FlyBritishMidland

I've stayed fairly quiet on my opinion of Mel Morris until now.
He's taken a club, OUR club, from having: a relatively low Championship wage bill; an exciting brand of football and decent future prospects in 2014-15 and ruined it in 7 years. We had a decent team and ended up throwing money around (that we didn't need to!) on bang average players and inexperienced managers (I'm thinking mainly Clement here) who didn't have a clue; then tried finding loopholes around how much we were spending! Now we're in administration, will end up having to 'sell the family silver', staff will lose their jobs and we'll be lucky to have a club this time next year by the sounds of it.
Anyone who knows me will know how much DCFC means to me (and I'm guessing many of you on here are in similar position) I'm gutted... absolutely gutted... and MM deserves everything the fans sling at him tomorrow ?

If we're going to do this we should do it properly. Let's try and rack up the biggest points deduction in a single season in football league history.
-12 for admin
-3 for unpaid wages
-12 for ffp
What else can we do?

I'd say what's common to both Cocu and Rooney is that - through no fault of their own - they inherited the worst squad we've had for years at a club in absolute turmoil, spiralling downwards.
To play "attractive, winning football" I would argue the manager needs a firmer foundation than this club currently provides.

We lost 3-0 against a team who now play in the Premier League in Cocu’s sixth league game in charge while we were playing catch-up following the pre-season debacle in the US.
I mean, you’re not really taking things into consideration are you?
We played worse in the 3-0 defeat at Charlton. That was Derby’s worst performance under Cocu besides the 4-0 defeat to Blackburn.
And as for Cocu being booed at half time (if true), within his first competitive month in charge, says a lot about the supporters that day I guess.
Still, not as bad as some of our performances towards the end of last season which were dreadful and nowhere near as bad as the days we were losing 6-1 to Coventry City.
 

Bielik was injured under ‘my boy’ Cocu.
I’m not even criticising Rooney. 
I’m defending Cocu when people say Rooney has had it much harder, or any other criticism that has gone his way.
The comments re Rooney are simply because people are comparing them both.
I’ll stick up for Cocu all day long as I genuinely liked the guy. Yeah, the football at times wasn’t great, but he’s the only manager we’ve had since Nigel Clough that has put Derby first before personal ambition.

Phillip Cocu is the only manager during Mel Morris's reign that actually followed the club vision. You know, playing the youth, improving the youth and looking to add value to the team.
The likes of Lampard, Rowett and even McClaren had no interest in doing so. They wanted promotion first and foremost at Derby to enhance their own reputation, and they were willing to leave a trainwreck behind to then move on to better pastures.
What Rowett did in particular was unforgivable. He sold Hughes and signed Davies, Huddlestone, Ledley, Jerome etc. He was responsible for a 20% hike on our wage bill to £40 million+. He did all that to have one shot at promotion, and the playoff finish enhanced his reputation, then he ditched us the moment a better opportunity came along.
Phillip Cocu, on the other hand, was here for the long haul. He was willing to sacrifice his own reputation (Forest away in the cup) to play the youth players as that benefited the club. He publically backed Tom Lawrence after the crash, and played him to an extent that he retained his value despite many wanting TL sacked. To the benefit of the club. He wanted to provide a pathway for the younger players to either break in to the first team, or be sold for a profit, to the benefit of the club.
He was undermined following Wayne Rooney's arrival. He was dealt with a ridiculous set of circumstances including the Keogh fiasco, Krystian Bielik's injury and Chris Martin leaving. We failed to sign a striker replacement, and saw our better players leave. And after all that, he reduced his compensation fee after his sacking, to the benefit of the club... 
Most in his position would have told Mel to do one.

Cocu would still be here, and our youth would be thriving, if Wayne Rooney never came to Derby County.

I am off to the vets tomorrow with our little dog, had her 13 years and unfortunately she isn’t very well at all and I think the vet is going to call and end to It… gutted, absolutely gutted but she isn’t eating anything and is just vomiting all the time….
She is the thickest dog I have ever know, knows no tricks, has zero loyalty, isn’t snuggly at all, is blatantly disobedient, has always peed and poo in the house every couple of months for no reason, eats anything she finds, dead or alive, rolls in anything horrible outside, drinks the dirtiest puddle water, will get covered in mud and dirt on any walk, hates going in the bath and has the stinkiest breath ever…. Going to miss her so so much. 

What nonsense. It was nothing whatsoever to do with Emma. It wasn't her call. She had zero choice in the matter. It's the rules for a blood stoppage, as you would have in any sport. It was very poor from Fernandez, but she's young and it was the heat of the moment. But still, very poor from Fernandez.
Here are the Grandslam rules: https://www.itftennis.com/media/2495/grand-slam-rulebook-2020-f.pdf
If you searched for "bleeding", at the bottom of p.19 you get this,

A marked contrast to how quietly Emma sat when Leylah took a toilet break after she lost the first set.
Took the opportunity to compose herself, which is really what Leylah should have done.
But we shouldn't let that spoil the contribution she made to a great final. Exceptional tennis at times from both players.

No matter how bad it gets, you have to live in hope that the good times will return.
Here are a few examples of current Premiership teams who've had recent bad times :
Man City - 3rd division in 2001
Leicester City - Bankrupt & 3rd division in 2008/09
Leeds United - Bankrupt in 2007 and 3rd division for 3 seasons to 2010
Southampton - Bankrupt and 3rd division in 2009
Brighton - no ground and 3rd division up to 2011
Wolves - 3rd division in 2014/15
 
 

And when Fernandez took a 5 minute comfort break immediately after losing the first set. Was that poor form too?
Honestly, there's literally no pleasing some people! 

Advanced fullbacks isnt an issue, but they shouldnt both be so advanced at the same time.
One should go forward and the other stay back to leave a back 3 with 1 of the cdm filling in the space to make it a back 4 still

I share the sadness too.
And apologies to @Sean. He's a great poster and I didn't mean to treat him harshly.
There's a lot on here demanding action from Mel without saying what he can do. I should have picked up on those rather than venting my spleen on Sean who was merely lamenting the situation.
God, we all want it to change so much.

Good posts @duncanjwitham.  The problems we have now stem from the signings made when Clement was appointed and Mel took sole control.  We gambled on going up and it didn’t pay off.  It was a here and now approach rather than a strategic plan.  And moving between managers and style of play at a rate of knots.
From what we know of the meeting a few weeks back is that one of the things Mel said is that he couldn’t understand why managers wanted to sign players rather than give chances to our own talent.  When Johnson signed I seem to remember in the January time (?) Mel saying it was too good an opportunity to miss.  Three signings summed up the change in attitude - Shackell, Butterfield and Johnson.  Previously we’d never have signed a player for >£3M let alone a 32 year old centre half who’ll you’ll never get your money back on.  And when Hughes and Bryson were injured, previously we’d have dipped in the loan market (e.g. replacing Thorne with Mascarell).
The only manager who really aligned with Mel’s view of bringing your own through was Cocu.  He even said he’d rather loan a player for a year to let a player develop rather than buy someone, give them, a 3 or 4 year contract and end up losing the academy player because they don’t get a chance.
We can blame the EFL, Gibson or whoever for our current plight but ultimately that’s pointing the finger at the symptom.  The cause started a few years ago because we gambled and lost.

Hiring Phillip Cocu who has an excellent record of bringing through and developing youth was exactly what we needed given our situation.
The biggest error was immediately undermining him by bringing in Wayne Rooney as a platform for him to go into management.
Mel did it to raise the profile of the club so he could sell it. It has backfired spectacularly.
 

How on earth can you blame them for the goals?
Roos had initially rescued Buchanan.
Sibley's was a ricochet.
Tactics lost that game.

We were 5th in the table when Morris bulleted him, at Christmas I believe we were actually top but then went on a run of no wins in about 7 or 8 games when we slipped to 5th then Clement was sacked. 
Interestingly at the start of the campaign Morris said that promotion that season wasn't a priority.....but playing style and strength of squad was. 

Good posts @duncanjwitham.  The problems we have now stem from the signings made when Clement was appointed and Mel took sole control.  We gambled on going up and it didn’t pay off.  It was a here and now approach rather than a strategic plan.  And moving between managers and style of play at a rate of knots.
From what we know of the meeting a few weeks back is that one of the things Mel said is that he couldn’t understand why managers wanted to sign players rather than give chances to our own talent.  When Johnson signed I seem to remember in the January time (?) Mel saying it was too good an opportunity to miss.  Three signings summed up the change in attitude - Shackell, Butterfield and Johnson.  Previously we’d never have signed a player for >£3M let alone a 32 year old centre half who’ll you’ll never get your money back on.  And when Hughes and Bryson were injured, previously we’d have dipped in the loan market (e.g. replacing Thorne with Mascarell).
The only manager who really aligned with Mel’s view of bringing your own through was Cocu.  He even said he’d rather loan a player for a year to let a player develop rather than buy someone, give them, a 3 or 4 year contract and end up losing the academy player because they don’t get a chance.
We can blame the EFL, Gibson or whoever for our current plight but ultimately that’s pointing the finger at the symptom.  The cause started a few years ago because we gambled and lost.

Those 3 are also the ones for me that really epitomise everything that went wrong.  I remember a Norwich fan coming on here as we signed Johnson, who basically said he's divisive - half your fans will love him for his effort etc, but the others will get wound up by his lack of technical ability, and how often he gives the ball away.  That was an immediate red flag for me, because we had a team that had spent the last few seasons playing pass-and-move football through midfield, and you just can't do that if your main midfielder can't pass the ball consistently.  If a random fan from Norwich could spot the problem, why couldn't we?
Exactly the same with Shackell. I'm pretty sure Clough bombed him out because he wasn't good enough on the ball for a team that wanted to play possession football, yet we go straight back and get him.  And we never really understood what Butterfield was good or bad at. We used him in the same way 'Boro used him (where he struggled), not in the way he was used at Huddersfield (where he was very good).  He played much further forward for Huddersfield and had mobile guys running off him, we sat him in front of the back 4, with a massive gap to the forwards and just hoped something would happen.
At no stage in that early rush of signings did we ever seem to stop and think about what players where good and bad at, whether they could do what we needed from their position, and whether they were going to replicate what they had done well at previous clubs when they got here.  

Good posts @duncanjwitham.  The problems we have now stem from the signings made when Clement was appointed and Mel took sole control.  We gambled on going up and it didn’t pay off.  It was a here and now approach rather than a strategic plan.  And moving between managers and style of play at a rate of knots.
From what we know of the meeting a few weeks back is that one of the things Mel said is that he couldn’t understand why managers wanted to sign players rather than give chances to our own talent.  When Johnson signed I seem to remember in the January time (?) Mel saying it was too good an opportunity to miss.  Three signings summed up the change in attitude - Shackell, Butterfield and Johnson.  Previously we’d never have signed a player for >£3M let alone a 32 year old centre half who’ll you’ll never get your money back on.  And when Hughes and Bryson were injured, previously we’d have dipped in the loan market (e.g. replacing Thorne with Mascarell).
The only manager who really aligned with Mel’s view of bringing your own through was Cocu.  He even said he’d rather loan a player for a year to let a player develop rather than buy someone, give them, a 3 or 4 year contract and end up losing the academy player because they don’t get a chance.
We can blame the EFL, Gibson or whoever for our current plight but ultimately that’s pointing the finger at the symptom.  The cause started a few years ago because we gambled and lost.

I don't think they necessarily need to be "decided by the manager". Obviously, the manager should have the final call on whether to sign them or not, but I don't think they always have to be involved from the start.  If Morris was dead-set on making this Derby-Way stuff work, it shouldn't really matter if the manager is involved anyway - everyone should be pulling in the same direction.  We should have a style of play in mind and be appointing managers that play that way, signing players that play that way, and developing academy players to fit too.
I genuinely have no idea who was in charge of transfers in those early Morris days, and I'm not sure it was one single person.  We seem to know Blackman was a Clement request.  We know Weimann and a few others were lined up (but not confirmed, obviously) before Clement was given the job.  There's various suggestions/allegations about Sam Rush's approach to transfers.  A few of the signings honestly feel like Morris either wanting to get the boys back together(Ince, Shackell, Wisdom), or basically have a new train set to play with (Johnson).  There was definitely a too-many-cooks problem somewhere there.
I have no idea what McClaren's job actually entails, but I think someone like him in charge of making sure the Derby-Way happens is absolutely what we need.  Someone that actually understands football, understands youth-development and is willing to make hard decisions ("we are *not* signing Malone when we have Buchanan and Lowe in line, you can have a loan for a year if we need it" etc).

I'll skip over the horrendous contradiction I've highlighted there...
The big issue wasn't just the fact we kept sacking managers and kept letting them rebuild the squad, it's the fact we kept appointing managers with a radically different style to the previous one.  If we'd gone the equivalent of like McLaren->Lampard->Cocu we'd have been in much better shape. They all play vaguely similar styles of football, with similar players in similar systems.  They're not identical obviously, but there's more similarity that not.  Instead we basically alternated between managers who wanted to play possession and managers who wanted to be very direct.
Looking from the outside, the whole thing just screamed reactionary thinking, with no clear sign of having an actual plan.  Players wilted second half of the season, get a manager in to kick up the backside. Bryson got injured, sign the most expensive midfielder we can find.  We need more goals, sign the top scorer in the league, even though he plays in a different position in a different system and hasn't scored for 3 months.  Our promising young left back isn't quite ready for the first team yet, so spend £3m+, prem wages and a long contract on Malone.  Just endless random decisions that don't tie up with any other decision being made at the club.
And the really frustrating thing is, Mel described the right plan almost exactly when he took over (the Derby Way stuff). He either never had the balls to follow through on it (being willing to say no to managers etc), or the knowledge to know why it wasn't working. 

I miss proper Saturday nights. Salad, Dr Who, Generation Game, Starskey and Hutch, The Two Ronnies, Match of the Day.