Alty_Ram

So as far as I can tell, tickets went off sale last Friday and are not available to folks that want them yet? Not a big deal I guess, but a few tickets expiring sounds like a quick update job and doesn't seem like something that should result in the ticketing part of the website being deactivated for days. Is there perhaps something a bit more radical planned with this delay for 'Phase 2' ?

Ride the wave DCFC! Get folk signed up while everyone is still buzzing !

I'd absolutely love to get this guy signed up but the budget is what the budget is and we have several areas that need strengthening including goalscoring and that is never cheap. If we can't get him for a sensible sum because Cardiff play hard ball and are quoting fantasy numbers for a guy in the last year of his contract, then reluctantly we'll have to move on. Whatever way you look at it, the case for the long overdue 'physical presence' has been comprehensively made.

35 minutes ago, RaminBerlin said:

I’ve been looking to try and buy my first one but only link I can find seems to be to Car Park STs. Am I being thick?

No, you're not being thick, Season tickets are 'off sale' after 'Phase One' (renewals) ended on Friday. As I understand it, they will release non-renewed tickets with the rest of the seats shortly. I feel certain that someone will post on here when they say as soon as they announce it. I believe that it is 'imminent', although that could be '48 hours' or any of the other 'nobody really knows' timescales 😉.

Seriously though, I'd expect it to be very soon.

11 minutes ago, DerbyPride12 said:

Thinking of purchasing my first ever set of season tickets for me and my lads.

I do have a question though - I'll be getting an adult ticket, child ticket and under 5s ticket. Some games will be too late for my under 5 to go to - can I "upgrade" the ticket to bring my dad along?

Thanks in advance.

Yes you can but I believe that it is a limited number of times per season. This is from the official site:
 

Upgrades

Concession Season Tickets can be upgraded to a higher priced age category on up to four occasions per season. The upgrade cost is available by contacting the Ticket Office. Any upgrades after the fourth time in the season will only be done at the discretion of the club

https://www.dcfc.co.uk/page/ticketing-useful-information

Ticketing Useful Information - Derby County (dcfc.co.uk)

If you assumed say (I dunno) 29k home seats, capping at 22k leaves what, 7k open-sale home tickets which seems a bit unnecessary, particularly when you get all those night games where the casual fans tend to turn up in much lower numbers and with greater fannying about with kickoff times due to the TV deal that are being talked about. There should always be some open sale tickets for sure but that just seems an unnecessarily large block. ST holders tend to show up anyway because they've already bought and paid for it.

Without knowing our budget and how far that will stretch and looking at necessary parting of the ways with some players, I'd consider a good season to be somewhere mid-table, hopefully without ever really feeling like we might get dragged into the relegation mire.

I watched a few games at the top of the Championship and tbh, most of them (unsurprisingly) looked absolutely streets ahead of where we are. Get up, stay out of trouble and get established. Any thoughts of getting promoted are pure fantasy I'd say. It's important to be realistic or the moaning will start just because we are suddenly chasing shadows against the better sides with high quality squads bloated by parachute money. We've stepped up a level now and we're going to need to rebuild a Championship quality squad and that will be no small task. I think we're a lot closer to Sheff Wednesday than Ipswich so lets not over-react to the inevitable games where we just are well short of the level of the opposition.

After starting from a position of near oblivion a couple of years back, this was always going to be evolution not revolution as we rebuild and hopefully push on in a responsible way. The general perception was that the crowd was going to be important in the season just gone, and I think it was, particularly away. I think that goes double next season though. We'll need a levelling factor to compete with the better opposition and the crowd could be that if we stay positive but perhaps temper expectation a little.

What a weekend. just on Cloud 9 ! Great to see the nod to B4 and thinking about how much joy he'd have had at how things turned out. I never met him in person but feel that through those who did, that I now have some measure of the guy.

It just set me thinking though (and without wishing to put any kind of dampener on things) about all the other now departed Rams fans who never got to see us make the step back up again, including my Mum who we lost before Christmas - she was a season ticket holder of many decades who drove us to away games before I could drive. It's not a sad thought though, she'd have been absolutely buzzing today and would have loved all the scenes at the end. 🙂🐏 COYR

5 minutes ago, Mostyn6 said:

Would I have been the only poster teasing B4 that we never caught Pompey if he was around? 

Even though I knew he had some difficulties, I used to enjoy a little ribbing at expense of his optimism, however reading this, it makes me sound like a bully! I don't think there's a regular poster/reader here who didn't love B4's valuation of Rams players! 😄

Nah mate, job done. If there was such a thing as a 2024/25 Championship table, then it has us ahead of them on alphabetical order 😉

On 26/04/2024 at 22:06, rammieib said:

And there will probably be a week where existing ST holders can change seats before everything opens up.

I assume that any un-renewed tickets will go into the general scrum tomorrow morning won't they ? They are surely not going to hold unrenewed seats just in case people have a change of heart ?

Cheers for that, much appreciated - not always easy to pop your head above the parapet after such a tense run-in. Yep, there is always a lot of noise from complete morons and wind up merchants on social media but most folk to you make an effort to speak to are a much more reasonable breed and I think you're right, and for all that we joke about and get frustrated about the wild over-reaction on here, forums generally seem positively calm and reasonable places compared to the likes of Twitter/X !

I'm up in the North West and a few months ago found myself sharing a table in a pub with a Bolton fan and my overall impression was that he just sounded like one of us lot in terms of feeling that you (like us) have currently been playing at a level well below your potential or your natural place in the hierarchy. That wasn't arrogance or conceit, it was simply a reality. Also, sometimes people forget how many clubs have been through a fair bit of trauma including ourselves, Pompey and Bolton. Not quite perhaps as deeply in the s*** as we were but you have been close enough to the precipice to start to think about the unthinkable happening and realising how much your club means to you.

Of the playoff places I have no particular favourite as such but in truth I'd happily see Barnsley miss out, no idea why really. Portsmouth, Derby and Bolton has a decent symmetry about it. You pushed us to the last game and for that alone I'd be happy enough to see you lot again next year, plus it's no distance at all for me for the away game 😉

If Posh field a similarly weakened side to last night then as a mindset we'd have to assume that Bolton will win fairly comfortably. Cheltenham bossed that 2nd string Peterborough team 25 shots (8 on target) to 9 shots (3 on target). Bolton would surely chew that lot up if they fielded the same team again but that's not a reason for extra pressure or worry, it is what it is. If Posh field a weakened side then a very good team in our league (Bolton) would be playing a strategically, consciously weakened opponent and you'd expect them to win. If Bolton win 10-0 it's still all in our hands. Just focus on us and get our job done and it's all academic.

On 22/04/2024 at 16:30, TimRam said:

Wonder how many other potential "classic" games are going to be ruined. The use is bad enough but having fans cheer a goal then having to wait minutes for it to be confirmed is killing the game. That Cov v Man U was destined to be remembered as one of the greats. Now just a footnote as another Man U win.

But yay, we got the decision 'right' ... well possibly.. or possibly not.. assuming the line drawing is infallible which based on the pics of the Cov vs United line-drawing seems not to be. I think that fundamentally VAR delivers accuracy in the tens of centimetres at best but the modern game is asking for for decisions to be made to centimetre accuracy and I'm just not convinced that VAR can deliver that.

I feel that if an instant 'that was an incorrect decision' can't be made then it should just stand and we move on. VAR officials are getting a lot of stick but they are being asked to do brain surgery in boxing gloves. It just isn't fit for purpose for a lot of these incredibly tight decisions. We can draw two lines for an offside and once that's done we can tell you 100% whether the blue line is nearer the goal than the red line as we have drawn them, but what if we simply can't assign that level of confidence with the drawing of those lines ?

18 hours ago, Highgate said:

Yeah you can never be sure if the action has been stopped at precisely the right moment or not.  But if you introduce a margin of error, won't the debate just switch to whether the toenail was within the margin of error line or not, rather than whether it was ahead or behind the last defender?  Whatever criterion is used, whether it's offside by any amount, margin or error or 'clear daylight' between the players, the decision will often come down to judgement calls based on millimetres. 

I'd be happy to bin VAR altogether and go back to best guess by the officials.  At least then people could go back to celebrating goals naturally when they occur.  

I appreciate that some think VAR is a step in the right direction the above is the argument in a nutshell for me. Is the 'correct by a toenail' forensic approach worth it when it is seemingly so flawed/ambiguous on tight decisions anyway ? The original explanation/justification was that VAR was essentially there to correct big errors and injustices. I'm just not convinced 'drawing lines' on a screen and spending sometimes several minutes making at best dubiously 'accurate' decisions on the tightest of tight calls, is really addressing the problem.

The crushing of the spontaneity of goal celebrations for frankly impossible to call decisions in a fast moving and highly emotional spectator sport is (IMHO) simply not worth the sacrifice as a spectacle, though I appreciate that many wouldn't agree.

I think we have to be positive and go and try and seize the game by the scruff of the neck and get our business done, then everything else elsewhere would be academic. I don't mean be utterly reckless and risk conceding soft goals but just trying to keep it super-tight and pinch a goal would just be agonising to watch. Any team can grab a goal out of nothing and this lot are no different.

Ideally we'll take an early lead and push on from there and make the game safe but you can imagine what a bundle of nerves the whole place would be if it was on a knife-edge. It's times like that when the home crowd can work against you and their nervousness can get to the players. As fans, we need to do our bit and roar the players home and not convey any (well, as little as we can) of our own nerves !

30 minutes ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

https://www.grandoldteam.com/forum/threads/forest-fan-20th-april-we-need-to-do-something.119301/

Some of the responses to the Forest begging bowl are fabulous 😂

They haven't exactly rolled out a welcome mat have they 😄. That's the lesson that we learned quite quickly - the idea of the 'Football Family' is a load of horse****. A call for solidarity for the sake of the fans? Good luck with that. It happens very rarely and Blackpool/Derby was one of very few examples that I can think of. Not even 100% sure that would be repeated if it was all going off now.

Seems that even threats to the very existence of a club barely causes a ripple these days, so don't expect much sympathy from fans of other teams if you overspent and might go down a division, particularly if your fans were being arses last time the teams met.

Cue EFL points deduction for failing to properly segregate fans....

8 hours ago, downsouth said:

Thank you for the gracious comments.  I'm a bit *ahem* tired and emotional - it's been a relatively long wait for us to get back in to the second tier.  I'm rooting for you to get over the line and other results this evening appear to have been in your favour.  Good luck and raising a glass to B4.

Gratz Pompey, that's a well-deserved promotion and title. Ultimately you've been the most consistent (and effective) side and that's what gets you promoted when the season is all done and dusted. Some thoughtful and classy responses on here too, even when everything was still very much in the balance for you.

So, it's down to us to do our bit now. Hopefully we can get over the line and get that 2nd place. Nervous ? Hell yeah... 🥴💩

Bolton to win at an absolute canter IMHO. I expect us to have to win our last 2.

Bolton may have had a tough game at the weekend but Shrewsbury are garbage and played a good chunk of their game on Saturday with 10 men after a sending off so will be far from fresh.. Makes it doubly frustrating when you think that we tossed away a couple of points by failing to beat them at PP a couple of months back with one of our signature sloppy late goals conceded. Ifs and buts.. I know....

My Dad was a big fan of Westerns and for my entire childhood I was convinced that a simple safe way of rendering someone unconscious was to smash a bottle over their head ! A simple tap on the head and they always obligingly explode into a million safe non-sharp fragments and the guy in the black hat just lay down for a bit. It was on the way to a football match where I saw someone hit by a bottle and there was blood everywhere and the bottle showed no sign of breaking 🤔

You could always wait until after we get inexplicably battered by Cambridge and see if there are some tickets suddenly coming available... 😩

18 hours ago, StarterForTen said:

I think Ebou could be our modern day Darryl Powell. He played more than 200 games for the club, many in the Premier League and in a World Cup finals yet had no more technical ability than Adams possesses.

Regardless of which division we're in, if we have a situation where Adams was our least accomplished pure footballing midfielder then it's not looking too shabby is it ? We've been crying out for some bite and physicality for years now and now some folks are worried that our defensive midfield specialist isn't also some creative genius too? It's all about a blend surely. The creative players can only flourish if we have a foothold in the game and are winning a decent proportion of midfield duels. Warne might not exactly be an advocate of total passing football but he knows that crosses don't get crossed and through balls don't get threaded through if you can't get the ball.

On 13/04/2024 at 17:36, Red_Dawn said:

Fair play lads. I’d say that was you effectively up at this stage. 

A glorious moment in the history of DCFC. Promoted back to the second tier. I can hear the champagne popping from all the way up here in the North West? 

Well obviously you're setting this up for a fall RD because you'd find it funnier, but in all seriousness the pattern of the last few games have been a case of if you don't like the last result, just hang around, it'll all change again, triumph to despair in the space of 90 mins.

It's in our hands for now at least but since when did we ever do anything easily? I'm fully expecting more twists and turns and although we've won a lot of games this season we've also had several worrying random piss poor performances against the poorer teams in this division so absolutely nobody is taking anything for granted at this stage. We'll get there if we get there and I'll worry about celebrating then if we get over the line.

It might be 'just' a chance to get back in the Championship but I imagine that you'd have been cheering as loudly as the rest when Forest managed to haul themselves out of the 3rd tier. Unless they change the rules I think we're only allowed to get promoted one division at a time, so if we can see this through to a successful conclusion I'd be over the moon for now ta.

As for your lot, well it's still wide open. I've maintained that you have 3 worse teams than you and I still think you'll stay up but there are some huge games coming up. Your game at Everton looks massive, particularly when Luton are home to Brentford on the same day. Even if you are in trouble after that lot though, you still have the bottom 2 teams to play in your last 3 games. Club colours aside, it's actually been a genuinely interesting PL campaign at both ends but after last weekend it looks like advantage Man City and I don't expect them to need a 2nd invitation to take advantage.

6 hours ago, Bris Vegas said:

Unfortunately Forest have a lot of winnable games coming up.

Burnley, Sheff Utd and Everton away, plus Wolves and Chelsea at home.

I think they will get another 10 points.

I don’t see Luton getting any more than 6.

Luton gave it a brilliant go but they dropped some easy points by losing at home to Sheff Utd and squandering a 3-0 lead at Bournemouth.

Unfortunately I agree. I just think there are 3 poorer teams who will wrap up those relegation spots. The bottom 2 are all but gone (Sheff Utd are barely half a point a game and Burnley not much better). I just don't see Luton winning many games and as you say, they have squandered some good opportunities.

The only slight wildcard is the form of the likes of Brentford, Palace and Everton. Brentford are 1 win in 11 and Palace are 1 win in 9 and that was against Burnley. Everton is 1 win in 11 and that was narrow scratchy victory against Burnley. With both Forest and Luton bagging a recent 3 points, any kind of win for the next couple of games for either Forest of Luton would make the rest of that lot seriously twitchy, given that they are in pretty desperate form.

8 hours ago, Wolfie20 said:

If you label him as 'an athlete' and not a footballer there's a few posters who will wet themselves (again).

Well, true ! But obvs I meant in the sense that he seems like he'd be able to play high intensity football once he'd understood what Warne needs from him to help the team. He seems to be getting there now and hopefully the timing will help us get over the line. We can't win every game by simply outplaying the opposition so we need players who can win games with a moment of trickery. We don't have an enormous number of those so we don't want it all to be just about NML or Wilson. The more potential headaches the opposition have, the better really.

Regardless of his patchy start, he has all the raw materials for what we need - plenty of pace, some trickery, and a willingness to run at people and pull defences about. A major worry this year has been 'What happens if NML breaks down or badly loses form?' Apart from NML we don't have many options that can really scare defences with their direct running so it was good to see CBT put in a good effective shift against the best team in the division. He's an athlete and of the right age profile. Hopefully bodes well for the future.