Nigel Clough Sacking

[i-Ram]

46 minutes ago, Derby_EnglandLoyal said:

NC are poor manager and that'll never change my 'views' about him anyway. Forest away 1-0 down and he made a sub at 90 Minutes and there are more other things that he got it wrong so many times. 

Not sure whether to LOL or SIGH, tbf.

[ronnieronalde]

23 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Thing is Clough was never going to get out of those players the results Mac did. We were going mid-table mediocrity with Clough. Mac made the team greater than the sum of its parts.

I spoke to one of the players about this, in quite some depth. Next time I see him I'll ask if I can have his permission to name him. I think you all know that I've still got some ties. Not saying I'm ITK but I still somehow get to talk to a few people inside football because of my teenage/early adult life.

He told me that the entire squad was buzzing during those last few weeks of NC's time, he told me the stuff they were producing in training was absolutely sensational and that there were times when they'd literally stop and clap one of the moves they'd just put together. He told me they were playing with a huge smile on their faces and that it was only a matter of time before it all clicked into place and in his words "There's going to be teams in this league that won't know what's hit them this season"

The management team were quietly confident. NC is never going to be the type to shout from the rooftops about he thinks things are going, it's probably one part of him I'd like to see change. I wish he had more of his dads brashness here.

What I've written above changes nothing. I'm sure quite a few of you will dismiss it just because it's coming from me and you'll think I'm posting out of loyalty to NC. The truth is I don't care anymore. I might still think it was a bad decision to let him go but I also can agree it was a good decision to bring in Mac, based purely on his results and style of play.

That's why I'm still just a touch disappointed. It was the money men who decided NC's time was up. Sam Rush may not even have been NC's biggest critic/internal enemy either. I believe that might have been Mel (but I'm not criticising him or stating that as fact) It was the money men who decided AND Sam Rush.

If I never trusted Sam's knowledge of football, how could I agree with the sacking? I personally will always believe that the "football men" could see we were close, a tweak or two away from really cracking it and I believe Sam Rush missed that, couldn't or didn't want to see it.

I wrote earlier in the week that the episode is over from my side. I'm not angry anymore. I'm very happy with where Nigel is a and with what he's achieving at Burton. They're a nice club to follow and I already did for ten years first time around. So I'm happy.

Derby have undoubtedly moved on, had a couple of successful seasons and been really unlucky not to have got promotion to the Premier league. I firmly believe and hope that with Rowett in charge of ALL THINGS FOOTBALL and with Mel's undoubted brilliant backing financially that you'll all get your wish and you'll go up next year playing brilliant stuff along the way.

I don't want to argue with anyone anymore about NC but I will always post explanations/opinions/rebuttals when I see him getting a bit of in-necessary stick.

[Comrade 86]

Strange how polarised thinking is on NC's tenure. My sense of it is that he did a fair job given the difficult circumstances he faced when taking the job on but that he lacked the vision to push us onwards once the hard graft of stabilising the club had been done.

Comparisons with SMC seem more than a tad unfair in most regards and if you could meld NC and SMC you'd have a pretty decent manager, I reckon. Pragmatism and flair. Someone not unlike the present gaffer in other words 

[CumbrianRam]

5 hours ago, David said:

Sheffield United finished 5th in 12/13, Nigel arrived in October 13, finished 7th that season.

His first full season at Derby finished 14th, the following season 19th.

That season so dreadful apart from 6 weeks in the Autumn.

[CumbrianRam]

3 hours ago, ramblur said:

Opening league gates in 12/13 were 21,188,23,437,23,514 and 21,465

Give it another two years and it would have been below 20k, I lost most of my interest in Derby County back then 2011-13, only this forum kept me going to be honest. Steve McClaren in winter 2013 won me back.

He's had a decent career, but no surprise he's done better at Burton, compared to Derby and SHeff U, he thrives under being the underdog.

[Mostyn6]

I do wonder how long Clough might have lasted under Shotgun Mel.

[archied]

The new manager bounce factor ??????

The Mac new manager bounce added to clough built team/ spirit / pre season training and fitness = some of the best football we've played for years and narrow Miss out on promotion ?

the Mac new manager bounce added to an unbalanced team/ squad ( he helped bring in) = a good run of results from not brilliant performances then back to the relegation form he came into ? 

Rowett has the utmost respect for Nigel's management qualities and speaks the same language when it comes to spiririt / workrate / attitude and treating the clubs money like it is his own , I'm hoping he has lots of cloughs qualities but with that added spark that lifts him to a higher level

 

[CumbrianRam]

3 minutes ago, Mostyn6 said:

I do wonder how long Clough might have lasted under Shotgun Mel.

He would not have survived the Crawley debacle.

[Mafiabob]

7 minutes ago, CumbrianRam said:

He would not have survived the Crawley debacle.

That was when I realised we weren't going anywhere fast with him..... still remember Bueno sitting on the bench whilst Ben Pringle shuffled his way around the place

[CumbrianRam]

2 minutes ago, Mafiabob said:

That was when I realised we weren't going anywhere fast with him..... still remember Bueno sitting on the bench whilst Ben Pringle shuffled his way around the place

That was when I wanted him out, 5-2 at City Ground was concerning but the end of the season was dreadful, very lucky we didn't go down 49 points I think.

[DEL]

13 minutes ago, Mafiabob said:

That was when I realised we weren't going anywhere fast with him..... still remember Bueno sitting on the bench whilst Ben Pringle shuffled his way around the place

Dean Moxey came on in that game but we should have used Beuno instead Moxey, also Davies came on at 93rd minutes. 

[G STAR RAM]

I always find it strange that NC is given so much credit for cutting the wage bill.

He came into a club with rubbish players on high wages and offloaded them, what is so good about that.

Now if he was having to sell his best players to do that then by all means I would understand it but all he did was get rid of loads of deadwood.

If I remember correctly a few contracts were even paid off.

[davenportram]

6 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

I always find it strange that NC is given so much credit for cutting the wage bill.

He came into a club with rubbish players on high wages and offloaded them, what is so good about that.

Now if he was having to sell his best players to do that then by all means I would understand it but all he did was get rid of loads of deadwood.

If I remember correctly a few contracts were even paid off.

It was more about offloading them and then relacing with cheaper better players than just offloading them. Wage bill cut from £17m to below £8m and with that you got the bulk of a third place team. 

[Pearl Ram]

13 hours ago, G STAR RAM said:

Right in what respect?

It depends how you measure his achievements. 

If you are measuring it in terms of promotion to the Premier League then you are correct that he achieved nothing, but there again that would also mean that NC also achieved nothing in 5 years at the club.

If you measure his achievements in terms of putting bums back on seats, he achieved something.

If you measure it in terms of increasing revenues, he achieved something.

If you measure it in terms of the club getting a day out at Wembley for only the 4th time in the last 30 years, he achieved something.

If you measure it in terms of helping being back football that got fans excited and raised expectation levels so high that anything other than promotion is now regarded as failure, he achieved something.

If you measure it in terms of getting an extremely rich local businessman to invest in the club, pay off the mortgage on the ground and virtually wipe out all external debt, he achieved something.

So which one is it?

Is promotion the only measure of achievement? In which case he was surely right to sack NC after 5 years without it.

Or are there other things that SR was involved in that you have chosen to overlook? 

Well constructed post that.

But to get away from the NC borefest for a moment, all the above mentioned contributions from Rush are very commendable and Mel would surely have acknowledged them and held him in high esteem for them so it begs the question just what the chuff has Rush done to merit his immediate removal from the club ?

If, after all the positives you mention in your post didn't earn him a "WTF Sam" ? or a "tell me what I've just been told/discovered is wrong Sam" may I put it to you he has undone all his good work in a stroke and to that end is indeed a snake in the grass.

I believe Mel is not stupid. He would not have removed Rush without concrete proof of wrongdoing. So, for me, anything positive he has done in the past is tarnished by whatever constituted his removal, it would not have been a trivial issue and would appear to have been very detrimental to the either the club or Mel personally and that is not good.

[ronnieronalde]

3 minutes ago, G STAR RAM said:

I always find it strange that NC is given so much credit for cutting the wage bill.

He came into a club with rubbish players on high wages and offloaded them, what is so good about that.

Now if he was having to sell his best players to do that then by all means I would understand it but all he did was get rid of loads of deadwood.

If I remember correctly a few contracts were even paid off.

The credit lies in the fact he came into a club with rubbish players on high wages and he couldn't offload them all straight away in one fell swoop. He couldn't afford to sign "top quality replacements" for all of those rubbish, deadwood players on high wages. So he had to rely on some of them to play, he had to rely on some of them to form the spine of his team, even though inside NC probably felt they were spineless (for want of a better word)

The fact he had to pay some of them up to leave also robbed him of those funds to go out and buy better players. Do you think he'd have rather spent 500k paying off Dean Leacock (purely hypothetical example - no idea on accuracy of figures) or spend that 500k on another Bryson type fee?

The fact that he somehow managed to get those rubbish players on high wages to cobble enough points together for survival, while h was trying to shift them out, also deserves credit.

Don't forget you'd barely won a league game for a season and a half when he walked through the doors.

[Mr Tibbs]

Giving Nigel Clough X amount of money wouldn't have altered his shortcomings, there were far bigger problems than financial constraints on his part. 

4 years on and we were still bringing Jake Buxton off the bench with 15 mins to go to play at CDM, protecting a 0-0 away from home. I thank him for stabilising us over those first few years but I still believe to this day it was the correct decision to get rid of him, so far we've proved that to be correct. 

Have we gone backwards since NC's days? Maybe since Macca's first year we have. Just look at the state of our season and we're still going to finish higher then we ever did under Clough. Winning more games than we have lost which again, we never achieved under Clough. 

 

 

[Rev]

Can we not just have a caged thread where you defend/criticise Nigel to the death, and leave this one to Sam the Snake/Sam the saint?

[G STAR RAM]

28 minutes ago, ronnieronalde said:

The credit lies in the fact he came into a club with rubbish players on high wages and he couldn't offload them all straight away in one fell swoop. He couldn't afford to sign "top quality replacements" for all of those rubbish, deadwood players on high wages. So he had to rely on some of them to play, he had to rely on some of them to form the spine of his team, even though inside NC probably felt they were spineless (for want of a better word)

The fact he had to pay some of them up to leave also robbed him of those funds to go out and buy better players. Do you think he'd have rather spent 500k paying off Dean Leacock (purely hypothetical example - no idea on accuracy of figures) or spend that 500k on another Bryson type fee?

The fact that he somehow managed to get those rubbish players on high wages to cobble enough points together for survival, while h was trying to shift them out, also deserves credit.

Don't forget you'd barely won a league game for a season and a half when he walked through the doors.

But I could become Derby manager tomorrow and get rid of Blackman, Camara, Shackell, Bent and say I had taken £5m or £6m off the wage bill and I'm not sure why I would deserve any credit for it.

You know I have the utmost respect for what NC did for us but lowering the wage bill is something that I don't really see as deserving that much praise.

And when I say we had rubbish players, I meant at Premier League, top end of Championship, we certainly should not have been struggling at the bottom of the Championship.

[BOB BIGGS]

I think we would have improved under NC if he had been given longer and more funds. Just thought I'd mention that to balance the opposite views. I don't know whether I'm right but neither do any of the haters. It's just convenient for them to sound as though they couldn't possibly be wrong.

For sure, he had shortcomings like all the others we've had since. He was sacked for not doing well enough in Sam's eyes. I'm not sure how much difference it makes as to whether we're 9/10th or 14th in the League. Sam said 14th after a dozen games or so wasn't good enough. If he was right, then what followed his decision isn't good enough either. I look where we are now compared to where were then and we're just a few places higher, despite the vast amounts of money wasted on average players. 

So, new start. New manager. No Sam. It all sounds good to me. If we manage top 6 next season, it will be some achievement. I hope GR gets the chance to put his mark on the Club.

 

[G STAR RAM]

34 minutes ago, EastHertsRam said:

Well constructed post that.

But to get away from the NC borefest for a moment, all the above mentioned contributions from Rush are very commendable and Mel would surely have acknowledged them and held him in high esteem for them so it begs the question just what the chuff has Rush done to merit his immediate removal from the club ?

If, after all the positives you mention in your post didn't earn him a "WTF Sam" ? or a "tell me what I've just been told/discovered is wrong Sam" may I put it to you he has undone all his good work in a stroke and to that end is indeed a snake in the grass.

I believe Mel is not stupid. He would not have removed Rush without concrete proof of wrongdoing. So, for me, anything positive he has done in the past is tarnished by whatever constituted his removal, it would not have been a trivial issue and would appear to have been very detrimental to the either the club or Mel personally and that is not good.

Yes can't help but agree with you.

I think people are perhaps overlooking this though because of Mel's tendency to fire who he wants when he wants!