Alty_Ram

Just nice to have some options to discuss for this thread title ! Fornah looks very composed. A good athlete too who doesn't get bossed. Nelson has been Mr Steady and reads the game really well. Really pleased with him, absolutely what we needed, particularly after a rocky start for Bradley. Nyambe has that slight 'tough as nails' Wisdom vibe but probably with better positional sense. He's not going to tear teams apart on the counter but looks really solid and does a lot of good work.

I have to admit to being a bit baffled by the strength of feeling and negativity towards this. There is a clearly a load of baggage around this whole issue that I am not really understanding despite reading the objections, but I would have thought that if it is an option for some level of fan representation in whatever form, then that is better than no representation ?

I don't have a clue who is the best person to represent fans in this scenario other than certainly not me, because I don't frankly understand enough of what is required. I feel reasonably sure though that any fans group is made up of people who are surely by definition, fans and followers of our great club. When the ball hits the net and I leap about and celebrate with complete strangers, I'm not asking for their membership cards to see if they might be celebrating for questionable reasons or because of some sinister agenda that will only become clear when they revert to their evil alien lizard form. I just don't know what folk think is going to happen.

Blackpool 2 Derby 0 no RFGS

On 29/09/2023 at 09:11, Anon said:

Stop paying players so much money. This isn't a defence of the shambolic way Scunthorpe has been run, but these situations are getting more and more common and we always go straight to hand wringing about fit and proper person tests and clubs as historic institutions. They're businesses and very few businesses could survive by paying almost their entire turnover out in wages. No one ever suggests that maybe, just maybe a league 2 footballer shouldn't be getting £75,000 per annum. Maybe Scunny will go the same way as Bury, but I can guarantee if they do most people will pretend that it's because the people in charge were malicious and somehow uniquely evil rather than the fact that the cost of keeping a competitive playing squad is becoming completely untenable for small town parochial clubs.

The problem also seems to be that there is almost no control over how much technical loss you can run at, and then nothing to stop an owner just leaving them to it when they lose interest or drop dead, leaving behind an unviable mess. There are several clubs that are (still) just relying on an owner to bankroll their current expenditure by writing debts off with accountancy shenanigans and there is absolutely no attempt to work within any reasonable responsible budget and inevitably at some stage the owner will find something else to spend their money on.

We were rightly criticised by some over the activities of Morris but the likes of Boro and Stoke continue to run at completely unsustainable levels once you take the safety net away.

It's slightly tricky in that I don't want to have a situation where the super-wealthy ruling elite of the game can never be challenged by say someone wanting to bankroll their hometown club, but commitments need to be about more than just the current season and need to have some focus on longer term viability. I'm not really sure how you balance that with the current setup within football though.

I think unfortunately, our team on Saturday was one that had neither of our most cultured players in the form of Hourihane and Bird. Sure, we created some decent chances but for all that we seemed to control possession, we never really did so in areas that created a consistent threat. Aside from the first 15-20 mins where they were a bit more front foot, , Cambridge seemed content for us to have the ball in our own half and we knocked it about without seemingly much of a plan or any ability to really carve them open. As soon as we got to the final 3rd we looked like we'd run out of ideas and we either hit the first defender with the cross or overshot everyone. Certainly poor execution hampered us but the strategy seemed to be what the players were asked to do.

You need to give some credit to Cambridge but I honestly think that the way we played would make anyone look organised and disciplined. We just had no cutting edge and our sole plan seemed to be to dash down the flanks, bang a cross in, and hope that someone could get on the end. We never looked like we were going to pick anyone out by threading a ball through, or curl one into the top corner. It was pure percentages football where if we hit enough crosses in then something will probably happen. We also seemed reluctant to shoot from the edge of the box which seemed odd. We always seemed to want to push it out wide and then try to bang a cross in and hope for the best and any well-drilled defence will lap that up all day with our lack of much of an aerial threat.

Hopefully Hourihane returning can give us a bit of much needed guile but the tactics need to be more than just hit and hope crossing.

48 minutes ago, Leeds Ram said:

What concerns me is that it will take a really big club to go under for this to be sorted. At one point, I honestly thought we'd end up being that cautionary tale for everyone else. 

Yeah, exactly. A lot of other teams fans still don't seemed to have grasped just how perilously close we were. I've read some absolute garbage written on social media by the ill-informed (that's pretty much the same thing I guess..) that suggests that we were 'always going to get dug out of the s*** by someone'. That is absolutely not true. It was the Clowes cavalry, driven by a desire to save his club for the city; or absolute and utter oblivion and start again with a phoenix club at whatever level we would be allowed to participate. It was that black and white. Time had run out, the good ship DCFC was going down with all hands.

The fans were outstanding in terms of loyalty and resilience and raising the profile of the issue but we cannot save a club on our own with the staggering debt profile of some clubs these days. The sheer size of the unserviceable debt that can be run up, and the way that owners can just throw a club and fans and history under a bus, and the way that primary assets like the stadium can be separated from the football side of things, added to the tacit encouragement by the EFL to let teams sue each other for damages for any perceived wrongdoing and it is surely just a matter of time before a bigger club pops in a messy way, and even then some people will still be surprised by this when it happens.

People have to stop assuming that some Arab Sheik or wealthy American consortium will just sort it out - The debt in the championship even is getting beyond the means of anyone but the absolutely loaded. Where there is no financial case to be made for buying a club because of issue like above (no stadium asset, crippling debt, guaranteed relegation due to points deductions, looming litigation etc) then you are left hoping for a miracle. A miracle that makes little financial sense to sort.

The current crop of bigger sides that are in trouble may be OK because they don't have all these factors stacked up against them, but our situation will not be unique unless rules change. Someone else will suffer that perfect storm of circumstances because nothing has been addressed in the governance and finance of the game.

The Scunthorpe example is particularly scary because the owner seems to be actually taking glee in their plight.

Not everyone has a David Clowes riding over the hill on a white charger. Sometimes that noise approaching is just another 10,000 orcs who have come to burn your castle down.

Jeez, what a total shambles 😞 

Not just in financial trouble, they're mired in litigation and don't even have a ground to call their own. Sounds horribly familiar... At least the numbers required to save them would presumably be chickenfeed in comparison to us. Even so it would probably need a local business person with a love for the club, not their business head on. That also sounds familiar.

As always, you feel for the fans.

Ah OK, it seemed to be a VPN thing so perhaps country restricted ? Anyway, cheers for that. Yeah, Gasly not a happy bunny... I imagine that was a fun chat later !

That video seems to have been pulled. What were the juicy bits ?

As you say, it's been a bit of a mixed start and performances haven't been great, but it's always going to need a decent block of games to see how things are working out - 10 minimum I'd say. It's been good to see us win some games where we've not looked quite on our game. We've also had a few tough games on paper so perhaps that along with seemingly constant injuries is hampering us.

I think though that I'd be happier seeing is us dominating games a bit more. I don't want to see endless backwards and sideways passing and no end product but I'd like to see us control things better and let other teams run themselves ragged trying to close us down. It's strange that our best football has been played in very small bursts. For example, the two goals against Lincoln were snapping passing moves and it shows that this team are capable of playing some good incisive stuff so why does it look so underwhelming for most of the rest of the time ?

Perhaps as we get a settled side and a bit of momentum and confidence then the football will flow a little more easily. Let's hope so.

I have no idea what the history of this one is to be fair so I'm only have this comment and single response to go on, but wow, if that's genuine then it sounds like they have a huge problem. It's not just someone who isn't capable of sorting out whatever they are going through, it's someone who would seemingly take vindictive pleasure in seeing the club buried. I hope for the fans sake it was just a mardy bit of lashing out after a few beers or something or getting triggered by a few idiots who had a pop at wider family or whatever.
 

I think it will need something pretty unique to ever seriously threaten our record. We were massively worse than any other team that year. This year though, as others have said, that there are several poor teams who will pick up points off each other so I just don't see it.

Even if teams only manage one win all year then they can probably limp over the line with draws as there are so many mediocre teams down there to pick up points from. Sadly, I just don't see anyone being that bad again. I could only ever see a lower total by way of a points deduction for financial irregularities or something.

1 hour ago, Red_Dawn said:

Oh the days of us playing in the Papa John's Pizza trophy or whatever its called.. Seems a lifetime ago

Gen question. Would you even want to win it? 

As you know, given the very limited opportunities to make any money at this level, I believe that financially its very much worth getting to Wembley and winning, so on that score yeah, I'd be happy to win it. Until that stage though it's just a worrying opportunity to pick up injuries in an already fairly congested calendar. That said, after having so many players out with various injuries, it's actually proving a useful way of getting some minutes for players returning.

PP is a bit of a double edged sword at times. A big noisy home crowd is obviously a significant advantage and the players and manager seem to all say as much, but if it's a really flat performance with little goalmouth action then it settles down into that really distinctive murmur as people just start chatting. Some of that conversation may be about the game but I suspect that much of it is about what takeaway folk are going to get tonight.

In South Stand you get phases where the crowd try to rouse the team but it is a 2-way thing and if the match is dire then it soon settles down - the players need to play their part to get things going too. Part of this may be tactical as the opposition are all too aware of the potential power of a Derby team with their tails up and a big crowd roaring them on so they may be consciously trying to quieten the crowd, but once we get to the murmur stage, it often seems to be quite difficult to get the momentum back. Not always though and I honestly can't say why that is. Sometimes a crunching tackle or one slick move can set it all off again and other times its just flat. We seem to get that a lot with early kickoffs.

If South Stand is rocking then it often carries other stands with it but completely agree re comments about East Stand. I used to be up there and there was a bit of banter with South Stand but that seems increasingly rare these days.

Agree also re the relative predictability of the songs. In truth, I just don't know (and have never understood) how the dynamics of new songs work either. It needs a core of people to try it but also a wider group to pick that up and run with it. I see threads about new songs but you rarely see these appear but I'm as guilty as anyone in that I have never tried to start something new and I'm sure that most folk would say the same.

The noise and crowd at PP can be a huge asset but it's often a mixed blessing as a groan spreads round the ground when a pass goes straight into touch. I don't know how you 'fix' that though. At other times the atmosphere either home or away can be absolutely rabid for no apparent reason with the crowd roaring every challenge and at other times it's so quiet that you can hear text alerts pinging, but barely audible above the dreaded murmur of distraction.

Wait, you mean that they have been throwing huge sums of money at this for years for years to steal a competitive advantage by creating a massively uneven financial playing field and are not in fact paragons of sporting virtue who should be hailed as saviours of the game ?

Well bugger me... who knew, right ?

21 hours ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

So, what a race that was.

 

Best race for a long while IMHO. Podium positions occupied by 3 different manufacturers and Verstappen and Red Bull nowhere to be seen. Great to see 3 cars still locked in a tussle round the last bend and 5 different cars in the top 6 - what a refreshing change. I've wandered off from so many races this year (even fell asleep during one!) but this one had me on the edge of my seat right up to the line. Probably too much to ask for any repeat, sadly..

34 minutes ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

Sigh. I've never been convinced it's the best approach, it keeps the pressure on you and makes life easier for the other side. A defence that knows what it's doing is preferable to having another of your attacking players standing around to just be there.

No, me neither because I think the tendency is for the ball to just come straight back at you and I also think that you are more likely to get a clumsy tackle in your own box from someone who is not a defender. It just makes sense to me to put one of your quicker players up the pitch so you have someone to chase a clearance and let everyone push up. The attacking team is not likely to leave just one player back then to mark them as that is a high risk approach as they may slip or get beaten for pace so it pulls a couple of players out of the attack.

In terms of Warne's idea that it prevents the opposition having space, well the counter to that is that it is increasingly difficult for your keeper to claim the ball though a more congested penalty area. Warne being Warne, I'm sure that he has decided on this tactic through analysing some stats but it feels counterintuitive to me.

Rams 0-2 Portsmouth

7 hours ago, BaaLocks said:

It's an utterly pointless discussion this one, which is why nearly every club in the land sings "we're by far the greatest team" with no sense of irony. And it's actually irrelevant, or possibly even more relevant, if they are smaller than us. I understand why we can't keep up with a club like Man City or Liverpool, in the same way I guess most Fleetwood fans do recognise that in the long run they can't keep up with us. But I really don't care if we get bigger gates that Bournemouth or have bigger away support, what I do care about is that they are in the Premiership (sic) and we are not, even though we have an infrastructure that suggests we could be.

I also think that money from bigger gate receipts probably only really works as a significant advantage in the lower leagues. By the time you are in the top flight, the extra fans (and therefore gate money) vs anyone else in that league is just not really that big a factor as TV money dwarfs the money coming through the turnstiles. That's how the likes of Brentford, Fulham etc seem to manage not to struggle. They obviously can't compete with the Man Utd's of this world for players fees and wages because their (United's) worldwide presence is a huge factor in their wealth but as the likes of Everton are finding out, no amount of history or bigger gates is going to guarantee you finishing ahead of these smaller teams, not with the way the top flight finances are structured.

After last season's narrow failure to get into the playoffs with a hurriedly assembled scratch team, I don't think that an expectation from fans of doing better this year is unreasonable, particularly when there was talk of having a fair bit more financial flexibility to tweak an already reasonably decent side and to fill it with players who fit the manager's chosen style rather than some square pegs in round holes. I don't think it's fair to expect us to spend nothing and walk the league but an improvement is something that you should always be looking for unless you are in financial trouble and having to shed your best players.

The challenge has come with the recruitment and injuries. I don't think the recruitment worked out quite as well as Warne had hoped and we've had a string of injuries before the season has even really got started. Add to that a pretty challenging start fixtures-wise and I guess our current position is not entirely surprising at this stage.

That said, once we've got our teeth properly into this season and we've got a few of these players back then we'll have more options and I think it is perfectly reasonable, even with one of two longer term injuries, for us to be expecting to be in the mix. I don't think it is reasonable to consider anything less than automatic promotion as a failure because our fee outlay is negligible, but surely an expectation going a minimum 1 place and potentially just 1 point better than last year and being involved in the playoffs is perfectly reasonable ?

I don't see it any time soon if I'm honest. Hopefully we can be back to the Championship relatively soon, maybe the next couple of years but I think we are going to need a lot of things to align to get a team that can get promoted to the top flight. We will have to spend some money and we will need a good manager (don't know yet whether the current manager is that man) and the sort of blend of players that just seem to click and are far greater than the sum of their parts.

Who knows what timescale that'll be on and whether the gap is going to be harder to bridge than it is already. I'll just hope for the best but it feels like it's likely to be a long road back. Hopefully we'll have some fun along the way though. I'd love to see us get promoted though, even just from this division. It's been a long while and it'd be a big boost to the fans and the city generally.

I know the season is barely underway but this feels like a huge game already for some reason. A win here feels like it would be a significant moment after the Bolton setback. Last year we failed to impress against promotion rivals but if we can see these off plus the win over Peterborough then it feels much more positive than the general mood on here.

I'd like to see us be on the front foot and get at them. They have a really tight defence so I hope they don't score first and sit in.

I think what frustrates me personally is when you think back to the Fleetwood game. There was a move just before Waggy's goal where we played some fantastic crisp one-touch passing football and went quickly from our own penalty area the theirs, leaving Fleetwood chasing shadows. The crowd really responded and it showed that this squad, for all its shortcomings, can play some high quality football. So why do we not do that more often, and why did the players choose to do it at that moment but rarely again ?

If he wants to go then he's as good as gone, that's no "boo hoo poor us", that's just reality and absolutely no ill feeling towards the player himself. This is unfortunately what you're up against when you ply your trade in the 3rd tier. There is nothing we can do to compete with what Brighton can offer and the remaining contract situation is going to seriously impact what we can get for him but we just have to get what we can.

2 minutes ago, Warren Blufitt said:

You’re right mozza we are struggling after a very bright start. No Santos, no midfield, defence leaking goals it’s a real puzzle. On the plus side though Dion Charles is on fire at the moment and Adeboyejo is improving so if we can get the service right at least we can score. You on the other hand have picked up recently and seem to be hitting form so it should be a cracking game on Saturday with maybe a few goals in it? I still think we’ll both be there or thereabouts at the end of the season so Saturday could be an important pointer.

This probably belongs in the match thread so apologies to the mods.

Interesting, cheers for that. As for us, well I honestly don't know what to expect. Like many League 1 teams it's been a real mixed bag. We've looked really ropey in some games and yet we also managed to blow Peterborough away in 16 minutes last weekend. Warne seem to want to play a system that doesn't seem to work with these players and we look very vulnerable (3 at the back). Teams seem to just stroll through our midfield at will, but whenever we've abandoned that system we seem to look more effective. Looking at the squad before the season started we all thought defence would be solid but we'd struggle to score.. shows what we know !

The squad is paper thin though with injuries plus quite a small squad to start with, so not that much in the way options off the bench. Signed a couple of players before the last game so hopefully that's been addressed in part.

Honestly, no idea as to the scoreline. We might beat you or we might get a hammering, it's that kind of season so far !