Leeds Ram

I went yesterday and wasn't too disappointed. I've not read through the thread so sorry if this is repeating what others have said. I thought we lacked a focal point and this challenged our attacking menace. However, once we got our 1st we easily could have had a 2nd in the next 5 mins. I think if we'd have gotten that we'd have won easily in the end. Midfield wise Adams was class with Bird and Hourihane not having great games. Bird's passing especially was pretty poor as was his decision-making when he did get forward. Gayle once he gets some service and minutes will bag goals in this division easily. Even though he was offside for the chance towards the end the way he peeled off their defence was great. I did question our pressing. Their big CB didn't know what to do with the ball and could not clearly pass or control it but instead of putting Laing on him to harass him into making errors we just kept off him until someone eventually broke our marking and he had an easy 5 yard pass on. It was quite infuriating to see this pattern in the second half. We ran out of steam around the 70-minute mark and it showed. If we get these lot in the playoffs I fancy our chances tbh. I thought they looked really poor overall and don't have the players for the game they play. Another day we win that game 2 or 3-0 i think and at home we'll batter them. Usually, I'm down about Warne and quite critical. Yesterday, we did shoot ourselves in the foot but if that's who are our biggest challengers we should come out on top in the long run.

I think this is a real bind the lower leagues are in. Almost totally dependent on ticket revenue to keep the lights on means an increase in prices with the poor state of the economy means for many working-class families football is now a luxury they can't afford. Not blaming the increase on the club, the ticket prices remain reasonable and as I live a good bit away and oftentimes work until 7.00pm I can't get a season ticket anyway, but I do feel for those families who are essentially priced out of maybe the one luxury they had.

I didn't say it was a sign that an owner was unwilling to continue to fund the club. In my reply to Angieram I described the situation you have just said. I think it's a sign of a poorly run business that is having to sell assets to facilitate potentially greater capital spend to either get under the loss limiting mechanisms defined for clubs or to accumulate cash.

I did say 'even if it was a fair valuation' towards the end of the post. I recognise I'm not an expert in these fields.

Stoke is run by the Coates family in an astoundingly poor way. With massively bloated wage bills, managerial merry-go-round and finances they are completely reliant upon the owners to plug massive holes. I don't think many would look at how Stoke is run and say 'great job'.

As I said, even if it was a correct valuation it should still have rung alarm bells that assets were being 'sold' in this way.

I think on the first point that's a large part of my argument. I just don't buy that because many other clubs are poorly run it makes it acceptable that we are poorly run. On the value of the stadium like the amortisation issue I'm not an expert so I'll let others decide on that. But yes not disclosing this was clearly not a good idea whomever proposed keeping it secret.

Feeling good about this. We dominated them at Pride Park and hopefully we can manage this again. Should be a great atmosphere with 5,000 making the trip too 🙂

Unfortunate to see the amount go up but it being frozen for a few years I guess it was inevitable.

Do you really think Pride Park is worth 80 million quid... At the time I'm pretty sure it was widely regarded this was a very high end valuation. Even if it was a correct valuation selling off assets is hardly a sign of confidence...

I'll use the word 'unique' policy in the future as that's what it was. As I've said in other posts I think the way the club was ran we now know was strategically poor, tens of millions were wasted and we alienated ourselves from the governing body. We were also the only club in the top 2 divisions to face such a crisis post covid. I'm not sure how us being in that position made us 'more prepared than most' for pre covid. To me, it simply does not add up.

There are levels and levels. We weren't operating like a Preston or a Coventry or a Luton. We were operating closer to a Villa, Leeds and Stoke model. In my opinion, those models are inherently dangerous and if you don't have billions (which Mel never did) then it adds an extra layer of risk. You add in the 'unique' amortisation policy, selling off PP to the owner at an overinflated price, buying players which it turned out we couldn't fully pay for and the MSD loan it all starts to look like an absolute shambles... which it was. We don't know the full circumstances as to the timeline when Mel decided he'd pull the funding but I doubt he woke up one morning and said 'f*** this I'm pulling the plug'. Rumours had already been circulating that there were financial problems before we went into administration after all. I think pretending Pearce had no control over the running of the club as CEO is slightly ridiculous. Also pretending we were run 'just like every other club' isn't exactly true either. We enacted policies to maximise our financial leverage and when the capital ran out the floor dropped out from underneath us. In doing so we alienated other clubs and the organisation running our league who bore a grudge against us until a new owner took over. Now personally, I don't think it's good enough for the CEO at the time who still remains in his job merely to say 'I'd rather not discuss it'. Well, I and 30,000 others would rather not have seen the club almost liquidated, the academy pilfered and a relegation forced upon us. I'm sure the people who lost their jobs would rather not have seen that happen and the vendors who lost money would rather have been paid on time and in the full amount. To me it just stinks that he takes that attitude given what has happened.

Well not really no. In my field, there is a range of different views on legitimacy- one person may say something is legitimate another person may reasonably contest that point. Again, I'm not an accountant so on the more technical details I can't contest them. If a business cannot sustain itself without regular large infusions of cash it makes it functionally non-viable does it not? Now most clubs do run on an investor model but we were at the sharper end of owner investment reliance with the Villa, Leeds, Stoke and a couple of others. The red flags were there with the loan from MSD, selling the stadium back to himself at an overinflated price, and the inability to pay Cocu's full severance package which he 'deferred'. Rowett's revelations that Mel was scaling back investment to then only go and blow a load on Lampard speaks of serious strategic failures at a high level. This was hardly a well-managed ship- it was a wreck moving from one expensive mistake to another. Now you can lay all that at the feet of Mel or you can suggest maybe the CEO is also in some way to blame. With the amortisation policy, it completely alienated us from the EFL, rightly or wrongly, strategically it was an idiotic thing to do even if it got us out of the mire temporarily. The blowback was horrific. I think it's difficult to argue the club wasn't financially and strategically mismanaged. It led us to go within a week of non-existence, indebted and unable to even pay transfer fees on players we'd already signed. We were left in a position no other club in the division was in. I tend to think that Pearce as CEO bears some responsibility for that and his unwillingness to publically own up to his part in almost killing a 140-year-old institution doesn't reflect well on him. It in my view speaks a little to his character and potentially lack of it. It leaves a cloud hanging over the club with him here continuing. That's just my opinion though and I respect that plenty of others with more knowledge than me of the situation will disagree.

On the second point, I guess it's like anything in fields people have different views. From memory, my brother-in-law believed it was essentially a ploy to overinflate assets to skirt what were rules put in place to ensure fairness of competition. He felt, from what I remember, that it also indicated deeper issues with the core business model. I would emphasise I know nothing about this area at all but I do know we were at odds with how other clubs did their accounts at the time. On the 3rd point honestly, an apology and a recognition of his role in the disaster would go a long way with me. He was a core part of the flawed unsustainable business structure which left us in 10's of millions of debt and ultimately saw us as a bankrupt and isolated business. By not openly recognising his role in that debacle and it's ludicrous to suggest as CEO he had no role in it, it just makes me think what planet is this guy on. It makes me think he's arrogant and a bit ridiculous. I recognise people make mistakes, even serial mistakes, but a failure to acknowledge to recognise those mistakes is a serious issue for me.

To the first question I'd just put this up as an example as to what I'm talking about. on the amortisation policy, my brother-in-law who worked as a senior accountant at a major firm described it to me as crooked and dangerous as a policy. He spotted it as a red flag immediately when he read reports of it tbh. Now I tend to trust his judgement in these matters as he's highly regarded in his field. On the third point I'd like him to show some f****** contrition. He's somehow been kept on a six figure salary after playing a significant role in almost killing the club. I don't think I've ever heard him even apologise for his role in this. When he's asked about his role in the media I don't think it's good enough for him to say he'd rather not talk about it. Given what the club and the fans went through it strikes me as exceedingly arrogant that he believes he can simply pretend it never happened.

I'm not a lawyer but I find it hard to believe that Morris still has an NDA so wide-ranging around Pearce that he can't shed any light at all on how he felt while performing that job. I would think it would be very hard, if not impossible, to make an argument that Pearce's feelings on job performance and environment are part of confidential company information. As far as I am aware NDA's that are too broad or pertain to information which could not be considered confidential can be broken and have been. There is also a question that if he did sign an unbreakable NDA then there would also surely be questions as to the viability of his use in his position in the post-Morris era as presumably Pearce also couldn't discuss these issues with Clowes either. I find it odd that everyone just seems to have accepted this explanation with seemingly little to no probing at all, including local journalists. I think the sooner leaves the club the better. He helped drive the club off the cliff edge and repeatedly went on media shows telling us all everything was hunky dory when it wasn't. His discussion on radio derby where he says 'he'd rather not discuss the mel era' just shows his problems. I find it staggering that someone that high up in the club could comfortably state that given the trauma that the club and the fanbase went through. A trauma which he helped create and would have failed to mop up without a last minute local businessman saving his backside. Either the bloke was incompetent or he lied. Those are the two choices he's left with tbh. Our amortisation policy which he helped deploy was a recipe for disaster aside from the moral questionability of such a practice. Clowes kept him on for god knows what reason- perhaps he's a nice guy who believes the best in everyone or maybe he saw a giant organisation in an absolute state and needed someone to steer the ship for a year or two while he got more acquainted with it. However, the day Pearce leaves, either mutually or not, will be a day I'll be celebrating.

Glad to see Ed is back. His commentary isn't for me as he simply couldn't accurately describe the game. I'd watch the highlights and they rarely reflected what I heard on the radio. However, despite me not being a fan of his work, he must have gone through a horrible time. He clearly cares about the club and wants to see it flourish. He's a part of the derby county community and we should all wish him well on his return.

really like the look of this signing. Gayle's always impressed me with his awareness of space, clinical finishing, pace and power. At this level even at 34 he should be able to grab a few to get us over the line.

As a regular user of the train system I despair. It's poorly organised, inefficient and staffed by people who seem more bothered about striking than actually doing their jobs. Even when they're not striking the customer service is mostly terrible as conductors oftentimes treat passengers as potential fare dodgers for their s*** service.

Think Bird's an idiot for moving to Bristol City but there you go. Bristol aren't going anywhere in the championship, have a mountain of debt they need to move and is the less passionate fanbase in a city with a league 1 team... I don't see them getting promoted unless it's a luton scenario and that's pretty rare these days. I'd understand it more if it was a coventry for instance. I think this kind of shows where we are as a club right now which is quite depressing. Our inability to sign a striker is really depressing and it is yet another disappointing transfer window. I understand we can't pay fees upfront or big wages but the stature of the club and the position should be enough for us to get a striker or 2 through the door at this level. We're the only ones who can boast of averaging 25,000+ in the third tier, sitting in the playoffs, and will still have a bigger wage budget than 90% of teams at this level. If this doesn't equate to bodies coming through the door when we need them then something is going wrong.

we will finish 4th i think and lose in the semi finals. I just can't see us getting promoted.

I think successful teams think about both things. If you look at Ipswich and Plymouth they clearly had projects and an identity moving beyond merely promotion. This is why I didn't want Warne in the first place.

Yeah I think maybe relations since the start of the season has poisoned the relationship with Warne tbh.

The problem with it being a team game is that it does need to be coached otherwise chaos will reign. I get what you're saying some basic instinct should come in but if the players who are passing it aren't aware of where someone is they'll take a crucial extra second or 2 to find it and then be put under pressure.

Yeah, it does make you wonder what they do on the training pitch. I honestly can't remember the last time I had less enthusiasm for the team than I do right now. I've got no love for the manager and if I'm honest it doesn't seem like he has much love for us. The football when I've seen it has been pretty shocking and it feels like we're limping into the playoffs in a division which we should be putting a marker down for everyone else. I went to the game and honestly felt little to nothing when we scored apart from a hint of relief. I've been going for over 20 years, followed them home and away through the good times and the bad and I just don't see how this is going to work in the long run at all.