vonwright

28 minutes ago, Ken Tram said:

I don't buy that argument, because the whole club is a risk. What is the likelihood of relegation. It is a risk.

Surely lawyers estimate the chance of success, and that, multiplied by the claim is what the settlement would be.

If the chance is 10% for example, then I think that they'd be taking on a £4.5m liability.

But! Maybe the risk is 50% or 80%. Perhaps there is merit in Middlesbrough's claim. But if the percentage is low, I cannot see that dissuading an investor.

Except this is a failed football business. The administrator is already going to be squeezing for every penny of "value" to pay off the real creditors. They can't just knock a bit off the asking price to cover potential liabilities since it sounds like they are already getting only a fraction of what the creditors are owed, and the creditors are not going to accept getting nothing just because Middlesbrough reckon they are owed 10s of millions for some supposed harm. 

The potential liability sounds like it could be more than the value of the club, and it wouldn't be determined in the courts. A five per cent risk that you are liable for 150% of annual revenue in a loss-making sector is going to put most people off, unless you are a very rich, very long term or very altruistic investor. (Or you just love a good gamble.)

58 minutes ago, GboroRam said:

I'm not sure that interview with Parry is the smoking gun that a lot of people are saying.

Boro accused the EFL of not applying the rules correctly and threatened to sue them if they didn't. EFL backed down/agreed with them and applied their rules.

None of that is unreasonable I'd say. If the EFL disagreed that the rules weren't being enforced they could have called Gibson's bluff and allowed them to sue, as it wouldn't have got anywhere in court anyway.

Did Derby break the rules? There's been resubmitting of accounts and points deductions, so if there's an argument to say we didn't break rules, that ship has sailed now.

All I would say is, we've accepted the punishment and that's the amortisation issue dealt with. Harshly in my opinion, but that's not relevant to the two claims brought by Middlesbrough and Wycombe. Those need dealing with as a grievance, and the EFL needs to do that immediately. If they conclude that there's a football creditor in either case, we're dead and the EFL knocks the final nail in their own coffin, as it becomes open season on any team that ever failed FFP or will do in the future. 

Agree with this. The problem is the rules, which basically make it more likely that administration will end in liquidation if it involves a football club. That's surely the opposite of what we want, give what football clubs mean to communities.

If this was any other type of administration, these "claims" would have been assessed by the administrator, rejected, and that would be that. These clubs were not existing creditors, and undetermined civil claims can't be started or pursued against a company in administration.

It seems what's happened here is that the EFL is saying "no no, in this case we aren't going to do that, these claims absolutely must be heard either before the company is bought or afterwards." That wouldn't be the case with any other type of company, and of course it is going to put off potential buyers. Who wants to buy a broken company, pay off a sizeable proportion of its debts, and still face a potential multi-million pound bill down the line for the alleged wrongdoings of owners who have long since left?

29 minutes ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

 

We really need to turn these 'Hopefully a solution can be found' statements into 'Boro should withdraw their claim' statements, or 'The EFL should let the administrators get on with it without the threat of legal action hanging over the new owners' statements.

I mean it's good people are getting involved but we need real pressure. Let's face it even Boro would agree that 'hopefully a solution can be found asap'.

58 minutes ago, Caerphilly Ram said:

So EFL statement last night, Boro Statement this afternoon, MPs discussing in Parliament and now Rob Coughig is gonna be on Sportscene at 6pm, so all key players apart from Quantuma will have aired their views

To be fair, they've made their position clear: they want the claims dropped, or the EFL to allow them to apply normal administration law and basically dissolve the claims as part of the process. The last couple of days have seen the situation properly aired and a wider audience realise what's going on. That has led to some panicked and defensive statements put out from the EFL and Boro, and MPs giving them a pretty good going-over. Quantuma's position has improved through saying nothing.

That said, think we need to hear from them pretty soon on continuing talks with the EFL (not sure what we've got to discuss with Boro, but if necessary them too), restating the legal position and the case for the resolution they want, and hopefully something positive on interim funding. 

3 minutes ago, Ellafella said:

Precisely. We need to be direct! May need firm action rather than words.

Yep and the politicians, if they want to apply real pressure, need to make it clear what kind of pragmatism they expect - which basically means Boro dropping the claims or (more likely) everyone accepting that they fall due to administration rules, regardless of their "merits", because the priority is paying off actual creditors and saving the company. They need to make it clear to the EFL and Boro that they don't consider it "pragmatism" or "compromise" if Gibson says "Okay instead of demanding a gillizion for that time Mel made me sad, I'll accept half a gazillion."

The tough issue here is that despite all the talk of "compromise" and "pragmatism" these are going to mean quite different things to the different parties.

Boro seem to think it means: "Pay us £10m (or whatever) for our claim and we will go away."

For us (to Boro) it means: "Withdraw your claim, it relies on unproven and unprovable 'losses' and alleged wrongdoing by owners who are no longer involved in the club, and for which that club has already been punished."

And for us (to the EFL) it means: "Let us treat this claim exactly as it would be treated if this was a non-footballing administration - ie, ignore it completely since it isn't an existing debt ("football" or otherwise), and administration rules state compensation claims can't be started or pursued against a company in administration."

For the EFL it seems to mean: "Whatever doesn't upset Steve Gibson or get us sued."

The whole thing is a mess but simple calls for compromise and pragmatism, even if aimed at the EFL and Boro, aren't specific enough. That said the political and media pressure is growing and while Gibson might not care about that, the EFL probably will. This was a useful debate, I think, and the government stand-in seemed to "get it" by the end, if not at the start. It all helps. 

(The Bury thing is a real warning: if the EFL think overruling Boro will get them sued, or otherwise hurt them, they are the type of organisation who will just sit on their hands and "not-my-fault-guv"-it up to and beyond the point we get liquidated. That worries me more than anything.) 

3 hours ago, Ghost of Clough said:

I'm surprised we've accepted the first offer for him and no Championship clubs were interested.

Dunno, I think he's borderline Championship/League One in purely footballing terms. Great guy to have around the squad but if the choice was losing him or Bird or Knight or Thompson... for me it's Shinnie every time.

16 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

 

Once again, so impressed by Rooney. First job in management and his team building, man management and strategy have been absolutely spot on in the hardest of circumstances. And he navigates the media brilliantly too. Suspect he's going to have a second stellar career. 

If nothing else the EFL has brought all Derby fans together. We may have disagreed about Morris but the way they are acting now seems little short of gangsterism: riding roughshod over law, due process and basic fairness. Given the importance of football to communities across the country, they really should be regulated. 

I get why people use '**** the EFL' but accusing them of trying to kill clubs would probably get us more sympathy

58 minutes ago, PistoldPete said:

So why can teams avoid points deductions when COVID is the excuse, but we can’t? 
 

they are saying they couldn’t sell players because of COVID. We are saying Mel couldn’t sell the club because of cOVID. 

I was talking about our P+S penalty and how that was for breaches that had nothing to do with COVID. 

P+S breaches - and how the are calculated during a pandemic - are one thing, since all clubs will have lost revenue. Penalties for going into administration are another: we are the only club to do so, and we were clearly running up large debts before the pandemic. We had the option of pursuing our claim that COVID caused administration and we dropped it. 

(For what it's worth I don't think the claim 'We couldn't sell players!' has much merit. I'm just saying COVID wasn't behind our P+S breaches. It might still cause other clubs to breach P+S.)

8 minutes ago, vonwright said:

To be fair our big P and S breaches were for seasons before COVID. Theoretically if we'd not gone into administration we would have benefitted as much as any other team from some P and S related 'COVID adjustment' for seasons where it hit revenue. 

Of course we did go into administration, and we blamed COVID for that, but so far other teams haven't. (It would definitely get interesting if a few other teams went into administration and blamed COVID.)

(This is actually one of the things that puzzles me about the claims by Wycombe and Middlesbrough: did we actually break the rules in 2020/21? Or is the argument that we somehow caused them losses by our actions from several seasons earlier? How could that be some kind of contract breach or similar with Wycombe, who weren't even in the division at that point etc etc)

17 minutes ago, BucksRam said:

I agree - pretty sure a lot of people on here called out ages ago when Mel used COVID as one of the key reasons for loss of revenue, and therefore detrimental impact on our P&S that this would come out down the line for other teams. And here we are.  IF, and it is an IF, the likes of Brizzel and {insert expletive} Boro use COVID as a reason and have it accepted by the EFL then we have every right to appeal against the EFL's very black and white decisions on us, not least refusing us the loan.  Alongside the Boro and WW claims, this could indeed get very very messy for the EFL.  

To be fair our big P and S breaches were for seasons before COVID. Theoretically if we'd not gone into administration we would have benefitted as much as any other team from some P and S related 'COVID adjustment' for seasons where it hit revenue. 

Of course we did go into administration, and we blamed COVID for that, but so far other teams haven't. (It would definitely get interesting if a few other teams went into administration and blamed COVID.)

Not long ago he was the youngster I'd least like to lose. Now he's well down the list, sadly. Just feels like he needs to get his head down, play some games somewhere and figure out how to be effective against teams who know a bit about him.  

On 03/01/2022 at 09:29, Old Spalding Ram said:

Courtesy of Graham Richards
Nerves of steel……….”cool as custard”

“six minutes to go, and this is one of the most vital penalties in our history”

”goal, goal, goal”

 

 

Davison, Williams, Micklewhite, Gregory, Hindmarch, Christie... Pretty decent third-tier side!

On 03/01/2022 at 14:12, GboroRam said:

The Covid question is a legitimate one. How much has it affected the course of the club? Impossible for us to say. But we can see how other clubs are affected. If we find that most clubs can manage to circumnavigate the waves of Covid without sinking the club, can we surmise that Mel took us too far beyond the point of no return? All clubs had to manage through it one way or another. We're not the biggest club that had income restricted, plus we didn't lose the most money of all football teams - although I accept as a proportion of our funding, it had a major impact. But if other teams can manage to stay afloat I expect we should be able to. From what we're led to believe, Mel is one of the big money players, he's not a financial minnow.

Mel clearly was ready to pass the club on to the next person, as he was unwilling (unable? Impossible to say for sure) to keep paying. I think Covid offered him a great opportunity to stop paying what he'd committed himself to. In many ways perhaps he had little choice - who was going to come in and pay the full costs with the debts the club is carrying?

I think morally Mel had a duty to settle the outstanding bills at his own cost. It wouldn't have been easy, and it may have taken him time to get there. But in the meantime we should have started to cut our cloth accordingly, reduce the wages bill, reduce our costs and maximise our income. I'm sure it's possible to run the club without losing money every month, but it's highly implausible that any club can be competitive in the Championship while breaking even. With HRMC paid off and the club not bleeding cash a sale might have been possible. But when offered an opportunity to blame covid for administration, it likely has saved Mel tens of millions of pounds in total.

It's hard to get away from the fact we are, so far, the only club to enter administration during the pandemic (other than Bury and Wigan, who had well-publicised non-Covid issues).

Yes we didn't get the £8m EFL Covid loan but a) other clubs got by without it, b) it was a loan, and c) it was really quite small compared to the money we'd burnt through season after season. (For instance, it is roughly equal to the pay-off we supposedly still owe Cocu and his staff).

I don't know (or particularly care) whether it was pride, denial, or something else that saw Mel let things drift to a point where he couldn't or wouldn't foot the bill, but I do blame him to a very large degree for where we are now.

What a goal!

16 minutes ago, vonwright said:

"Score some goals"

Tactical genius, that Rosenior

Just now, roboto said:

The classic Rosenior note passing substitution…

"Score some goals"

Frustrating watch.

1) We've been really unlucky. We are playing well.

2) It's weird how much Derby fans hate Jozwiak for not being early-career Ronaldo. He's a tidy, busy, passing-darting type of winger and he's playing well in this team.

Probably around 10 per cent for me, but that's incredible given where we were a few weeks ago.

We really need to keep this run going, keep the squad together, and keep this attitude up.

Did a quick projection based on nothing more than current PPG and the end-of-season table looks like this (with points rounded) 

Bristol City 52

Reading 50

Hull 46

Cardiff 44

Derby 38

Peterborough 38

Barnsley 27

We definitely need our second half-season to be significantly better than our first, but so far so good. It's possible, just a shame there aren't more bad teams to aim at this year.

4 hours ago, Boycie said:

Who do we thank ultimately?

awks.

I'd wait and see how many we have to sell or let go for far less than they are worth. It might well be that it is fans of rival clubs who end up grateful for what Morris has done at Derby. 

Assuming we still have a club next year, this is the worst bit, really. The silver lining during all those years of Butterfields and Anyas and high-risk short-termism was that there was a major bit of long-termism, too: the investment in the academy. And now all the best ones could get picked off for far less than we'd usually accept. Then we really are starting from scratch, aren't we? The one indisputable positive of Mel's reign - and it could all get erased very quickly.

I know there's another thread about grief and the five stages. This is the bit that keeps sending me back from acceptance to anger.

We'd be pretty close to the relegation zone now even without the massive points deductions. This kind of performance shows why. I think it's miraculous we've done as well as we have with a paper thin squad of kids (some of whom aren't half as good as we think), ageing journeymen and a couple of senior pros who aren't exactly pulling up trees. 

Just hope we get the off field stuff sorted soon, because a bit of a reset is what we need. 

No idea why it's important for fans to be 'pragmatic' in accepting relegation. We don't run the club. When fans talk of 'believing' in incredibly unlikely things, they are often expressing hope rather than _literally_ claiming they think the unlikely thing will happen. And sometimes that hope is important to them, and it doesn't affect me, and it doesn't affect the club - unless we think the administrators (we are in administration, by the way) set their strategy according to this message board? That they are swayed by emotion? 

Do I think we will be relegated? Of course; I'm pretty much certain of it. But it's not my business to go round stamping out tiny flames of hope.