New Gold Dream

That depends whether or not you think fans can't chant as loudly sitting down. Fans standing doesn't guarantee they'll sing more - witness the South Stand at times these last two seasons. Banning mobile phones would be more effective in that respect, then they'd have to concentrate on the game, boring or otherwise. Closing the food and drink concessions while the game is ongoing would also help.
No-one should be forced to stand because someone else wants to break the stadium rules. Some people can't stand for more than a few minutes whether that's due to age or physical problems, but they're no lesser fans than the ones who want to stand.

Ever since becoming a new Dad just under 4 months ago, my daughter was born 3 months premature and very poorly which led her to being in life support, and in NICU for the first 2 weeks of her life. She's at home now on oxygen after 2 months in hospital and 9 blood transfusions, but something happened to me during that which has made me look at life in a completely different perspective. 
 
Stories like this really get to me because life is so fragile and its only until we go through something do we see it as such. I have no words that possibly come close to making anything better other than I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that for all the talent/money/success that Josh has been gifted with, that this has happened. Unfortunately cancer makes no exceptions, it doesnt matter who you are, it can come for us all. 
All we can do, is hug and hold those closest to us for as long as we have them in our lives, and appreciate every second we have.
My condolences to the whole family 💔

Whilst we bash away, mostly anonymously behind the keyboard, just go take a second to see what Josh Vickers is going through right now, Ed, just like us all is a real person. 
Regardless of how you feel about him as a person or his commentary style there is absolutely no need for personal stuff towards a fellow Derby fan.
Seriously, come on, have a word with yourselves.
 

Ed Dawes wears his heart on his sleeve and is a Ram through and through; don’t get the animosity towards him. He’s a good commentator and I feel connected to him precisely because he’s one of us. Hope he’s ok. 

It's quite an unpleasant forum on here sometimes isn't it.
The blokes doing his job,has some time off for unknown reasons and gets personally slagged off by fellow derby supporters whilst he does so.
 
 
 
 

We had this lad drop him, made him an honorary lifetime member of the Rams Heritage Trust.
Our saviour !
he loved it and we are going places ❤️

Sorry to start another thread but we have been down at Pride Park all day at Harrison’s Hub setting up for our display over the next two days of all things Derby County and I wanted to share the results.
it’s free entry and I promise you it will stir the grey matter and maybe tug at the heart strings! There is something for everybody from 1884 to David Mcgoldricks shirt from this season, The Racecourse to PridePark not forgetting the little old BBG.
great to see young @sagehe couldn’t wait for the weekend and had been queuing up all night so we let him in to help !
park in the main car park and have a pop in, we want a museum at the ground where all of the clubs history can be shared, we’ve got the gear we just need a space.
10.15 till 3 Saturday and 11.15 ish till 3 on Sunday due to the Ramathon, Ascot drive entrance to pride park will be open earlier than the others.

You could field a pretty strong team of "top Derby youngsters who moved to a top-tier club and basically disappeared" - not just Williams and Festy but Gordon, Delap, Ebiowei, Plange. Even Bogle was a bench player for a long time in the Premier League. 
It's completely understandable how clubs (and players) move so early now, but a shame nonetheless. 

Football hooliganism had nothing whatsoever to do with ‘Thatcherism’ it was well and truly started before the 1980’s. The hooligans themselves were young men who enjoyed the adrenaline rush of a tear up. That was attached to football for a while but it’s part of human nature, there will always be a proportion of young guys who like a bit of aggro. They grow out of it and are replaced on the conveyor belt. Thankfully there isn’t much of a hooligan element attached to football nowadays but it isn’t far below the surface. When you go away with Derby it’s obvious that there are quite a lot of young lads that wouldn’t take much encouraging to get involved

I’ve been to all the away games this season including cup games and friendlies, and hope to get to the remaining games, it’s hard work at times but hopefully this year it will be worth it. # It’s the hope that kills ?

Don't think it's necessarily a reality check to be honest. We knew all this before the game. Last night doesn't change the way I see the team. Sheffield Wednesday beat Newcastle. Does that mean they are ready to compete against Premier League opposition? Sheffield Wednesday aren't much better than us. 
On the night we just create chances or cause West ham enough problems. They did their jobs and were able to shut us out. That's it.

There’s so many odd assumptions in your views on this. A bit of reading the DET and watching interviews shows there has been some contact between him and Warne, just not recently which appears to be mutual.
Bielik said in an interview back in October that he is grateful to the club, that Derby is in his heart and that if we recalled him in Jan he would go along with it. He’s also said he is enjoying playing at Brum and in the championship. Nothing he has said or done is openly disrespectful, and yet you seem to be suggesting otherwise. A season long loan was agreed with a recall clause, from what info is out there you’re right in that Bielik’s wishes have been considered. Seems we accommodated this partly to give him the chance of representing his country at the World Cup and also because it relieves some or all of the financial strain his contract represents. All considered decisions made by the owner of the club. All parties aware he could be recalled in January, now a decision has been made not to do so.
I appreciate your opinion and it’s clear you won’t change your mind on it, I just don’t see what facts you’re basing your disappointment specifically related to Bielik the person on? He’s not downed tools from what we know, has spoken truthfully and respectfully in public regarding Derby and the loan spell, what is there to be so annoyed about? 

I was privileged to be asked by @Matt_Barlow_DM of the Daily Mail to assist him in putting together a full double page article celebrating the 50 year anniversary of Derby County becoming the Champions of England, please share its a great write up, so great to see something positive about our great club.
#SaveDerbyCounty
 
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-10677815/amp/Derby-legends-trip-memory-lane-50-years-winning-league.html
 

Didn’t Stan Collymore say recently a club like Derby can’t be allowed to die.
 
https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/derby-county-collymore-ashley-administration-6890383

Clearly he has been party to some catastrophic decision making at the club and he will have played a role in that. He, more than anybody, will be keen to move on to something else when the time comes.
However, just for a bit of perspective, he still reported to Mel. Anyone who thinks he had an equal decision making position, or was able to influence what Mel did to any great extent, is probably a bit naive. I'm sure he received many of the assurances and promises we all did.
This won't be a positive post, and I'm certainly not standing up for Stephen, he doesn't need me to! It's just good sometimes to take a step back, I don't think everything is always as clear cut as we think. Football clubs are murky places with lots of rumour, with no decisions made by committee. Could he have done more to prevent the mess we're in? For sure, but we will never know the ins and outs.
He will go, 100% and that will be the right decision. But ultimately, he isn't the main culprit in all of this imho.
 
 

Curtis Davies for me.
I know it’s cheating a little but following on from the last game of last season really when he came on to give his all to keep us up, despite not recovering from a serious injury and not knowing if it was his last game in professional football, let alone for Derby.
But at his age, the desire, the passion, the influence he has on this team. I believe it’s infectious for the rest of the players and he must be such a positive role model for the young players coming through. He doesn’t have the armband on, but he’s certainly the captain of this football club.

Finally managed to catch up with Mr Rioch after many many years, got him to sign the 1974/75 championship winners and Charity Shield winners shirt,
?The Villa fans will never mock when they remember Bruce Rioch ! Rioch..Rioch !?
what a shot he had ! Powerhouse !

The point being those players should have been there as emergency backup in their positions. Sort of like the roles Wes Brown, O'Shea, etc had at Man Utd. Capable of filling in, but not good enoigh as a regular starter - as evidenced when they eventually moved on.
In 15/16, we had Pearce, Shotton and Buxton as 4th, 5th and 6th choice CBs, playing for a total of 261 minutes in the league. Rawson could easily have stepped in as 4th choice instead, and showed he was capable enough based on his loan out to Rotherham. Hanson didn't look out of place in the team yet hardly featured again in following seasons.
16/17, Blackman, Camara and Weimann 4th, 5th and 6th choice wingers played for less than a combined 1000 minutes. Those should have been given to Bennett (who only played for 23). Lowe was exceptional when he came into the side in 16/17, including a memorable man of the match display vs Wolves. But, he had Forsyth and Olsson on senior player wages so shived down the pecking order.
17/18, Shackell 0 minutes, Butterfield 157, Palmer 426 and Anya 302. Are you telling me Rawson, Hanson and Elsnik couldn't have played those roles and not been just as good? We owned Vydra, Martin, Jerome, Nugent and Bent plus Winnall on loan. We only needed 2 of them, with Jacobsen as backup.

PRESTON NORTH END TICKET INFORMATION
Following the sad passing of Preston North End’s owner Trevor Hemmings on Monday evening, to encourage as many supporters as possible to celebrate his life and leadership of their club, the hosts have decided to reduce match ticket prices for Derby County’s visit to Deepdale on Saturday 16th October (3pm kick-off).
 
Tickets for Saturday’s match have been reduced to £5 for all supporters including away fans, with all gate receipts to be donated to charities supported by Trevor Hemmings.
All Derby supporters that purchased a match ticket at the original prices will automatically receive the difference to the credit/debit card used to make their purchase.
And although tickets for the Rams’ first match following the international break went off-sale as scheduled at noon today, Preston have advised that just over 2,000 £5 tickets in the away end will be made available to Derby supporters on the day.
Payment will be via cash at the turnstiles and card payment will not be accepted.
 
 

I appreciate this whole situation must be massively frustrating for any Derby fan, myself included. 
However I have no idea of the discussions MM and the EFL are having. I also don't know how Mel is, or indeed what is driving his approach. 
I understand that much of their discussion will be subject to NDAs. 
So, whilst it is unpalatable for most of us that we don't know what might be going on behind the scenes, we must be patient and assume that those representing Derby County are acting in the best interests of the club. 
Imagine if you were doing your level best for the club, working long hours to try to get the best resolution for the club, only to find on social media that you are incompetent, greedy, a disgrace etc. 
All we can do, as supporters, is to support the players during this difficult period. After all, their effort and application have been laudable. 
 
 

A devilish side of me would like Mel to re look at things in terms of paying the debts off, operating at a very low cost base that is sustainable whilst building the value of our very promising youngsters, in turn the side doing well and we actually make it to the play off by the next three seasons and be successful ( unlikely with clubs in receipt of parachute payments) where a buyer may well come in for the club at a decent amount. 
if I was him I would consider it if feasible whilst I would absolutely take the EFL to a court of law if they impose sanctions against us based on things they agreed to and they signed of as ok that were simply perfectly legal, how the EFL could defend their actions would be very interesting and unsuccessful I imagine.

I think at this point there’s too much we don’t know, such as what is the proposed deduction for? Is it for breaching the P&S limit in the years we had to restate? Is it for the next 3 year period that includes 2019? The one that includes 2020? (That one seems highly unlikely, given that Covid losses are allowable.) If we have breached the limit, is the proposed punishment purely for that or are they trying to claim for aggravating factors?
Saying that, if I’m reading between the lines of the article, it says ‘with a points deduction still possible’ - only ‘possible’ so not guaranteed? If it’s not guaranteed why would we accept it as though it was?
‘Under pressure from rival Championship clubs, the EFL is pushing for Derby to be punished’ - if we have obviously breached the limit why would they have to be put under pressure to try and punish us, and it wouldn’t only be ‘possible’, it would be written in the rules, so they’d just charge us with breaching it, let it go to another Disciplinary and be done with it, why would they effectively be negotiating with us? - unless they thought they would lose the case due to mitigating factors in our favour, so are trying to get us to accept something so they don’t lose face again?
It says ‘as expected’ about challenging the proposed punishment, ie. they don’t expect us to accept what they have proposed, presumably they think we’d accept a lesser amount, just to get it behind us, but why should we if it’s not guaranteed? If accepting a deduction doesn’t even get us out of an embargo, what does it get us? If we can’t add to the squad to mitigate the deduction, why not fight it, otherwise we’d have a small squad and a deduction, when we could fight it, have a small squad but maybe avoid a deduction. Why should we have to just accept both?
It, once again, points out ‘Derby have always maintained they did not seek any competitive advantage with their amortisation policy.’ which does make it look like as though it’s a limit breach, it’s in the years we’ve had to restate, they are trying to increase the punishment because of aggravation, trying to say that we deliberately went over the limit to give us an advantage, and we’re fighting our corner on it.
If it’s a small limit breach it may be that we’re trying to avoid a deduction at all, due to what was mentioned in the club statement post original charge, we can’t go back and retrace our steps to get back in line.
The DC made it very clear that we couldn’t have known at the time that what we were doing was going to be considered contrary to FRS 102. If it’s that we’ve ended up going over by an amount we could have sold a player for (so bid rejected) or played hard ball and increased what we sold a player for, not bought a player for, not paid a loan fee/signing on fee or wages for, as we couldn’t have known at the time that doing what we did would lead us to breach retrospectively, and different decisions would have been made at that time had we known, I don’t think we’d just roll over and accept it, and I wouldn’t want us to either.

Ed Dawes is a bit of a modern day Graham Richards and I have no problem with that. I do think that some of the anti Ed criticism on here is more to do with people wanting uncritical sugar coated coverage of the club rather than a general dislike of his match day delivery. Ed is a Rams fan and I like his passion for the club. If I want unchallenging coverage I’ll tune in to Rams TV.

As we're all aware, this season marks the 50th anniversary of our first League title. Had an idea for a while to mark it by doing a walk through the season as it happened 50 years ago (rather than just next May) - sort of a variation on the 'Derby on this day thread'
Whilst its stating the obvious to suggest a first title changed a club, this season in particular acted as a benchmark for Derby. It was the first season we had the Ram that we still see on our shirts today, it set the platform for our European Cup exploits the following season (and Brian Clough's obsession with landing the trophy after the Juventus semi-final) & our later title in 1974-75. It is also the breakthrough season which still affords Derby a lot of respect nationally from fans of a certain age & one often remembered for the nail-biting ending.
I wasn't around 50 years ago so my efforts will be confined to finding Youtube footage (if it exists), match reports, memorabilia & updated league tables as the season gets going. Where it probably needs fleshing out is with contributions from those who were there at the particular matches - what do you remember about particular games, what were the away fans like (good & lets face it, bad in a lot of instances) & any other memories/match rituals of the time
Anyroad, enough wittering from me. Exactly 50 years ago today we kicked off 1971-72 against Manchester Utd at the Baseball Ground. Youtube highlights below but we were actually 0-2 down in our opener against the Man Utd side of Law, Best & Charlton...
 

Nope.
That gets you toss like this

This

and this

instead of class like this

This

and this