it will be five years tomorrow

[ramblur]

so in a nutshell then ramblur are you saying that everything was fine and if it had of been left well alone we would now be in a much stronger position than we currently are both on and off the pitch, its ok quoting the accounts but in my opinion we were on a downward spiral much akin to Leeds, Portsmouth Cardiff etc etc. its unclear as you didn't bother to specify but are you saying that you would have bought the club in 2008 and continued to let it be managed the way that it was (on and off the field) really ?? if that was your money and you just sat back and watched ? you think you would be sitting there now looking at your spread sheet showing the massive gains that you had made, keep spending money that you haven't got gets you nowhere, the next footballing disaster waiting to happen is at loftus road, do you really think all of the money they are chucking around belongs to tony fernades ? when he realises that he has not got a clue about running a football team and he decides that he has had enough of playing silly buggers he will be off with much of his savings in tact, who will be left with the massive debt ? the club of course and they will then start the long long process of trying to pay off the debt, modern football is in crisis and the teams outside of the top ten in the premiership need to realise it, If Derby had not changed direction when it did we would have a lot more to be complaining about right now other than how inconsistent theo is, or least I would !!

Err,no,I was merely refuting your claim that the finances are in better shape now (and I assume you meant in comparison to the inherited situation).My whole point is that our owners inherited a decent financial situation and then sanctioned transactions from Savage through to Porter which led to an unsustainable wage bill in 08/09 (and onwards).AP even admitted that we were way over budget in August 08 and said he'd need to do something about it -unfortunately we just seemed to panic when we were struggling near the bottom,culminating in the Varney fiasco.As an aside,he had also mentioned that the wage bill would have to be trimmed if we failed to gain promotion,so we were over budget for 08/09 (which should have been rectified) and in addition to this more culling would have to happen in 09/10 onwards.

These were decisions made by the current owners,not the LOG,yet it seems that some would like to lay the blame for unsustainability from 08/09 onwards at the LOG's door. The last (part) season that they were responsible for saw a profit posted,which rather smacks of a sustainable season.

Just to clear one thing up,though I don't know why you should be confused.If I'd gotten control on 1/1/08 I most certainly wouldn't have followed the path that was undertaken.That's the whole point!

[loweman2]

Err,no,I was merely refuting your claim that the finances are in better shape now (and I assume you meant in comparison to the inherited situation).My whole point is that our owners inherited a decent financial situation and then sanctioned transactions from Savage through to Porter which led to an unsustainable wage bill in 08/09 (and onwards).AP even admitted that we were way over budget in August 08 and said he'd need to do something about it -unfortunately we just seemed to panic when we were struggling near the bottom,culminating in the Varney fiasco.As an aside,he had also mentioned that the wage bill would have to be trimmed if we failed to gain promotion,so we were over budget for 08/09 (which should have been rectified) and in addition to this more culling would have to happen in 09/10 onwards.

These were decisions made by the current owners,not the LOG,yet it seems that some would like to lay the blame for unsustainability from 08/09 onwards at the LOG's door. The last (part) season that they were responsible for saw a profit posted,which rather smacks of a sustainable season.

Just to clear one thing up,though I don't know why you should be confused.If I'd gotten control on 1/1/08 I most certainly wouldn't have followed the path that was undertaken.That's the whole point!

"I see " said the blind man, so out of interest Ramblur what path would you have taken, I wouldn't know which path to take to be honest at that time so my question is out of genuine interest rather than one of argument.

[ramblur]

I have read through the whole thread and the only post that seems like propaganda is this one and the one by Curb.

Sometimes is it not just possible for us to reflect on the fact that we had a few really bad years on the footballing side and lay the blame at the managers who signed the players door, instead of getting into the politics of which board spent what?!

At the end of the day a lot of it is guesswork because, transfer fees aside, nobody knows what contracts were dished out to players and what sort of money these have cost us.

I say have a break from the finances until the January window and then get ripped into the current board again.

I see the 'tamagotchi' alarm's gone off again.I'm left wondering why the sentiments you express in the second paragraph weren't directed at the OP (or any other posts that have been critical,either directly or implied,of the LOG).Silly me,they'd all be tamagotchi friendly.

Kindly tell me what is biased or misleading about the following:-

Cash in hand at 30/6/08 was £7.9m.

Two parachute payments worth £23m were to be forthcoming (curb's propaganda,apparently).

The overdraft was slashed in 07/08.

Debt on takeover was £31m (although reduced between takeover and 30/6/08).

The January 08 transfer activity was influenced by the current regime.

I can well understand why you have such a distaste for the facts.

We may not know what contracts were dished out to players,but it's fairly clear which administration handed out contracts to the various players.I'm just making the reasonable point that the LOG left a substantial amount of cash to deal with their own mistakes,in fact I deliberately gave a conservative figure because there's evidence that the chute payments came to over £24m and about £2m (from memory only,but I'm going to check) of debt was cleared between takeover and 30/6/08.I'll even leave the net Jan 08 cash spending in reserve.

[MrsRam]

[url=http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Worse-Worst-Breaking-Football/dp/0956114423/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353946456&sr=1-8]Bad Worse Worst: the Story of Derby County's Record Breaking 2007/8 Season (People's History of Football) by Edgar Smith (1 Oct 2010)

I read it not long ago - downloaded on my kindle, seems a bit overpriced in book form.

[DCFCfranco]

At least we're record breakers.

[ramblur]

"I see " said the blind man, so out of interest Ramblur what path would you have taken, I wouldn't know which path to take to be honest at that time so my question is out of genuine interest rather than one of argument.

I'm staunchly pro Clough,so my first job would have been to appoint him as manager.I most certainly wouldn't have forced him to spend anything in Jan 08 to 'make an impact'.I would have taken a dim view if he'd told the squad they were rubbish and would be on their bikes the following season (which I know he wouldn't have done,and he most certainly wouldn't have had them running round PP just because they weren't good enough for the Prem).

In 08/09 I would have allowed him to bring in some quality to augment the relegated squad,together with some players of potential to hopefully replace existing players whose contracts would (conveniently) expire after the chute payments ran out.The following year I might allow further modest purchases out of part of the chute payment -in both years I would ensure that wages were commensurate with income (somewhat easier to achieve when you haven't added 19 players to the remnants of an existing squad).I'd have supported the strengthening of the youth set up.

Having done all of this,I'd be rather disappointed if I hadn't achieved a much better position than that we currently find ourselves in,hence why I would have taken the financial position at 1/1/08 in preference to the current one.

[G STAR RAM]

I see the 'tamagotchi' alarm's gone off again.I'm left wondering why the sentiments you express in the second paragraph weren't directed at the OP (or any other posts that have been critical,either directly or implied,of the LOG).Silly me,they'd all be tamagotchi friendly.

Kindly tell me what is biased or misleading about the following:-

Cash in hand at 30/6/08 was £7.9m.

Two parachute payments worth £23m were to be forthcoming (curb's propaganda,apparently).

The overdraft was slashed in 07/08.

Debt on takeover was £31m (although reduced between takeover and 30/6/08).

The January 08 transfer activity was influenced by the current regime.

I can well understand why you have such a distaste for the facts.

We may not know what contracts were dished out to players,but it's fairly clear which administration handed out contracts to the various players.I'm just making the reasonable point that the LOG left a substantial amount of cash to deal with their own mistakes,in fact I deliberately gave a conservative figure because there's evidence that the chute payments came to over £24m and about £2m (from memory only,but I'm going to check) of debt was cleared between takeover and 30/6/08.I'll even leave the net Jan 08 cash spending in reserve.

I doubt there is anything biased or misleading about any of your figures (I have not even bothered to read them)

From how I read this, the OP was just making a thread about how sh1te we were 5 years ago. He wasn't blaming anyone. He was also just saying that he thinks we are more financially stable but I am sure that was just his guess rather than anything based on facts and figures.

The thread then turned into people reminiscing about the footballing side of things, at which point you came on declaring 'PROPOGANDA' was being used and stating lots of facts and figures which showed everyone how great LOG were for Derby County.

Do you not realise that not every fan has all of the facts that you have to hand and more to the point a lot of them don't really care and will make comments that are not true but are not meant in any malicious way and are sometime secondary to the thing that they want to discuss.

[curb]

There's a massive difference between spending what you don't have, and borrowing money that you were DEFINATELY going to get at the end of the season. Ie the tv money we were due should we have stayed up (followed by another payment the year after), or the tv money due at the end of the season followed by three parachute payments when we went down.

The money we actually did spend was very small in Premier league terms, and the wage bill was around 20 million, the next smallest wage bill in the Prem that season was 36 million, so it's not even a case of us throwing all caution to the wind, it's just that Billy Davies (and then Jewell) bought such utter *****.

[G STAR RAM]

There's a massive difference between spending what you don't have, and borrowing money that you were DEFINATELY going to get at the end of the season. Ie the tv money we were due should we have stayed up (followed by another payment the year after), or the tv money due at the end of the season followed by three parachute payments when we went down.

The money we actually did spend was very small in Premier league terms, and the wage bill was around 20 million, the next smallest wage bill in the Prem that season was 36 million, so it's not even a case of us throwing all caution to the wind, it's just that Billy Davies (and then Jewell) bought such utter *****.

Agree entirely, its so hard to believe that we made so many awful signings.

2 or 3 bad singings you can forgive but we must have made about 20.

[curb]

I doubt there is anything biased or misleading about any of your figures (I have not even bothered to read them)

From how I read this, the OP was just making a thread about how sh1te we were 5 years ago. He wasn't blaming anyone. He was also just saying that he thinks we are more financially stable but I am sure that was just his guess rather than anything based on facts and figures.

The thread then turned into people reminiscing about the footballing side of things, at which point you came on declaring 'PROPOGANDA' was being used and stating lots of facts and figures which showed everyone how great LOG were for Derby County.

Do you not realise that not every fan has all of the facts that you have to hand and more to the point a lot of them don't really care and will make comments that are not true but are not meant in any malicious way and are sometime secondary to the thing that they want to discuss.

You can't say that though!!

What you're saying there is that it's OK to have an opinion based on misinformation and ignorance, but not OK to form an opinion that's based on fact.

The truth is nobody wants to hear anything bad about our current owners, they'd rather paint them as whiter than white, when they contributed as much as, if not more, to the mess we were in.

[ramblur]

I doubt there is anything biased or misleading about any of your figures (I have not even bothered to read them)

From how I read this, the OP was just making a thread about how sh1te we were 5 years ago. He wasn't blaming anyone. He was also just saying that he thinks we are more financially stable but I am sure that was just his guess rather than anything based on facts and figures.

The thread then turned into people reminiscing about the footballing side of things, at which point you came on declaring 'PROPOGANDA' was being used and stating lots of facts and figures which showed everyone how great LOG were for Derby County.

Do you not realise that not every fan has all of the facts that you have to hand and more to the point a lot of them don't really care and will make comments that are not true but are not meant in any malicious way and are sometime secondary to the thing that they want to discuss.

The OP didn't say that the financial position was his opinion,he stated it as fact.He also talked of recovering from the mess of 5 years ago and talked (effectively) of getting into debt to buy players -both slurs on the LOG (as we didn't get into debt in real terms).I don't recall saying that the LOG were great for Derby County,but merely defended them against the implied suggestion that they left the finances in a worse state than currently holds sway.If you think that the facts and figures indicate that they were great for the club,then that's your opinion.

I would have thought that an understanding of the facts and figures would allow posters to frame a more informed opinion-the annual accounts threads always seem to attract a decent following.

PS If you hadn't read my facts and figures,how would you know they were making the LOG out to be great for Derby County?

[loweman2]

I doubt there is anything biased or misleading about any of your figures (I have not even bothered to read them)

From how I read this, the OP was just making a thread about how sh1te we were 5 years ago. He wasn't blaming anyone. He was also just saying that he thinks we are more financially stable but I am sure that was just his guess rather than anything based on facts and figures.

The thread then turned into people reminiscing about the footballing side of things, at which point you came on declaring 'PROPOGANDA' was being used and stating lots of facts and figures which showed everyone how great LOG were for Derby County.

Do you not realise that not every fan has all of the facts that you have to hand and more to the point a lot of them don't really care and will make comments that are not true but are not meant in any malicious way and are sometime secondary to the thing that they want to discuss.

thanks G STAR that is exactly how it was meant, so it seems you, myself and everybody else who has contributed to the brisk discussion are reading it in the manner it was intended, Ramblur is putting a more divisive spin into the thread.

[G STAR RAM]

The OP didn't say that the financial position was his opinion,he stated it as fact.He also talked of recovering from the mess of 5 years ago and talked (effectively) of getting into debt to buy players -both slurs on the LOG (as we didn't get into debt in real terms).I don't recall saying that the LOG were great for Derby County,but merely defended them against the implied suggestion that they left the finances in a worse state than currently holds sway.If you think that the facts and figures indicate that they were great for the club,then that's your opinion.

I would have thought that an understanding of the facts and figures would allow posters to frame a more informed opinion-the annual accounts threads always seem to attract a decent following.

PS If you hadn't read my facts and figures,how would you know they were making the LOG out to be great for Derby County?

Because you have quoted the same thing so many times I know what is coming next every time you refer to that period.

[westbrom1404]

Sorry for losing to you 'http://www.dcfcfans.co.uk/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':(' />

But am I right to say weren't you quite a few points ahead at the turn of the year in your promotion season? Then you started to slow down and ended up in the playoffs? I'm not even going to mention that stupid horrible cold wet day either.

[ramblur]

thanks G STAR that is exactly how it was meant, so it seems you, myself and everybody else who has contributed to the brisk discussion are reading it in the manner it was intended, Ramblur is putting a more divisive spin into the thread.

I was merely challenging something you stated as fact with an argument based on real facts.If one poster disagrees with another,is that now enough to have him/her labelled 'divisive' ?

[G STAR RAM]

You can't say that though!!

What you're saying there is that it's OK to have an opinion based on misinformation and ignorance, but not OK to form an opinion that's based on fact.

The truth is nobody wants to hear anything bad about our current owners, they'd rather paint them as whiter than white, when they contributed as much as, if not more, to the mess we were in.

We are never going to have a thread where at the end of every post the poster states whether it is opinion or fact.

If someone was posting about a match and said Theo played sh1te but Derby won, I would not ask the poster if was fact or opinion nor would I accuse the poster of anti Theo propaganda.

I know you for one believe that we were in a much better financial position when the LOG left and, something that will surprise you, I probably agree. However, if GSE had not taken over and we had still been relegated, what sort of financial position would we have been in if all the players had seen out their contracts? It's a question I have raised before and is something that nobody will know the answer to and, therefore, nobody can state as fact that we would have been in a better financial situation when they left us.

I don't see GSE as whiter than white but they came in with good intentions of keeping us in The Premier League and blew a lot of their own money in trying to achieve this (although some may argue that this money was an investment!)

[ramblur]

Because you have quoted the same thing so many times I know what is coming next every time you refer to that period.

Just shows how many times I have to reply to nonsense which isn't supported by facts.

[The Scarlet Pimpernel]

Just shows how many times I have to reply to nonsense which isn't supported by facts.

Insert "choose" & "other peoples views" & "aren't"

[ramblur]

We are never going to have a thread where at the end of every post the poster states whether it is opinion or fact.

If someone was posting about a match and said Theo played sh1te but Derby won, I would not ask the poster if was fact or opinion nor would I accuse the poster of anti Theo propaganda.

I know you for one believe that we were in a much better financial position when the LOG left and, something that will surprise you, I probably agree. However, if GSE had not taken over and we had still been relegated, what sort of financial position would we have been in if all the players had seen out their contracts? It's a question I have raised before and is something that nobody will know the answer to and, therefore, nobody can state as fact that we would have been in a better financial situation when they left us.

I don't see GSE as whiter than white but they came in with good intentions of keeping us in The Premier League and blew a lot of their own money in trying to achieve this (although some may argue that this money was an investment!)

The players' wage bill for 08/09 was reported in the DET at £15.5m,and given in quotation marks.The equivalent figure for 07/08 was given at £23m (including employers' NIC,otherwise the figure would have been nearly £26m,which was the total wage bill).The 19 players I referred to earlier (ranging from Sav to Porter) all had to feature within this figure,hence the LOG's Prem remnants simply couldn't have been a massive problem,especially when there's over £15m of residual chute payments to play with.No one forced them to sign 19 players.

In any event,if there were no GSE then there'd have been no Savage,Tito,Sterjowski and Carroll,which would have been a great start to slashing that £15.5m

[ramblur]

Insert "choose" & "other peoples views" & "aren't"

"Other peoples' views" are rather different to things stated as fact,yet not backed up by facts.Whenever I challenge posters,I think you'll find that the magic words "in my opinion" or "I think" or other similar variants haven't featured in their posts.