Miggins

I know that this is all chewed meat at this point but I just wanted to say that this was never intended to be a personal  attack on you. It was more of a rally the troops / community post after a glass of wine. I would never ever attack a fellow poster in the way that you thought I did. I joined this forum because I love the passion, wit and insight I read here. I understand how my clumsy wording led you to be so angry, but I apologise because it was, and will never be intentional. ? PS  I wanted to reply much sooner but your ire resulted in my laptop expiring. Just kidding! I'm now having to get used to a new laptop and it is so difficult! I'd had the last one for 11 years and this one is going to take a lot of getting used to. Keep well, and apologies once more.
 

I agree with that to some extent, Rev, but it sets a tone that others repeat here and elsewhere, sometimes directly to players e.g. on Twitter. I also suspect some players find their way onto Forums like ours from time to time - poor souls! 
I have never personally had an issue with posters who post constructive criticism of either players or the more general position of the club, but you have to admit there are a number of posters who are relentlessly negative about everything to do with the club and are overly personal in their abuse of individual players, coaching staff or the owner. While they may be able to shake this off and get fully behind the team on matchdays (which I have my doubts about in some instances ?), many others who are less able to detach themselves in that way take it on board and shout out the abuse directly to players at games.
I often post little snippets from the club Twitter feed on here to try to introduce something positive to chat about just to break the cycle, but the amount of smart-arse replies I get when I do discourages me from even trying.
And I don't mean the jokey stuff, I mean the dragging absolutely everything that the club does into a negative. I think quite a lot of posters find it tiresome. I know I do. 

Good post Curtains. I happen to be an atheist but believe there are similarities with being a football fan and religion. Those that will be attending a church service as we speak will be a diverse group of people with differing views on what the church and their faith means to them. Some will listen and agree with everything the vicar or whoever is giving the service says and ask no questions, whereas others might be more vocal and ask questions and challenge certain things, maybe the church’s views on homosexuality for example. But ultimately they all have their faith and leave that service as Christians or whatever religious group they are part of. That’s exactly how it is being a Rams fan for me. We might disagree on some things and agree on others but when we walk in to Pride Park we are all Rams fans and want the best for the team. 

The way to express an opinion is to say 
"I think that..."
"In my view..." 
Not 
Lawrence is crap
Rooney is clueless.
We are getting relegated.
Must have been hundreds of posts said exactly the latter last season. Turned out not one of them was fact.
 

We can draw a line under it at what ever point we choose and I choose now.  I found this report rather sad and that's not how I want to feel going into this season. A new season, a clean sheet. A new beginning. I appreciate where you are coming from. I am not hiding my head in the sand and I am not pretending that all is well.  Starting a new season on such a negative note does not help our team at all. If the fans expect us to fail then the team will have less confidence. They need lots of support from the fans. I hope that the team this season will respond to the positive response from the fans and will rise to the occasion. It's going to be a long and hard season so get behind our beloved team and stop draining their confidence.

We can draw a line under it at what ever point we choose and I choose now.  I found this report rather sad and that's not how I want to feel going into this season. A new season, a clean sheet. A new beginning. I appreciate where you are coming from. I am not hiding my head in the sand and I am not pretending that all is well.  Starting a new season on such a negative note does not help our team at all. If the fans expect us to fail then the team will have less confidence. They need lots of support from the fans. I hope that the team this season will respond to the positive response from the fans and will rise to the occasion. It's going to be a long and hard season so get behind our beloved team and stop draining their confidence.

We can draw a line under it at what ever point we choose and I choose now.  I found this report rather sad and that's not how I want to feel going into this season. A new season, a clean sheet. A new beginning. I appreciate where you are coming from. I am not hiding my head in the sand and I am not pretending that all is well.  Starting a new season on such a negative note does not help our team at all. If the fans expect us to fail then the team will have less confidence. They need lots of support from the fans. I hope that the team this season will respond to the positive response from the fans and will rise to the occasion. It's going to be a long and hard season so get behind our beloved team and stop draining their confidence.

We can draw a line under it at what ever point we choose and I choose now.  I found this report rather sad and that's not how I want to feel going into this season. A new season, a clean sheet. A new beginning. I appreciate where you are coming from. I am not hiding my head in the sand and I am not pretending that all is well.  Starting a new season on such a negative note does not help our team at all. If the fans expect us to fail then the team will have less confidence. They need lots of support from the fans. I hope that the team this season will respond to the positive response from the fans and will rise to the occasion. It's going to be a long and hard season so get behind our beloved team and stop draining their confidence.

We can look forwards was the point. We know what has got us here. #COYR

This all happened in the past and watching it makes me feel sad and confused. I'd rather draw a line under it now and concentrate on moving forward. Sorry, but watching this makes me feel sad. I know that it happened and this is like a post-mortem but I'd rather concentrate on this coming season. It's informative as to how we got to this point, but it is not helpful and we need to be positive and move forward with the players we have.

I’m due to leave my current job in the next couple of weeks due to bullying. Not of the physical type, and the perpetrators are a couple of harmless looking, but very spiteful and vicious women. A totally new experience for me, where I’ve had to take a moral high ground, not react and just remove myself cos I can’t be bothered to fight it. Life is too short. 

I fully agree with you very very few people know this I was badly bullied at school due to my learning differcults and because I had autism but back then it was not known because I did not know rules of play ground I was beat up in school and out of school to such a point that I wanted to end my own life. Only when I told my mum she cried when I said this and was angry at person who did this and for many many years it took to get over it but to this day I dont trust anyone anymore I know sad to hear but dammage done to me and only those ones who suffered it truly understand.

Yes, he's loyal and wanting to do well for the club and himself. He's managed to convince a load of (what some would say) unwanted old players to play for a 'train wreck' of a club and perhaps convinced Man U to loan us some of their young talent. The negative is all that is for nowt if he can't sign them!

By way of explanation - from the BBC feed...
Reports of vaccinated people ending up in hospital causes alarm.
On Monday, chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance revealed that around 60% of hospitalisations were among people who are unvaccinated.
So that means for every 60 unvaccinated people hospitalised, about 40 who have been vaccinated are also ending up in hospital. Does that mean the vaccines are not working very well? Absolutely not.
That’s because for every 60 unvaccinated people, there are about 440 vaccinated adults in the population.
So that means the numbers of vaccinated people in hospital are at least 10 times lower than they would be if the vaccines did not work at all.
The 60:40 ratio therefore suggests the vaccines are a little over 90% effective at keeping people out of hospital.
But the news is even better than that. The figures are skewed by the fact the people who are most likely to be unvaccinated are the younger age groups - the ones least likely to end up in hospital.
If you factor that in the vaccines look to be well above 90% effective at keeping people out of hospital – bang in line with what all the research suggests.

In my opinion anyone who attends a large gathering of people in august sept October be it sport, concert or whatever is taking an enormous gamble.

And a lot of people are struggling a bit financially ?

Glad to hear it B4. You may have to make a bit extra noise on behalf of those who are aren't at the stadium because they are still worried about large gatherings.
If we do start to come to terms with living with Covid as a country then I think people will gradually draft back to doing normal things but I don't think numbers will be fully back to normal for a little while yet. Hopefully it'll all still feel a lot more normal though so I hope you enjoy being back at the ground and showing the lads your support.

When we taught especially 'clumsy', poorly co-ordinated children, one of the first tests the educational psychologist would do would be to get them to throw or catch a ball several times and watch them kick a ball so that they could establish left hand/ right hand dominance and left foot / right foot dominance. Many children who had co-ordination difficulties were 'cross-lateral'  eg. left footed but right handed and vice versa. I am right handed but if I couldn't use my right hand I could learn to use my left but I doubt it would ever be as efficient. Trying to kick a ball with my left foot is possible but my instinct would be to always go with my dominant foot as the other way doesn't feel right at all and I feel unbalanced.  I'm guessing that the same might be true of footballers. There are very few people who can switch from right to left with ease with their hands, so perhaps it is true with feet as well.

You're right I did cherry-pick. 
Bird definitely suffered from second season syndrome last year and was pretty average in a very, very poor team. Knight went the same way in the second half of last season too. My take on Bird is that I expect him to be a good player that may make the Premier League. I think he was the driving force behind Derby's youth team successes and I think he is smart enough to make the grade. I think he is worth persisting with to return to the form that he has shown previously. 

Do we need an emergency meeting with the EFL? Surely the club needs to be able to function…

You've not been liberally giving our lads the eye again have you Angie? 
I thought that restraining order had stopped that sort of thing.... ?

At this point it’s going to be irrelevant whether Rooney is/could be a good manager or not.
If his higher-ups don’t get our situation sorted sharpish, he’s not going to stand a chance.

It was great to get back down to Pride Park and see our first team in action. Not the best day for it temperature-wise and sometimes players are going through the motions a bit in friendlies but I thought most of them today put in a good shift.
Players that caught my eye first half were Morrison (great use of the ball - if anyone can get him playing like that every week, sign him up!), Aluko, Byrne, Lawrence (despite his header!)  Jagielka and Davies both classy at the back and Roos' handling of the ball and quick distribution kept us moving forward. The intent was definitely there to get forward much quicker, with some smart interchanges to transition play down both flanks. 
Bird had a mixed game, did some good stuff going forward but made the mistakes for the goals. However, he tries things, Shinnie doesn't and was more of a sideways passer than Bird today. Buchanan puts in a shift going forward, I thought he did okay too given the opposition. 
No-one seems to have mentioned that we let our second goal in just before the 60 minute changes. At this point we were playing against a completely fresh Man Utd midfield and attack whereas our lads were wilting. It was 36 degrees pitch-side and a rushed pass from Aluko I think that put Bird under pressure.
Unlike others, I thought Fozzy played well when he came on, looked much sharper than the end of last season and I thought him and CKR took good responsibility for the younger group of players. Fozzy definitely organising the defence. Ebosele played well too, you can't ignore him, Hutchinson took a while to get into it but looked classy on the ball and could have had a goal. Bardell and Thompson showed some nice touches and weren't overawed - have either of them played for the first team before? 
Sibley and Macdonald a bit disappointing, especially Sibley who wasn't offering the defensive cover that Aluko offered first half. I want to see him get his mojo back quickly because this isn't the player I know he can be.
Not sure whether Man Utd's first goal was a handball? I thought it was but not given, did Rams TV show anything? 
Overall an enjoyable afternoon and a decent atmosphere for a friendly with a bit of banter between the two sets of 'singing' supporters.
However the highlight of the afternoon, and worth the admission money alone, was to see CKR score an actual goal in front of the Derby fans. Use him well and he's going to be even more of a hero this season than last. ?

That was the game I saw, mostly. I didn’t latch on to Morrison .. I was sitting quite close to the pitch and you don’t get a good view of midfield interplay. Unlike Roy I though Aluko looked dangerous, mobile and very strong. Feisty has come on physically since I last saw him. I’d hate lose Byrne. 
 
That was a good run out. We moved the ball well, weren’t predictable, got caught when they pressed hard and high but they looked hungry and skilled.
Had a little welling up when the team came out and when King Colin banged one in. It felt like coming home after a long grubby journey in bad weather. 
 
As the Aussies say “She’ll be right mate” 
we are ok … if we avoid a points deduction we won’t get relegated.. they are good enough and maybe will improve a bit on the way. 

I was generally quite pleased with that performance. A bit ironic that we lose the first half when we were the better side and draw the second half when we weren’t, but all things considered we did well. Aluko and Morrison were impressive, CKR’s strike was very good, Sibley seems to have learned nothing since last season regarding silly fouls and straying offside, Lawrence seems fired up to lead the team. If a couple of things had gone our way we could easily have won that game.