Old Sawley Popside

Absolutely love this football club. Slowly but surely we will become great again. 

Wayne ducking Rooney and all the players, take a bow lads. It's times like this when boys become men and men stand up and are counted. Against all odds, we're showing huge pride in the shirt and a steely will to win and doing it with a certain amount of style and panache too. 
So ducking proud of them all tonight, each and every one.
COYR

I won't lie -  I was unhappy with him at the end of last season and when he played for us, but his actions on and off the pitch (for the most part) in this season have been exemplary and I would like to thank him for his significant efforts to help the club through this difficult period when nobody else would.

Yep agree  I was there in the mid 60's and this is the worst I have ever known. It's so cruel on the fans and the club. Owners should be held to account at all times. But we will bounce back 

I've tried so hard to get Mr Miggins to come and see a game but he won't and you have perfectly encapsulated the reasons why he has fallen out of love with game. Like @angieram he believes that football has been broken and at the top end it is no longer a sport but an industry. If you are one of the 8 top teams in the premiership then you are fine, any lower down and to hell with you. As long as the cash cows of the premier league are bringing in huge amounts of money the plight of teams desperately trying to improve their position and survive in lower leagues is of little or no interest or concern. It stinks and as you say, @Gisby it needs much stricter regulation to make sure that every team in the league is looked after and the truth is that it won't happen. A broken game indeed.

It's hard for me to understand how we could have amassed so much debt and how it wasn't picked up by regulators at the end of each financial year. How many other businesses could have carried on in this way for so long? I understand Mel's point on Saturday about COVID affecting each team disproportionately depending on parachute payments, size of club etc.  and I think Derby was one of those clubs that was disproportionately affected. However I think that the main reason that we were also hit especially hard was because we already had huge impending debts and entered the pandemic with those debts hanging over us and with no money in the contingency fund. How on earth was Mel allowed to get us into this position? Did we not have top accountants at the club who could have stepped in to safeguard the future of the club? I wish HMRC had been as diligent with DCFC as it is with the rest of us! Yours in exasperation...
 

Fair play to Wayne if true. It's not Mels club any more. Cant have random old men cutting about the place whilst the people that actually give a toss about DCFC try and salvage the situation.

That’s it in a nutshell. The story of the crash is plain enough but what leaves me flabbergasted is that Mel and the people running the club with him / for him just didn’t react. Mel has had a career where I am sure he has sailed close to the wind …. Surely he must have learned from this …. Evidently not. These sort of people, and their accountants are (or should be) seasoned professionals. They failed. 
 
it’s a bit like the creators of endowment mortgages. Serious companies sold these. Blue chips, with solid track records but at a certain point they fundamentally mismanaged the selling and the projections to a degree that anyone with even modest prudence just wouldn’t accept. They believed their own invincibility at great cost to others. 

Starting to wonder whether Gibson has got something to hide, himself. What does he stand to gain from this?

Sorry Angie usually agree 100% but the directors have legal duties to run the club correctly not try and appease fans and ego. They are running a company with all that entails as well as keeping within your sports own rules. Our situation shows perhaps why a fan shouldnt run their club as they cant separate the two. I doubt Mel would have gone on a similar reckless spree spending at his other companies

Absolutely not. As far as the fans were aware for most of Mels tenure the club was being run competently and within the rules. We'll always want money spending. We have no control over how the organisation is run - that is entirely down to the owner.
If said owner then ruins our football club he deserves all the criticism he gets for it. We didn't force him to do anything - he ducked it up all by himself. He should have planned for the long term rather than throwing us under the bus.

The man is a fool, and he has failed the club and himself. He complains that Covid left the club £20m short, but has more or less detailed over £20m of bad decisions in his interview. Those bad decisions have been stacking up for years. As a fan, I had always believed he had those bad decisions covered, so ultimately it was simply at his own risk. Instead, he took the risks and then stacked the consequences on the club, and you, and me, and all the suppliers, staff and players who are now in jeopardy. Awful.

If I am honest I listened, nodded and shook me head at times but in reality I am not really bothered one way or another about what he said. It changes nothing. We are where we are and the real damming bit there is nothing we can do about it. Like a gambler Mel (and most supporters) thought a bit more and we will win the prize of promotion then another bit and another. A very large percentage applauded him taking that next bet, not that we could stop him, and the next. Now the money has run out and the future is bleak. Bemoaning Mel will get us nowhere. Supporting the team will. I my mind the notice and support against WBA and Stoke are the reason OUR team got  those 4 points. When the players started flagging WE got behind them and both lifted them and drove them on. The worst bit is that we are again waiting to see how OUR club is punished, waiting to see and praying somebody buys us before the administrators can sell out assets off in a fire sale. Hoping Wayne and the management team are allowed to stay and all the rest of it . All we can do , and I urge you all to do it, us support OUR team and drive them on so that even if we are relisted we are relisted as a confident winning team that can take that into next season and bounce straight back

To me the biggest reveal was that - in Mel's opinion - the potential buyers are simply hovering with no intention of buying until the club does go into Administration, and the points deductions are settled.
That may have been predictable to many, but here was Mel actually saying it.
I have also been thinking his relationship with Rooney had totally broken down - not telling him about Administration was disgraceful and Rooney said they haven't spoken for weeks - but it was nice to hear the praise heaped on Rooney by Mel.
I also think it was good to hear details about managerial appointments, failed takeovers and so on from the man himself.
People have been calling for honest communication from Mel. Here he was delivering it and you chose not to listen. Fair enough. I am just surprised.
Even if he had ranted about the EFL (which he didn't to a large extent) or Covid (which he did a bit more), I still think it's worth listening to the other side rather than just close your ears to it and make your mind up beforehand.
None of this is to say that I am happy with how Mel has managed the club or with what he's done, I'm very far from happy about it, but I do believe in listening to all sides and making a judgement based on that. As opposed to shutting things off. Why anyone would demand more communication and then just not listen? Sorry, don't get it.

Sounds like a narcissist to be honest.
“Blame everything and everyone but me”
Its been a circus since he came in - I’ve been berated for years because it was obvious he was taking us into a financial mess and the club would eventually come to a stand still. 
The ridiculous long term contracts, the manager merry go rounds, the pretty much bad monthly tabloids about us. 
 
This was way before Covid mate 

Having listened to Mel at Fans Forums he can sound very convincing. 
It doesn't matter because soon the future of the club won't be down to him. #COYR

This was the part of the interview that made the least sense of all though. It's a real pity neither Nicholson or Dawes challenged him on it or at least asked him to elaborate.
If Mel was prepared to let the club go for nothing as long as the debt was paid off, how does it benefit a potential purchaser to wait for us to go into Administration? The purchase price was already zero and as per Keiran Maguire's analysis, the excellent summary here https://www.football365.com/news/Derby-county-administration-failure-opinion, and the Peter Marples facebook post, most of the debt will still have to paid off in full even after coming out of Administration (i.e. the debts to HMRC and to MSD etc).
So, a prospective purchaser who decides to wait it out will, due to the interest continuing to acrue on the loans, just increase the amount of debt they're going to inherit as it will just keep rising. Add to that the obvious point that going into Administration virtually guarantees relegation to League One due to the 12 points deduction and it means that any new owner would be buying a club with an even less sustainable business model than we already have (much lower TV money, lower attendances, less sponsorship income etc). Just from a purely business perspective, why would a prospective owner decide to do that? And from a football point of view, they'd have already demonstrated that they didn't have the interests of the club at heart anyway.
Mel's optimism that going into Administration will magically unlock the transfer of the club to new owners who have been waiting in the wings just seems unfounded to me. I hope I'm proven entirely wrong...
 

No I didn't mate as unfortunately was away in Greece. In normal times I would have flown back and left the wife and kids but with covid a lot harder to do...
If I had been able to go, I would have ripped the NDA and walked out. Simple as that really. That's me though, others would have been present in the room that could have challenged / asked what was needed and perhaps in a more diplomatic way than me.
Yeah they were mate and why I left the forum for a while. I said people had heads buried in the sand, I stand by that comment as we seem to have seen a big shift in the Mel love in. 
All I / We wanted was for reassurance that the club would be okay. I actually feel I / We didn't do enough.

The writing has been on the wall for a very long time. So much chatter about the EFL and amortisation, and other non-cash flow issues. Like any business, paying debt as it falls due is a good yardstick as to the health of a football club, and the competence of its owner. This was an inevitable outcome. I hope somehow the Administrators can evidence some personal liability against the directors, and of course Morris in particular. He shouldn’t be allowed to comfortably watch the clear up process.

Well I’d like to thank Rooney for turning up if that is the case. He’s a better man than me, I’d have been like F U Morris if you haven’t got the good grace to inform me about such a monumental decision. Morris seems to be a piece of work for sure.

Are people really going to keep defending Mel?
He couldn’t even be bothered to tell Rooney before the news was announced.
The man is spineless but don’t worry as he is a fan an really cares (not).
He will walk away from this debt free. Yes, he has lost money but he will make it back somehow I am sure of it.
Oh and don’t forget his company owns the stadium so who will be receiving rent for us to play there in future? Or will he sell it back to us at a tidy profit for himself?

Listening to Curtis Davis post match. What a leader that man is.

Classless is being polite.  Rooney is a multi millionnaire already.  That's not why he's doing this and he's shown his class by sticking by the players, believing in them, doing everything he can.  The guy is top class in my opinion, forget whether he's an experienced manager or not.  So impressed with everything he and the team are doing with all the poo that's been going on.  The reaction today says it all. 

We can't even get along as football fans of the same bloomin club!
What chance have we got?
Fortunately I was brought up on singing songs and chants that supported the club I love and then singing songs that disrespected the club we were trying to beat.
And I know football forums are all about fans being entitled to their own opininions, but just look at how far the goal posts have been moved within the game.
The biggest thing I loved about going to the Baseball Ground was the crowd, the wonderful atmosphere of getting behind Derby County Football Club and tearing into the Leeds, Chelsea fans and all the rest...................why did it go all horribly wrong???????
Why do some of our fans choose to get off on, winding our own fans up..........why oh why????????
I'm out of here, I'd rather watch dull Sunday night telly than read our own fans bickering with one another.
Where is your dignity, respect, appreciation, honour, loyalty for your fellow fan of the same football club you all love?
D.C.F.C. Love, Life & Unity.
Very sad indeed............a bloody disgrace!