I and many others on here owe you an immense debt of gratitude - long may it continue .
Athol

I saw what you nearly did there!

You lot are something else. ??
Appreciate all the messages, especially the one that said I’m young. Whilst I hear all the you have nothing to apologise for messages, I feel I did and couldn’t just swan back in here like nothing had happened.
Now I have addressed it and the football is back, hopefully we can all draw a line under this episode and move on.
This is a time when we all need to be together right now.

I’d love to know the average age of people who give abuse online. 
 
I preferred the world of waiting for the ‘Green Un’ paper to come out at 6pm on a Saturday than the social media craze that we will now have forever. 

I'm glad you are back, were far more concerned with how you were doing rather than reading any meeting notes.
You've let no one down, it's been a tough and emotional undertaking, as well as ever-changing. Thanks for all your hard work, and all the mods hard work too.

I just want to apologise for the delay, my absence, my handling of the situation and try to explain what has happened.
The meeting on Wednesday was scheduled to end at 8.45pm, my last train home was 9.33pm, I slipped out just after 9pm as I didn’t have clothes, medication, toiletries with me as I wasn’t planning on staying overnight.
When the meeting had finished, an agreement was made where one statement would be written and signed off by all groups, this is the first time anything like this had been agreed, I was under the impression we would be allowed to report back as normal.
Being completely unaware of this, whilst waiting for my train I saw a conversation take place on my Twitter timeline discussing the meeting minutes, when would they be out.
I replied, that the meeting minutes were not taken and we would be sharing the information ourselves, which as I say I was under the impression would be allowed, why else attend? I thought I was being helpful.
Now I can see on reflection I was clearly naive in not appreciating the number of fans waiting online for what was said at the meeting, would see the tweet whilst was part of a conversation, which was also public and could be seen and shared by others. The tweet blew up online having been retweeted, I’m not exaggerating when I say maybe hundred or more replies, some abusive to the point where I had to turn notifications off as my phone was freezing with as I came back into an area with phone signal.
On the forum I did pre warn members not to expect anything Wednesday evening, the minutes can sometimes take a few days to a couple of weeks before being released. I was going with the intention of asking the club if the minutes could be released within 24 hours or that we could release the information immediately. Obviously once we was told the minutes would not be taken all that went out the window and believed we was free to report back immediately, and that was the plan.
Again, I was clearly naive to the fact fans on Twitter would not be aware of this, so when I wasn’t replying to all the tweets with thumbs up or down if it’s good news, or are we going to have a club next week the levels of abuse increased, despite my plea for being understanding I wasn’t in the position to do so.
With my write up, I had no intention of adding any personal opinion, it would be just what was said and allow you all to read and take it as you will.
As you will be well aware, all fans see things differently and I didn’t want to raise any expectations or disappoint fans, then receive more abuse as it wasn’t what they were expecting.
I put myself in this situation through naivety, but I don’t accept that the abuse was warranted at all, I have removed the twitter account from my devices and will no longer be active on that account, opting now for a private account as I have no interest in twitter fame.
I would seriously urge anyone that did send me abusive tweets to have a think how they talk to people online and their demands, if this is this what celebrities have to deal with on a daily basis, I’m glad I’m just a nobody!
Punjabi Rams, who I honestly can’t thank enough stepped in and put some tweets out from their account to give some information in my defence. You guys are awesome, didn’t need to do that but again, I honestly can’t thank you enough. Quick plug www.punjabirams.co.uk, @PunjabiRams on Twitter, go give them a follow if you are on there.
On the train home I started to do the write up on my notes app, realising I need to get this out asap, first thing to defuse the situation I felt I had created.
Thursday morning, as I was consulting my notes and finishing off the write up, there was a few things I wanted to fact check with the club were totally accurate, there has been times where things have been misheard in the past (Boycie ahem) and needed correcting, I didn’t want this to happen. We’re human, mistakes can happen, I believed I had time to ensure there were none.
I decided, and this was not requested by the club but to send my write up to them, asking if they could read it over and everything I had written was totally accurate, leaving ??? <—— fact checks where I was a little cautious over.
They agreed and I again naively yet again assumed that this would be back with me in a few hours……despite the previous night listening to just how busy they have been.
Now whilst I understand and totally agree that this meeting is important, the club staff are as I’m sure you can imagine really busy, now I need to really stress here that this is in no way the fault of the club, this is on me 100%.
No tweet, no forum post, none of this situation exists.
Meanwhile The Supporters Charter Group are scratching their heads as to why I’ve gone it alone, I can only apologise to them also, as I say I was under the impression that we would all be reporting back ourselves which I have explained privately with them.
A single statement isn’t something I would have been personally happy with but that is what was agreed in my absence.
I haven’t felt comfortable coming back on the forum if I'm honest, ignoring the fact I insinuated what was said at the meeting would be out Thursday on the forum, I feel like I have let you all down and for that I’m sorry.
Just to add, this apology wasn’t asked for, it's something I feel is owed to you all.
Should someone have gone that could have stayed all evening? Ideally yes, although Paul (Boycie) was unavailable to attend. Since the formation of 2017 it has only been either myself or Paul that has attended, I didn’t feel it would be right to send someone new which in hindsight was the correct call, they may have also not been able to attend until the end of what I’m led to believe turned out to be almost a 4 hour long meeting, putting themselves unwittingly into a similar situation I have.
I know you are all frustrated, the accusations of attention seeking, sitting on information, teasing, trying to get more views, followers etc. and even censorship on the forum are simply not true, they come from people that do not know me or how the forum is run at all, which is disappointing hearing it said by members that have been on the forum for a number of years now.
Finally, I do want to say thank you to those who have sent supportive texts, PM’s, DM’s, tweets you name it over the last few days, despite asking to be given time, it’s you who I put the hours in for, I will learn from this and work on handling things better in the future.
I would also like to thank the moderators who have been trying their best to keep on top of the situation, without them this forum would have crashed and burned over the last few days so please be respectful to them, even if at times you do not agree with decisions they have made. 
David
 

........I don't think it's the club's problem, it's the modern world and how it's been dictated too, and how it has to operate, and how people operate in a sheepish copy cat manner, or are expected to operate with everything been operated by mobile phones, scanners etc or their equivalent. Most other clubs are operating in the same or similar ways, with cashless grounds, and the like and less revenue streams as per the current COVID repercussions etc.
Them pesky kids at apple and the like are the problem...............it will eventually get to the case, where I will not be able to go and watch a live game of football because I don't own the appropriate, necessary mobile phone that scans me into the ground, and let's face it, that is the day, when I happily stay away, as I don't want to be in a ground where the majority of the crowd sits, playing around with their miserable phones during the game, whereas some of us just want to go, and actually watch the beautiful game of football, without any of these poxy annoying things anywhere near us.
Such will be followed in a few years time by 11 v 11 robots watched by a ground full of mobile phones on seats, whilst humans are all in the car park, charging themselves with electric, instead of their cars!
It's the world, that is the problem, and all the suckers in it.
Bring back the turnstiles, employ humans to operate them and sell me a proper football ticket, that I can keep after the game, so I can have a physical memory of what I have really done in my life, God, Jesus and Steve Bloomer didn't waste their lives trying to get into a football match pressing thousands of buttons, sending e-mails, to the clubs, typing about it on forums, linking id's and e-mail addresses and on and on and on and ariston!
Simplicity is Genius!.........Long live my little Nokia phone........we live on, to fight another day!

Did we spend this much time speculating about Paul Simpson's worth? Jody Morris's? 
No.
Management teams are just that. Teams. There will be assigned roles that should bring out the best skills from each member. There will be one boss. The strength of the team lies in how the boss manages the team to support the objective. We'll see how that goes as the season progresses.

opening the ticket office would be a start and selling Season Tickets again.
Lot`s of the Older generation just dont want the Faff of online ticketing on a MBM basis.
They like to have a Season Ticket or failing that, like to call into the ticket office and buy an actual ticket!
In my local in Ripley there are at least 5 DCFC fans over the age of 65 who simply will not go again until they can physically go to the ground and buy a ticket!

Do we set up to score goals or to not concede goals? The Euros saw Gareth Southgate pick 8 or 9 defensive players every game and it worked for a while but couldn't get him over the line, with an incredible array of attacking talent on his bench. Rooney has far fewer options but a very similar mindset.
Asked in today's Radio Derby interview why Louie Sibley doesn't start Rooney effectively said he doesn't trust him defensively. Sibbo is to Rooney what Jack Grealish is to Southgate. Rooney said he didn't play Sibbo specifically because his number one priority was not to fall behind in the match.
Here's the interview https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p09pv3hb with the best version of the interview at 46:30.
Derby's problem is not scoring goals. Louie Sibley is the biggest goal threat our team has. Aston Villa built their team around Grealish until selling him for £100m. If Derby are going to survive (and maybe thrive) this season we need to build our team around Sibbo, not give him a cameo in which to try to make the difference. How best to do this?
I have long argued that the 4-2-3-1 does not work for us and we should be playing 4-3-3 (set up as 4-1-2-3). With the players available at the moment we should have Shinnie shielding the defence and then we can have Morrison and Sibley as the two more forward midfielders, which gives a forward line of Kazim-Richards central and Jozwiak and Thomas wide. So much more threatening than what we have at the moment.
With a team desperate for goals, having your 5 most dangerous attacking players in the line-up seems a no brainer. Rooney needs to learn to trust Sibley, and I am certain that trust would be rewarded.

Kazim just needs to hold the ball up and distribute to the runners going past as some other player used to do for us ?......if we can get them to do that,we will start becoming more prolific I suspect ?
 

Summer always sees lower crowds - its peak holiday time and many will be away especially those like us ahead of both sets of exam results unusually next week, some will be committed to playing cricket for a couple of weeks yet (how dare half fans do something with their time) and surely this year the pingdemic/covid cases/caution will affect numbers a little or a lot. Also unfortunately some will just have got into the habit of doing something else they enjoy more on a Saturday.  Many also cant afford it each week especially if wanting to attend with kids. It is a very expensive day.
However, some of you please stop the superiority if you are lucky enough to be able to go each week. And yes I mean lucky. Many cant do that ever or at certain times of their lives. Doesnt mean "these plastic half fans" dont refresh their phone every 2 seconds waiting for news, get butterflies leading up to the game, feel jittery for every second of every game and be depressed/grumpy when we lose.  season tickets wont work for us this year but we will be there whenever we can home and away and we are not less fans because of it

Great post …. There’s going to be a reasonable crowd for the first time in a long while. We need to make the RIGHT type of noise .. forget the protests, forget the in fighting. We are all in this, every cheer counts.
We talk casually about “academy lads” .. Some of them have been playing 1st team football for a year now - in a echoing mausoleum - Meanwhile they have got stronger, growing, learning, they know what a fight is. Now; the first for many of them … they are going to have 20,000 fans on their side. Lets show them what we sound like and what it feels to have a stadium urging them Forward …. Let’s lift them to the ceiling, Let’s do this ! ????????????

Let me try this again, I was forwarded your post and just online replying to say thanks, and I appreciate the concern. Posted and the topic was merged and my post lost as I submitted it. Cheers mods.
I have an apology and what exactly has happened post which will follow the report from the meeting, I don't not can't want to go into detail now. 
What I would say is, this is not the clubs fault, anyone using it as a stick to beat the club with are doing so without the full facts, which is unfair and not helping myself personally as I try to fix the situation and get the information out to you.
I, David, has handled the situation poorly, been naive and been busy working my hardest to get back to you all with what you want.I would like to think that over the years we have built up some mutual respect, if you don't want to believe me that's fine, but please just stop until you have read what I put out.
You must also all understand that the club staff are ridiculously busy right now working long hours on other important issues, whilst I feel somewhat in limbo, I'm more happy that we have an extra 2 defenders in the squad than missing out as they need to read through my emails.
As for tomorrow, I am excited more than you will ever know, football is back, Derby are back, fans in the stadium, perfect.
I'm just gutted I can't be there, but I'm doing the next best thing, taking a flight out of here so I can watch on RamsTV with a. few beers that are chilling in the fridge.
Those that are going, regardless of your thoughts on the ownership, club, put all that to one side and get behind the team, we have a young team that doesn't deserve to play under a negative atmosphere. 
Drop any protests, Mel chants, anti EFL or anti and sarcastic Rooney chants, focus on positive support for the team, this is when they need us the most, the atmosphere is all on us nobody else, if we crush those lads with booing and all that baalocks, we will have to shoulder some of the responsibility.
I'm sorry for the lack of communication, I just didn't have anything to add and felt it would be best to stay offline. But please, regardless of what you think of me, the club, just read the above and take it from a fan that loves this club and wouldn't be saying any of this if I didn't mean it.
?
 

Tomorrow is day one of what is almost certainly going to be "An interesting season"!

I sincerely hope you are giving it the same excited attention as the rest of us Rams fans.

If the reasons for the delay in posting your report from the meeting is in any way stressing you out... walk away from it... NOW!
Forget your well meant intentions.  Forget any "promises" you may have made.  And most importantly, ignore any flak being thrown in your direction, whether that be full on abuse, or poorly delivered banter.
You are not representative of Derby County Football Club, hierarchy or boot room, and you should not be bearing any burdens relating to such.
You are just a bloke that runs an internet forum... for the benefit of others.  No better, no worse, and no more important than the countless factory floor workers, office workers, and street cleaners amongst us.
Crucially, you owe us nothing.  If anything, we owe you, for providing us with this excellent forum of yours... of ours... for which many on here are extremely grateful.
Do what is right for you.  No excuses.  No explanations.  No apologies.  Indeed, if it suits, then don't even make mention of it.  I repeat... you owe us nothing.
Get your arse back on here.  Concentrate on tomorrow's game.  Bring actual real live football back into your life, and sod all those that expect more from you.  Let your minions wield their banhammers if need be, to keep the great unwashed at bay.
This is your manor, and we are nothing more than your guests.  So head up, chest out, deep breath, and let's get this season started.
DO NOT MAKE YOURSELF ILL OVER WHAT HAS BEEN A POO FEW DAYS.
 
UTR  ?
 
 
 
*If the above is totally along the wrong lines, and your absence is in any way related to more personal family matters, then I can only offer my sincere best wishes to you and yours.