GadFly

5 minutes ago, Chellaston Ram said:

How can spending 200 million and still fighting relegation be classed as doing a good job ?

200 million is nothing in Premier League terms, to be totally honest.

200 mill amounts to about 5 or 6 players of Prem calibre in today's market. Given that Forest were bottom of the Championship when Cooper took over, and upon promotion had 5 or 6 of their first-11 return to their parent clubs from loan, I think that splashing that amount of cash was always an inevitability if they wanted to have even the slightest hope of staying up.

It's all relative.

I think that the volume of signings is far more of an eyebrow raiser than the value of them, personally.

 As much as it pains me, I think that Cooper is doing very well indeed over there... though they're certainly not out of the woods yet. 

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but the number of empty seats in the stadium is quite striking and shocking. 

11 minutes ago, Chester40 said:

Seriously? Are you just on the wind up?

PS I'm not stalking you honest....I just disagree with everything you say today! No offence.

I'm not on the wind up. 

The original poster was suggesting that Samba should be punished for being the left back position of the field when it was all kicking off, but our own goalkeeper had ran half way across the field to join in the commotion too, 

18 minutes ago, Chester40 said:

Not at all....

The ref thought it too...

I literally said "besides the referee himself"

33 minutes ago, Crewton said:

I didn't realise Samba was playing left-back.

Allsop was well inside the Forest half at that point.... should he have been punished too?

Just now, RoyMac5 said:

The typical things ref do. Make no decision, book them both. #easy

I think I must be the only person besides the referee himself who believes that a yellow for both was the right decision. 

Tbh getting wound up and upset about things that happened after a penalty when the ball is dead is clutching at straws a little bit in my opinion. It's what happens when the ball is alive and in play that I'm interested in, where the game should be won or lost, and what we should be discussing. 

Just now, jono said:

There’s competitive winding up / sledging and then there is cheating - different things .. that mouthy ginger lad held his hand to his face .. he was lying in order to get an opponent booked. That’s is pure dirt and should not be allowed in the game. For me fake hands to faces and feigning injury should be straight red. I’m serious. This is sport, you just don’t do it. 

Samba assaulted Lawrence off the ball, Lawrence retaliated. The rules probably say yellow for both. Samba has no excuse at all. Lawrence as captain might have done better but when adrenaline is high these things happen. 

Agree that feigning injury should be punished. I hope I've not said anything to suggest otherwise. 

Also don't think I've ever said that Samba should have gone unpunished for his behaviour after the penalty was scored. I'm simply saying that the ref was correct to take no action against him for joining the fracas that followed Ravel's sending off - there were several players involved in that, all goading each other. I could be wrong but I don't think that using verbals to get a rise out of an opponent is against the rues, provided it's only verbals and nothing physical. The player on the receiving end of said goading should be the better man and rise above it like a professional, in my opinion. 

The point that adrenaline is high and these things are more likely to happen in circumstances like that is not one that I disagree with, but it applies equally to all players on both sides, so I'm not sure of its relevance. 

3 minutes ago, Chester40 said:

The point you were making was garbage though, unless you're a red.

Someone constantly following you round, eyeballing you, talking trash and bumping into you in the last minute of the game is crying out to be laid out. Ref needs to get a grip of it and warn him for ungentlemanly conduct.

I would argue that being inclined to lay somebody out is ungentlemanly conduct. 

Just now, Indy said:

No. But Samba should get a red card for pushing Lawrence and following it up by taking a swing at him. 

Ok. That has nothing to do with the point I was making, but I don't disagree with you. 

1 minute ago, Ilsonram12 said:

Ref lost control of that at the end, samba should of been sent off, clearly goading morrison as to why the scenes at the end 

Is that against the rules of the game? 

Don't agree that players should be booked or punished for "trying to get a rise out of the opposition" - in this case Samba and Colback. If you're a professional, you simply don't rise to it. They're not children, they're grown adults who are supposed to be at work. 

5 minutes ago, TheresOnlyWanChope said:

I agree but maybe there will be no buyer with such a high debt. Which means liquidation. Maybe a pre requisite for these buyers is that the debt is reduced.

Yeah I appreciate that and I agree... but that kind of brings us full circle to my original question - aside from what essentially amounts to sympathy for the fans, why should/would your average citizen give a toss if Derby get liquidated? Surely from the neutral perspective of your average taxpayer, you'd want to insist that the debt is paid in full and if not, the club should be punished and prevented from operating in the future? Imagine it wasn't Derby, or even another football club.. 

2 minutes ago, TheresOnlyWanChope said:

Oh, I get you. It’s unlikely to be written off surely. Reduced or payment plan as you say but written off? Can’t see that. 

Even reduced seems a bit unethical to me when I try to view the situation through a neutral lens. The club should pay their taxes in full IMO, even if it takes a lot longer than it would under normal circumstances. 

2 minutes ago, TheresOnlyWanChope said:

They won’t get their money if DCFC don’t exist anymore so maybe they will accept less. However this might set a precedent so maybe they won’t accept less- as per that article mentioned previously. 

Yeah but by writing off the debt they won't get their money even if DCFC do exist...? So again, from the perspective of your average taxpaying Brit, I don't see how it can be justified to just write off 30 million quid and allow the club to just crack on operating as if nothing happened.

Surely the sensible and fair thing to do would be to create some kind of manageable payment plan, where the club pays back the money over a longer period of time?   

Forgive my possible stupidity, but perhaps somebody can enlighten me... 

If we owe 30 odd million in unpaid monies to HMRC... why should they write that money off/reduce the debt? I'm looking for answers that don't resort to whataboutery please. I'm not interested in "well Amazon/Starbucks/whoever don't pay their taxes so why should we?" or anything like that (I mean, for starters, two wrongs don't make a right...). What I want to know is - from the perspective of a non-Rams-supporting everyday taxpayer, why should their tax money be used to prop up a football club that they have no association with, and couldn't care less if it went out of existence? Wouldn't that money be better spent on education or healthcare? Why should any of us continue to play fair and pay our fair share, if DCFC won't/don't? 

Surely if you're going to advocate and hope for DCFC to have their unpaid taxes ignored, then you cannot ever take a moral position against any other corporation not paying their taxes, ever again? 

If I've got this completely wrapped around my neck then I do apologise, but I'd also like to understand the situation a little better so please don't go too hard on me if I'm just being dumb - enlighten me instead! ?

15 minutes ago, Crewton said:

My gut feeling is there's allot of p*** and wind in these stories of Boro and Wycombe taking legal action, designed to put off potential buyers and drive us into liquidation. I don't believe they have a snowball in hells chance of winning a legal case, but tying us down in legal battles is another way of sucking us dry. 

This is war. Make no mistake about it. 

Why would anybody want to do that? 

Please explain your thought process.

Just now, Andicis said:

Yup, we beat a bunch of crap teams and got found out vs our first proper opposition, but people will tell you that england are great and we got unlucky when we beat Denmark, the worst Germany in 30 years and Ukraine ?

100%. Was the same at the World Cup too. 

And then the occasion, the spectacle of being in a final, is used as an excuse to cover up the fact that we're just not that good at football tbh. 

I think that it's possible to separate the football itself, as in; "are we actually any good?", from the enjoyment of getting far in a tournament, as in; "we're in a final!"... but it seems to me that most people get those two things conflated with each each other. 

Typical England... same old same old England.

"We got to a final" - yes, we did... but look at how Italy got to the final, beating Spain and Belgium, and then look at how we did it. Credit where it's due, we beat Ukraine and Denmark and managed to play out a goalless draw with a pub side from Scotland, and beat one of the worst Germany sides you've seen in years... so, credit for that England, sure. But really Italy deserve this FAR more than we do, and honestly if we'd have won the tournament tonight on penalties I think we'd have absolutely robbed them.

Once again, as soon as we come up against anybody half decent - we lose. The nation gets a massive boner over the team because "we're in a final" or "we're in a semi final", but we've got there really by getting lucky and being drawn against a bunch of far inferior teams which allows us to basically walk our way in to the latter stages, allows us to flatter to deceive, makes us look better than we actually are. It happened in the world cup and it happened again here. If we'd have played Italy, Belgium, Spain or France in the round of 16 we'd have been out ages ago.

On to the game itself... we had TWO shots on target. TWO. One of those came from our LEFT BACK.. our LEFT ducking BACK. A wealth of attacking talent, all millionaires, all star names for their clubs, and it's our left back who's getting the goal. Can anybody tell me who got our other shot on target, without googling it? I actually have no idea. It was probably a header from a corner. That's the way this England team plays... defend as though you believe the other team is better than you are, as if you're scared of them, despite the fact that any one of your players could walk in to the Danish side (for example), and then hope to grab a cheeky goal from a corner or an own goal or a penalty. It's ducking boring, it's ducking embarrassing, and it's ducking cowardly.

WHY ON EARTH was Saka expected to take that final penalty when there's seasoned and senior pros in the side who could have volunteered ahead of him? Where's our apparent golden boy Raheem Sterling? Didn't he fancy it?

Our supposed messiah of a manager made 2 substitutions with about 30 seconds to go, which I can only assume was so that those players could take a penalty... and they both missed. Bravo, Gareth. Bravo. I honestly feel really sorry for Jordan Pickford.

Anyone else notice that all 3 players who missed, and one for Italy in Jorginho, all took some elaborate run-up? Just run up to the ball and put your ducking laces through it for ducks sake.

It's boring! Can we not play like we want to win for once, rather than like we're just trying not to lose? Can we not HAVE A ducking GO?!

Please, somebody, tell me why I should believe that this England team are anything other than lucky to get this far in the first place, and why I should believe that we have any hope of doing well, or even playing anything remotely resembling entertaining football, at next years World Cup.

8 hours ago, Brummie Steve said:

On having to cease work through ill health I had:-

6 months on full pay then

6 months on half pay then

a mediical to decide if I should be granted ill health retirement with my pension entitlement enhanced.

In circumstances like the three rampaging Rams (severally or in consort) I don't think my employers (in common with the police and other public service employers) would have been legally bound to make any remuneration except, extraordinarily, an actuarily reduced pension.

Much as I like Richard Keogh,I fail to see how the club is duty bound to pay him over £1 million PA to do nothing. It may be a different world as a pro footballer but I would expect the club to follow legal advice on the way forward.

This whole argument is a bit of a red herring when the club makes zero reference to his ill health in their statement, and makes it all about his conduct. 

3 minutes ago, JfR said:

The implication of the club's statements and actions is that they found that Keogh has committed an act or acts that Lawrence and Bennett did not and which were more serious than the acts Lawrence and Bennett committed.

baalocks. The implication to anyone with half a brain and the ability to apply logic and critical thinking to a situation is that Keogh is worth less money, and is more of a liability/drain on resources to the club now than the other two are. 

16 minutes ago, The Orange Pimpernel said:

Because Derby are generous employers and perhaps wanted to soften the blow due to his service to the club

Oh right so they actually WILL "tolerate any of their players or staff behaving in a manner which puts themselves, their colleagues, and members of the general public at risk of injury or worse, or which brings them into disrepute"?

1 minute ago, The Orange Pimpernel said:

This isn't difficult. All three are guilty of gross misconduct. The impact of that gross misconduct can be dictated by the company. Lawrence and Bennett have been dealt with and have returned to work. Keogh rendered himself unable to work so the club have used their right to sack him after offering him a generous chance to stay on reduced terms. 

The bit that's weird is this; if he's so unable to work, if his conduct was so appalling, why has he been offered reduced terms at all? Why was he only dismissed after refusing to accept said terms? 

5 minutes ago, AndyinLiverpool said:

A lot of lawyers on here today. 

A lot of people with a moral compass that isn't broken and all. 

19 minutes ago, Davide said:

I would be embarrassed being Bennett or Lawrence after this. Sack all of them or none. 

So much this. Wish I could like it twice or more.