DCFC27

2 minutes ago, GenBr said:

Playing devils advocate here, but how do you know he still has his fortune?

Reports today, he’s done well in his other investments. Not overly  accurate but according to the Sunday times he’s worth £515m. Even if he’s worth half of that he can more than afford to keep the club running. Even if he’s worth £100m he’d still be one of the richest owners in the championship.

9 hours ago, kevinhectoring said:

The main problem with Maguire’s ‘I thought Mel was better than that’ is that he’s not listened to what MM said yesterday. Or understood what’s going on
 

Here it is (not direct quotes)

“I can’t sell whilst the EFl is on my back

“The EFL aren’t resolving this. They are dragging their feet and it seems they will continue to do that so long as I am owner. “
 
In other words, the anti MM vote on the EFl board is forcing MM to pour money into the club whilst they reduce the value of the club by delaying resolution. 
 

Ok Mel is largely the unlucky author of his own misfortune. But Kieron, you foolish man, it’s not surprising he’s pulled the plug 

He authorised the contracts and created the budgets. The EFL didn’t help but Mel still has his fortune and just won’t pay.

5 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:

Great post, I was thinking the same sort of thing. You can't just gamble with the club, then walk away when you no longer fancy funding the mess you created.

Something I posted a while ago was could all transfers and wages be paid upfront in full to centrally run bank account, out of which clubs and players are then paid as per agreed schedule. Clubs would have to have to have the cash upfront before buying a player. Cash could be either gifted by an owner or taken from club profits.

The realtime regulation could then be paying rest of the staff/bills vs the incomings. Football needs to stop owner being able to gamble big, then walk away when they fancy it. 

I don't want to listen to the interview from yesterday, but was Mel asked "why are you not prepared to keep funding the club, like you said you would"?

He deflected and said it was in the long term interests of the club. What a plonker. 

3 minutes ago, alram said:

did he answer what the situation with the stadium is? 

for me this is the worst thing he has done during his entire time here, we could be a homeless club in a few years like coventry

It is and it isn’t, I don’t know how I feel about it at the moment. From what he said, he owns it and it’s not in Admin. So that means that the admin can’t sell it to pay off the debts etc. On the other hand, Mel Morris owns it. 

Ultimately, whatever Mel has said and done. The fact is he bought the club, he authorised the contract and signed the cheques in a gamble to get us into the premier league, it hasn’t worked out and he should be the one paying for it now. The guy is a wealthy enough man to keep the club  afloat for many many years to come. The simply fact is he doesn’t want to. 
How does this persist? Why when it happened to Wigan and Bury was it not sorted.

FFP\P&S is a broken system… it allows clubs to loose £39 million over a 3 year period before anyone takes notice?! Bury can’t afford to loose £39m and now they are gone. 
I have said for a long time now, and I heard G Neville say something similar at the weekend. There needs to be real time regulation of clubs. There needs to be a way of making owners accountable. Let’s use the example of Mel. Mel bought Derby and he was reportedly worth £500m apparently he still is?! But let’s say he’s not and he’s “only” now worth £100m. He’s still got £100m that rightly (unfortunately not legally) should be in the club. 

Morally how is it right that Mel has £100m but the staff member at Moore farm won’t be paid and they will have to beg borrow steal to buy a loaf of bread now? 
Why is it that Wayne Rooney is paying for the teams away trips? 
Why is is that loyal Derby fans who paid for their season tickets and asked for a refund during the pandemic were ignored?! 
 

Something has to be done in future. Owners should have to personally guarantee their clubs liability’s over and above their incomings. Even if the there was some protection to owners - for example If you have an owner worth - £500m they have to personally guarantee the club until their down to their last £10m. 

Maybe then when Mel was hell bent on promotion, he’d have thought more about the contracts he was signing! He’d have thought harder about sacking Clement, Pearson, Cocu. He’d have thought harder about appointing them and he’d have know that if this goes wrong it’s going to cost him most of his fortune. 
 

However, this is not the case and Mel can now got to bed tonight sleeping like a baby, knowing that his money is safe. I genuinely believe he thinks he’s been hard done by here and it’s not his fault. Mel if you’re reading, pay off the debts. We know you can afford to. Just leave the club in the same state that you found it in. 

Does anyone have a link to the play back? 

18 hours ago, G STAR RAM said:

Once again factually incorrect.

As at 30 June 2018, all funds MM had put into the club were via equity not debt.

That’s what I said, you can gift money to the club. But Mel seems to have borrowed most of the money from MSD 

18 hours ago, G STAR RAM said:

Factually incorrect. Do the research if you are going to try to convince people on the finances.

Prove me wrong 

51 minutes ago, Grumpy Git said:

When a director puts funds into a company, they not only still own that amount, they charge the company interest on it.

They can gift it too. Mel just seems to have borrowed it 

1 hour ago, Van der MoodHoover said:

Back in 2018 - 19 Frank Lampard was saying in det that Mel Morris had put in 150m but that books would have to be balanced from that point. 

Was that all nonsense? 

I sort of thought maybe it was only once income collapsed in covid that Mel started borrowing to finance the club but was it in fact earlier.... Perhaps from 2019?

 

All egotistical claims by Mel. Doesn’t look like he’s spent a penny personally. Said he’s been loosing about £1m a month for 4/5 years and there’s at least £60m debts. You do the math… 

MSD leant the money before the pandemic. There seems to be various other charges on the club too not just MSD. Mel bought the club debt free. 

2 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:

I'm really struggling to understand why we are going into admin.

We gambled too much on promotion and tried to find loopholes to escape the FFP rules. Whilst it was a stupid thing to do, it made some sort of sense. If/when it failed, it means points deductions and probable relegation. But it's not because the club ran out of money, it's because we spent more money than we were allowed.

How have we suddenly reached the point now where we don't have enough money for the club to continue functioning? Has Mel literally got no money left to keep the club going? If not, why has he now decided to stop funding the mess he created. Can't he just carry on paying the money until Jan, sell any high earners, sell the whole first team, and have a cheap team of kids? Or are most of the outgoings now just servicing debt with no end in sight? Just hope there is something else going on and this is necessary to push it through.

Mel just doesn’t want to carry on funding it. He’s still has his fortune but just doesn’t want to carry on funding. I’m not even sure he’s put in any significant amount of his own money. I think most of it has been borrowed or income into the clubs. The guys name should be mud. 

2 minutes ago, NottsRam77 said:

No to my knowledge he walks away with nothing apart from writing off 180m and perhaps the token £1 someone will give the admin to take the club and its mess on 

Yeah, he doesn’t have to carry on funding the club and leaves it with huge amount of debt. If the debt is as high as reported it doesn’t look like he’s put a penny into the club, looks like he’s just leveraged it all this time and suddenly we can’t afford the repayments and day to day running costs. 

11 minutes ago, simmoram1995 said:

So first of all they’ve got rid of Darren Wassell

as for assets 

every player will be put up up for sale 

roos = £200-300,000

marshall= free 

Byrne = £250-300,000

jagielka= End of contract 

davies = end of contract 

forsyth = £100-150,000

Buchanan = £400-800,000

sibley =£ 500,000 - 1 m 

Bird = £ 500,000- 1.2 m

shinnie = £300-450,000

lawrence = £750,000- 1.25 m

Joz = £ 1.5- 1.75 m- 2 m

knight = £500,000- 750,000

bielik= £500,000- 1.5 m

baldock= end of contract 

CKR = £100,000

Obviously some of these figures are ludicrous but as administrators I think they’ll take what they can 

 

 

I don’t think that will be the case, I have a feeling MSD will step in and run the club fora few years until they can sell on. 

5 minutes ago, YouRams said:

So why hasn’t Mel just sold us for £1 we take the 6/9 point deduction and hope a new owner can save us from relegation this year? What’s the benefit to him or the club putting us into admin?

Or is he to be believed that we can’t find a buyer and we’re simply losing too much money to carry on?

No ones willing to take on the debts as they are. Somehow they will be reduced in administration. By the size of the debts quoted it doesn’t look like Mel has put any of his own money in at all ffs 

Absolute greed Mel has 100s of millions available to him. It was his decisions that lead to this. Unfortunately it were you or I and we didn’t pay our bills we’d have to pay.

3 hours ago, uttoxram75 said:

So why don't the EFL announce and publish the exact rule we have broken and punish us accordingly. I said last week, they need to ? or get off the pot.

 

They have 

49 minutes ago, MackworthRamIsGod said:

I'm no fan of Mel anymore, he deserves a lot of the stick he receives, same with Pearce, but, protests shouldn't be aimed at them, they should be aimed squarely at the EFL.

It surprises me that some fans haven't clicked onto who the real enemy are. Protesting against Mel Morris will have Rick Parry licking his lips, and Steve Gibsons no doubt. Any protest against Mel, regardless of our feelings, is another dent against the club.

Protests need to be pre-arranged, before and after the game, banners with words to the effect that the EFL are destroying football. The media need to know so the protests get air time and we need a spokesperson who can appear in the media and give facts as to why we feel we are being harshly treated. Such as; if the EFL hadn't signed off all our accounts we wouldn't have paid 10 million for Bielik, or 4 million for Jozwiak, or x amount for Wayne Rooney.

In all of this, we don't have anyone visibly representing Derby and trying to set our story straight.

I am absolutely sick to the back teeth of the EFL and Rick Parry, I would rather see us play non-league football and fight them to the hilt than bend over and accept guilt!

If Mel Morris reads this (he won't), you have made lots of mistakes, but you have my full backing on this, fight the barstewards right to the very end, don't accept any points deduction, at least until the EFL accept liability also.

Protest against the EFL not Mel!

Whichever way we dress it up we broke the rules... he bent over backwards to avoid FFP so is it a massive surprise they want us punished... We had to work out an accounting process to work around the rules and sell our stadium so that we could make the signings we have. Ultimately he tried to cheat and he's embarrassed the club and the fans. We'll probably go into league one on the back of his ownership so ultimately I don't blame fans if they want Mel out. Whilst I don't doubt his intentions and commitment to Derby County he has monumentally failed! 

9 hours ago, Mucker1884 said:

I’m talking about DCFC’s “Covid-19 Supporters Code of Conduct”:

5. Supporters are advised to wear a face mask, face covering or face visor within the concourse, toilets and walking to their seats.

 

If that is no longer advised by the club, then they need to update their terms & conditions, so we all know what is expected of us?  
At the very least, change the wording to something that suggests it is merely their preference?  (If indeed that is the case?)
 

Totally agree that it’s down to each individual to decide whether to attend or not.  Not sure that’s even an issue, as I’m not aware of anyone attending against their will?  

 

I think the word “advised” is the key point. You can choose to act on their advice or not, making it a preference.
I think if you look under flares etc it will be fans are prohibited from entry with a flares. 

My point is more, if you were worried about covid I don’t think people wearing a mask in the concourse would make them feel safer overall, as your about to stand in close proximity with a large group of people anyway. Making the whole mask in concourse debate trivial. There really is no point. 
 

In society I genuinely feel masks will be here to stay in some settings- eg 

crowded public transport

Hospitals 

doctors 

City centre supermarkets 

football stadiums… 90 minutes in close proximity to 10-20 people sat around you isn’t going to be ofset by a 2 minute walk to your seat through the concourse. - unless of course you sit the whole game with it on. 

2 minutes ago, Boycie said:

“Someone” tells The Mail 9 points.  We all go “no way!”

The actual points is 6, we all go haha! See!

mind games

Unless it’s more for Steve Gibson in which case the mail say 9, Gibson says “no way” and It’s  actually 12…

On 14/09/2021 at 17:40, Mucker1884 said:

I’d be happier if we all abided by the rules (which we all agree to as part of the ticket purchase transaction), and also for the club to police it. 
Mask wearing through the turnstiles, concourse, toilets and stairs  has been almost non existent, from what I’ve seen. To the point where I feel the freak, keeping mine on until I get to my seat!

It matters not who agrees or disagrees. It’s part of the deal!

?

 

It’s not though is it. It was before masks became a personal choice.
Ultimately if someone is worried about catching covid or any other catchy viruses, Pride park probably isn’t the best place to be Mask or no Mask. 

3 minutes ago, sage said:

You can only pass it forwards when someone is available. He once again played the best ball of the game to Lawrence who slightly overhit his pass to Baldock.  

Has to do it more often I’m afraid. The passes are almost always there too! It’s so frustrating watching, so often they’ll be a man free in midfield but he doesn’t trust himself to make it. 
 

When he played as a number 10 last season I did feel he looked more confident to make those passes but when he’s deep he just pickes it up and passes around the back 4. 

Im tempted to post some frames of him in possession to share as it really is frustrating.

3 hours ago, sage said:

Buchanan wasn't under pressure and to blame him for thr 2nd is laughable.  

He does have a point. Bird all too often plays it sideways instead of turning and playing forwards. Eventually someone gets it under a bit of pressure and the ball goes astray. I’d much rather play the ball forward and loose it than play lots of balls sideways until we loose it. 
In the words of Paul Scholes if you’re going to play in midfield you can’t pass the ball backwards. 
If you play in midfield you have to have enough about you to play the ball forwards 80-90% of your passes. Bird has all the attributes to be a good midfielder he just needs to work out why he’s on the pitch. It is not to keep possession.

Bird isn’t the only one there are others but he is the most frustrating as he could actually do it with the ability he has. 

1 hour ago, Unlucky Alf said:

I watched Chelsea Vs Villa earlier on, Chelsea play the exact same, They were caught out once trying to hold onto the ball and Villa caught Saul in possesion, Any road, What Chelsea can do that we can't is, Once the back 4 have the ball they're looking to their midfield to exploit space in the middle of the park, Which they do very well, It can be a 10 yard pass or a 20 yard pass, It in most cases finds their man, We unfortunately keep playing the ball across the back 4 which leaves the opposition 2 things, Our back 4 get closed down, And midfield are picked up, Now in no way am I putting us in the same mould as Chelsea, Just as Brum are no Villa, Villa had as many if not more chances than Chelsea, But Chelsea have Lukaku, A target man with pace and strength, Villa had 2 leightweight forwards in Ings and Wakins...Goals wins you games, And it's goals that will be our down fall imo.

If WR wants to keep a passing game then he has to work out or instill movement, Control and pass around the opposition, And not taking too many passes backwards and side ways, We hear about togetherness in the camp, They had better bring this togetherness onto the pitch, With what we have it's going to be a tough ask.

Up until their goal I actually thought we played really well from the back. We managed to turn and play forward and beat their press however the goal we conceded just ruined our game plan. We still haven’t overturned going a goal down in 28 games 

9 hours ago, Sean said:

I try and keep things as fair and balanced as I can, as I always do when it comes to Derby County, but tonight was completely symptomatic of where we are at as a club.

Mel, you've been a decent custodian for a number of the years that you have been our owner. It can't have been easy trying to compete with parachute payments and the like and trying to chase the dream with thousands of baying Derby fans full of ambition on your back. I get that. But tonight is a major indicator of the total mess we have now been left with as a club with the unorthodox methods you have employed to try and gain these advantages. Derby fans deserve some finality to the current issues and need to move on to save the club from the inevitable major decline approaching.

You simply can't expect a squad of mostly kids bolstered by some ageing free agents to compete in the toughest league in the world. By trying to plot and work around the financial fair play rules (as flimsy and pathetic as they may be) you have led this great club into an untenable position at the moment. Squad depth is non-existent and in the odd case that we can stay competitive in games our lack of options shines through when the going gets tough in the 75th minute. It is completely unfair on Wayne Rooney and his staff to be left in this position, and completely unfair on the players who have stuck by and are currently fighting for Derby County Football Club.

I understand I will personally never be in the position to walk away from a multi-million pound business so can't imagine the problems this would pose, and I have no doubts that you are doing what you can to keep things afloat, but with the club being a proud institution of Derbyshire, it's so heart-breaking to see that things are going the way they are because of what I feel are personal battles and arguments with members of the EFL board.

To the people of this forum, how much longer can things go on the way they are going without being challenged? We are dying by a thousands cuts in the hope that we may avoid a points deduction and stay up again by the skin of our teeth. In reality, every game that goes by is forcing a points deduction on us whether we like it or not. We can't keep trying to tread water like we are.

1 bad result and suddenly that result is the picture of the club. Gheeze it’s football, you win some you loose some. 
What I saw tonight was no different to what we used to see under Nigel clough, honest enough hard working group of lads willing to try and play football on the ground. We’ll win some we’ll loose some. Mid to lower table if we avoid points penalty. 

6 hours ago, RAM1966 said:

It probably comes as no surprise that I am no fan of Mel, I was initially, but, when I saw the players arriving for the fees they were and the salaries they were being paid, it immediately set alarms bells ringing with me.  That day was when we signed both Butterfield and Johnson in the final hours of the TW for a combined fee of around £10M.

Where has Mel failed:

Firstly he has wasted far too much money recruiting managers to then sack them, meaning he got the appointments wrong.  Each manager, wants to build there own team and as such it cost £10Ms each time we do this, as a complete rebuild from players to formations and style of play is required.  I was particularly unimpressed with the majority of his appointments, he should of gone for someone like Warnock which knows his way out of this division and proved it on numerous occasions.   

Clement was a poor choice a talented No2 but no experience in managing, let alone in the Championship and his football was negative and dire.  Pearson was an enigma and I think there was a bust up behind the scenes, well what else can you assume from the Derby Way comments?  McLaren was a great appointment but sadly it did not work out the second time, but, we played the best football under him since Jim Smiths era.  Rowett was a complete farce, dire boring negative football and thankfully we did manage to offload him to Stoke at a profit (Only for him to be sacked as I predicted to a Stoke fan I know).  Then there was the one season gamble with Lampard, who sold the talent to fund a 1 season loan strategy to get us up.  Firstly it was always going to be risky employing a rookie, secondly what if it failed we were going to be left with a depleted squad, which is exactly what happened when Frank selected the wrong team at Wembley.  Cocu another gamble, although the guys CV looked good, he could not gasp the pace of the English game and particularly in the Championship.  History is repeating itself with Rooney on the rookie front, to be fair though Wayne has become a quick wheeler and dealer under these tough embargo conditions we are under and I wish him well.    

Then there is the financial side of things, either he has appointed a poor CFO who has badly advised him on the finances, or Mel has ignored the sensible approach to keeping the books within the EFLs P&S limits, we have had to take the nuclear option to sell the ground to stay within the rules, it also appears we have been creative with our accounting policies.  I understand the last point is perfectly legal, yet the other 23 clubs in the league were using a differing method, now the EFL have revisited our methods and we are in this endless embargo and disciplinary process. 

There is also meddling Mel, the man who allegedly enters the dressing room at HT to administer to rift the players, cancelling training camps in the sun, flies drones around Moor Farm to allegedly spy on Nigel Pearson's training methods as was reported in a national newspaper.  This is not inspirational leadership, its overpowering and the fundamental reason why the teams performance dipped as the players did not take kindly to the interference.

The communications from the club has been nothing short of a disgrace, inviting a small selection of fans into a forum and making them sign NDAs was a grave error of judgement, the only thing to come out of it was a few sentences from Rams Trust and the more detailed version from Punjabi Rams that actually told us anything (Thanks Guys).  Rams trust assured us that all was well, yet a short time later we have another open letter to the board.  That's aged well then, it fills me with even less confidence than I had before!  

Which leads me to the ticket office debacle, its still closed, many older fans with no internet can't get tickets and are missing games.  Why on earth do we still have an unmanned ticket office that could be generating income for the club.  Maybe its because we are rolling in money and don't need it?

My view is that Mel has been far too hands on, not kept an eye on the balance sheet and gambled by spending far beyond the clubs means.  How the debts are parked; with Mel personally or against the club is immaterial, everything is going to have to go through the accounts and this is going to take years to put our house back in good order.   

However you dress it up, he's the man that appoints the people in the key positions to make the key decisions, he's made poor appointments, he's sanctioned the overspending at the club to the extent we no longer own the ground.  How anyone can defend his actions is beyond me, I suspect when the accounts are all filed and up to date, there are many more that are going to desert him.  I'm sorry but the buck stops at Mel's door and the whole club from top to bottom is nothing short of a shambles which smacks of sheer incompetence.  Can anyone think of a more embarrassing situation for a football club than we are in right now?

I actually have no problem with the managers he brought in sort from the fact none of them continued a style of play. For example, no one minded Rowett when we were 2nd in the league at Christmas. If we had then signed Warnock or Dyche etc we would have been able to move on from a style of play without ripping the team out. 
 

If we had gone from Mac to Cocu or Thomas Frank. We wouldn’t have been signing Butterfield Johnson Anya Blackman etc. We would have just signed players that complimented what we had. 
 

Unfortunately, every manager we have brought in wanted to rip the squad out and we ended up with Deadwood players that in all honesty we probably ruined their careers as well. 
 

I do think he should have constantly had scouts looking for the next manager who could have worked with the players we had rather than just reacting to the scenarios.