Bladderwrack

What was needed was to get the club on to an even keel from the start. The oh we have problems here let’s wallpaper them over with this, oh more problems more wallpaper please. Then when the wallpaper tore different things were used to cover up. Mel you cannot keep just keep covering up for ever eventually you have to do repairs or the whole thing will fall down and now loothey have.

Why do business men lose all business acumen with football clubs. Football clubs are different, people do not fall in love with Sainsbury’s or Mark’s and Spencer’s, if starbuck’s or McDonalds folded people may miss them but they would not grieve them.

Football clubs become entangled into the very souls of their fans. You have to have responsible acting people to safeguard them, Derby this time around were not given that luxury and the fans are paying the emotional cost.

There is a possibility Derby could be liquidated, it will not happen though. Derby may be in a hole but they have bags of potential, they have a  massive fan base and clubs with this will always find a way to dig themselves out. They just need the right men in charge to do it.

There is however one constant truism that always accompanies situations like this. The doomsayers are always out in force. To quote the famous poem by Albert Edgar Guest

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,

     There are thousands to prophesy failure,

There are thousands to point out to you one by one,

      The dangers that wait to assail you.

Some people take joy in prophesying and forecasting the worst case scenario.  It may be they are expressing their own paranoia as a therapeutic measure or they may be the type who get a thrill from spreading doom and gloom. Whatever it is, it is a time for people who love their club to grow thick skins and learn to ignore such negativity until it comes from people who genuinely have their finger on the pulse and are speaking facts not fears. 

As has been said on here Mel Morris made a high stake gamble with the future of Derby County. In fact it was more like Russian roulette with more than one chamber containing a bullet. He lost and the consequences for the club will be dire. If Derby had beaten Villa in the play off final the gamble would perhaps have come off and Villa may have been going through this torture. But to have the very existence of the club dependent on the outcome off one game is too much. 
 

Fans understand sometimes a club has to speculate to progress and would support that and maybe even demand it. But, you can only do that if you have a reliable back up plan if it does not work out. You take a chance to get out of this league but to make it a make or break gamble is too much. Mel Morris has failed not because he took a gamble but because he made the gamble an all in one with no contingency plan. That is where the incompetence lays.

The EFL has rules and rules have to have sanctions applied if they are broken otherwise rules are useless. It may be argued EFL rules are useless anyway, but everyone is signed up to them.

4 minutes ago, Oldben said:

Any chance the administrators could force the sale of the stadium at a lower price.

Throw in the training ground at a lower price.

That might help sell the club.

Not sure that can happen, if Pride Park is owned by a company owned by Mel Morris then it belongs to him not Derby and so would not be part of what the Administrator can sell to raise funds. Morris can sell it to who he wants and the money would go to him. 

41 minutes ago, atherstoneram said:

I assume all football related debts include payments to Cocu,Keogh and anyone else that the club may still owe money to.

Yes it does, the players can choose to help out the club and not insist on it but of course that will not happen.

Administration can be a new beginning, there are examples of clubs that have been through it and fully recovered. What Administration is not though is a golden ticket, it is the start of what can be very dark days at a club. What is more essential than anything is that at the end of it the club is owned by someone or some consortium that has the interest of the club at heart and have the intelligence and capability to formulate a realistic plan for the climb back.

As has been mentioned all football related debts have to be paid first, failure to do this will result in the EFL removing the golden share, without that you cannot compete in any of is competitions.

The next problem is the HMRC, they are below football debts in priority and they hate it. They will issue winding up orders and they do this frequently in pursuit of the money they are owed. Normally clubs come to an arrangement but that arrangement does not include any reduction of the debt. They have to be paid and paid in full and they are relentless. Then come everyone else, all the small businesses and contractors and ancillary staff and they get screwed, they get the small crumbs that are left.

At other clubs there have been examples of players and managers tearing up their contracts to help the club, not many do that but it has happened. Wayne Rooney maybe someone who could leave the club in a good light by doing this.

Administration is the first step into a dark period, with it come massive restrictions on what you can spend and that applies for a period after you have come out of it. Administration may be the first step into darkness but good management thereafter can find the light again.

All set up for a 1-0 smash and grab.

You need proper owners in football to succeed. It starts at the top if you are owned by clowns you end up being a circus. Leeds for example had a succession of joker owners and ended  up as a laughing stock for 16 or so years. A succession of small clubs like Bournemouth and Brentford have succeeded recently due to good leadership. If you get professional leadership who are invested in progressing a football club and the football club is their main focus and not personal agendas and ego trips that club will prosper. Match good leadership with a big club and  Derby are that and there is only one direction you go and that is up.

13 minutes ago, FindernRam said:

Pessimists are rarely disappointed. 

If you expect the worst and its not so bad you are happier.

On the other hand if it does turn out fine, pessimists may have missed the odd disappointment but have spent most of their life feeling negative and miserable. Worry about things that may or may not happen destroys the soul especially if it is something that the worrier has no control over. 

This is a mismatch in as much as financial fair play does not apply to relegate clubs from the Premier League. Parachute payments make a mockery of any fair play. West Brom were able to retain their Premier League squad. They raked in a further £17m  for selling just 3 players two of them squad players, if that. They did not pay any transfer fees but were able to recruit two free transfers Alex Mowatt from Barnsley, the Barnsley player of the season last year and Adam Reach from Sheffield Wednesday plus a couple of loanees from Brighton. They had an average age of 25. Derby trading in the transfer market with their legs and arms tied together got 4 players on frees with an average age of over 33. 
 

However  this is the year of the underdog, the year when a tennis player representing GB makes it through qualifiers to get to the Us Women’s open final,  so I go for WBA 1 Derby 2

Rooney was a great player. For some reason when applying for a managerial job a playing history carries more weight than it perhaps it should. A good manager, or head coach as it may be in 2021, needs above all to have the ability to teach, he can have as many international caps as you like , if he cannot organise, react to in game situations and teach his players coherently his playing career  is irrelevant.

In the Premier League 16 of the managers did not win any caps at all only Hassenhuttl 8 with Austria, Solskjaer 67 with Norway, Vieira  107 for France and Guardiola 47 for Spain have caps.

There are few great players that have the ability to become great managers. In the Premier League perhaps only Guardiola can have the great tag for both codes. That is what management is, it is a different code to playing requiring a completely different skill set.
 

The question about Rooney is does he have the managerial skill set?

Roos did okay the defenders did not.

That is one long throw.

2 minutes ago, Coneheadjohn said:

Rooney v Bowyer in a drunken brawl for the 3 points.

Rooney is an ex youth boxer so no contest