Who was the worserest owner(s) of Derby County

[Tyler Durden]

8 minutes ago, Mostyn6 said:

It wasnt the original title. 

What was out of curiosity ?

[Rev]

11 hours ago, ziggyram59 said:

Sorry hope you don't mind me putting this in but without a doubt Sam Longson and John(Jack) Kirkland, pushed Clough and Taylor out the door and will never forgive them for that. Could of won more league championships, european cup maybe but they decided to interfere especially Kirkland. The 3 amigo's and Maxwell were bad as well. 

You'll have to forgive me my youth, even though I'm not young, but you honestly think our worse ever owner is the one who oversaw the most successful period in the club's history?

[strawhillram]

1 hour ago, Tyler Durden said:

Can't someone change the title of this thread please every time I click on it and read the worsest owner it makes my skin crawl. 

Bad worse worst

[Mostyn6]

17 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

What was out of curiosity ?

I think it was “Who was worse owner (from this list)?”

[oldtimeram]

5 hours ago, StrawHillRam said:

I think he might have left it too late. Hope he can swim

Me too.  I don't remember teaching him as a kid at Reginald St baths

[ziggyram59]

On 16/01/2021 at 23:16, Rev said:

You'll have to forgive me my youth, even though I'm not young, but you honestly think our worse ever owner is the one who oversaw the most successful period in the club's history?

Yes because he got rid of our greatest manager who could have brought more success to the club instead he went to our rivals and achieved it there, 2 European cup wins, 4 League cups. What did we achieve 1 league championship? 

[GboroRam]

On 16/01/2021 at 22:10, Tyler Durden said:

Can't someone change the title of this thread please every time I click on it and read the worsest owner it makes my skin crawl. 

Happy to help.

[Spanish]

On 14/01/2021 at 11:16, Ambitious said:

If it isn’t sorted to a reasonable conclusion soon enough then Morris will go down as the worst Derby County owner of my lifetime. It sounds like he may well end up killing the club he grew up supporting, quite possibly the heaviest burden he will ever carry. 

League One is looking inevitable at this point, with potentially sales and a point deduction. How on earth did it get to this point? 

and no ground

[Asanovic70]

@CornwallRam

I think you're looking for specific reasons rather than the general malaise which goes beyond the Academy, though, in fairness to you, you did point out you are going against accepted opinion. As @LeedsCityRam pointed out, home grown players do possess a resale value, where was the re-sale value on Johnson, Butterfield & Anya, £15m+ of transfer fees plus wages. I think Frank Lampard's permanent signings have been disappointing, £5m for Waghorn (reportedly), few, if any, have made a telling contribution, even Marriott who I like but am prepared to see us move on if it means bringing in player(s) Rooney wants. Then there was the £1m loan fee for a player who didn't even belong to us (Wilson). Judging by Cardiff's current form, maybe we dodged another financial bullet we couldn't afford by not re-signing him. 

Interestingly, I think it was Billy Davies who exhibited the sort of rationale of asking for resources to be used for players rather than invested in the Academy. Under Nigel Clough, it took a couple of seasons for the Academy to start producing players like Hughes & Hendrick, none of the players upon his arrival stepped up to make the grade. It has been a resource which has operated in fits and starts since the mid noughties, generally it appears to produce more players when money, time & personnel are devoted to it as Mel has done in the last few years.

If you look at Swansea, their Academy has been the salvation of them at a difficult time. After relegation, they faced financial challenges & an uncertain future, but the Academy enabled them to play youngsters, some of whom have moved on (Rodon) . If we end up in League 1, it we have to adopt a similar approach to Forest who built a side out of shrewd lower league signings (cherry picking) alongside a spine of home-grown players from their renowned Academy. We may have to depend on it out of necessity rather than choice.

 

[CornwallRam]

19 minutes ago, Asanovic70 said:

@CornwallRam

I think you're looking for specific reasons rather than the general malaise which goes beyond the Academy, though, in fairness to you, you did point out you are going against accepted opinion. As @LeedsCityRam pointed out, home grown players do possess a resale value, where was the re-sale value on Johnson, Butterfield & Anya, £15m+ of transfer fees plus wages. I think Frank Lampard's permanent signings have been disappointing, £5m for Waghorn (reportedly), few, if any, have made a telling contribution, even Marriott who I like but am prepared to see us move on if it means bringing in player(s) Rooney wants. Then there was the £1m loan fee for a player who didn't even belong to us (Wilson). Judging by Cardiff's current form, maybe we dodged another financial bullet we couldn't afford by not re-signing him. 

Interestingly, I think it was Billy Davies who exhibited the sort of rationale of asking for resources to be used for players rather than invested in the Academy. Under Nigel Clough, it took a couple of seasons for the Academy to start producing players like Hughes & Hendrick, none of the players upon his arrival stepped up to make the grade. It has been a resource which has operated in fits and starts since the mid noughties, generally it appears to produce more players when money, time & personnel are devoted to it as Mel has done in the last few years.

If you look at Swansea, their Academy has been the salvation of them at a difficult time. After relegation, they faced financial challenges & an uncertain future, but the Academy enabled them to play youngsters, some of whom have moved on (Rodon) . If we end up in League 1, it we have to adopt a similar approach to Forest who built a side out of shrewd lower league signings (cherry picking) alongside a spine of home-grown players from their renowned Academy. We may have to depend on it out of necessity rather than choice.

 

But none of those arguments work when we are in relegation trouble and paying (possibly) £5m per season for the academy with a turnover of about £30m. All it does is takes resources away from the first team and makes the first team weaker as the finances dictate that academy products have to be forced through.

Under Clough the balance appeared to be correct - decent academy producing maybe one player per season to add to the squad. That's sensible. No pressure on the manager to play sub-standard players, no massive drain on resources, just a reasonable channel for developing young talent. It's also the way Forest do things, and Southampton did - and their systems have been far more effective at generating revenue than ours.

Swansea's academy was paid for from Premier League money - indeed, my argument switches if we ever got there. It would be silly not to have a top cat 1 academy with an income of £200m. 

[RoyMac5]

4 minutes ago, CornwallRam said:

But none of those arguments work when we are in relegation trouble and paying (possibly) £5m per season for the academy with a turnover of about £30m. All it does is takes resources away from the first team and makes the first team weaker as the finances dictate that academy products have to be forced through.

But isn't that because we adopted the model 'under duress'? We didn't have enough decent experienced players on reasonable wages. So the youth has been made to step up when not ready and to be relied on too much. Plus we're also struggling financially so have to consider offers for the better youth at silly prices.

It's the old 'well I wouldn't have started from there' cliche. We needed to be in a more stable situation to begin the model. The problem is not with the model but when it was adopted.

[CornwallRam]

1 minute ago, RoyMac5 said:

But isn't that because we adopted the model 'under duress'? We didn't have enough decent experienced players on reasonable wages. So the youth has been made to step up when not ready and to be relied on too much. Plus we're also struggling financially so have to consider offers for the better youth at silly prices.

It's the old 'well I wouldn't have started from there' cliche. We needed to be in a more stable situation to begin the model.

We didn't adopt the model under duress. It was a central plank of Mel's strategy. He believed that by investing in the academy he could turn it into a player factory and provide the first team with a supply of quality, cheap players and supplement the income of the club by selling a few on. It's also helpful to FFP to sell homegrown players as they have low book value and thus high profit for P&L accounts.

It's not a ridiculous idea, but my argument is that it is a subtly flawed one. Mel's big problem is that he has acted as if he believed that development was linear - players, managers, income streams etc. All he had to do was invest in the right places and everything would get gradually better and we'd eventually get promoted. The basis of my whole objection is that development in football is not linear. You can't 'build', you have to create in the short term. It's even more pronounced in this division because while you are patiently waiting for your investments to develop, your resources are draining away.

[cheron85]

On 12/01/2021 at 21:24, Mostyn6 said:

League of Gentlemen: rescued the club, but without actually putting money into the club. Guaranteed loans, got us promoted, didn’t invest, cashed in. 

This is the guys who reportedly robbed us right? One of them went to jail for what went on in their time at the club I think? Sold our only decent assets for pennies and pocketed the proceeds according to rumours?

(Think I've caveated enough there to preclude liable?) 

[CornwallRam]

Just now, cheron85 said:

This is the guys who reportedly robbed us right? One of them went to jail for what went on in their time at the club I think? Sold our only decent assets for pennies and pocketed the proceeds according to rumours?

(Think I've caveated enough there to preclude liable?) 

No that's the Three Amigos. The League of Gentlemen were fronted by Peter Gadsby, but  also featured one Melvyn Morris.

[RoyMac5]

51 minutes ago, CornwallRam said:

We didn't adopt the model under duress. It was a central plank of Mel's strategy.

Well we did because Mel didn't want to fund any more 'big money' signings. Horse before the cart. 

 

53 minutes ago, CornwallRam said:

It's not a ridiculous idea, but my argument is that it is a subtly flawed one. Mel's big problem is that he has acted as if he believed that development was linear - players, managers, income streams etc. All he had to do was invest in the right places and everything would get gradually better and we'd eventually get promoted. The basis of my whole objection is that development in football is not linear. You can't 'build', you have to create in the short term. It's even more pronounced in this division because while you are patiently waiting for your investments to develop, your resources are draining away.

This I agree with. ?

[cheron85]

11 minutes ago, cheron85 said:

This is the guys who reportedly robbed us right? One of them went to jail for what went on in their time at the club I think? Sold our only decent assets for pennies and pocketed the proceeds according to rumours?

(Think I've caveated enough there to preclude liable?) 

Gotcha - I barely even thought of them - In my head they were essentially just interim owners? Like Wassall at the end of the 15-16 season?

[Asanovic70]

53 minutes ago, CornwallRam said:

But none of those arguments work when we are in relegation trouble and paying (possibly) £5m per season for the academy with a turnover of about £30m. All it does is takes resources away from the first team and makes the first team weaker as the finances dictate that academy products have to be forced through.

Under Clough the balance appeared to be correct - decent academy producing maybe one player per season to add to the squad. That's sensible. No pressure on the manager to play sub-standard players, no massive drain on resources, just a reasonable channel for developing young talent. It's also the way Forest do things, and Southampton did - and their systems have been far more effective at generating revenue than ours.

Swansea's academy was paid for from Premier League money - indeed, my argument switches if we ever got there. It would be silly not to have a top cat 1 academy with an income of £200m. 

You contradict yourself slightly as Forest haven't been in the PL for getting on 20 years + so you don't necessarily require PL funding to run a successful Academy. Their Academy has continued to produce players as if  operating independently from the on-going chaos often surrounding their ownership (Al-Hasawi) @RoyMac5 I agree with his points, there was nothing wrong with the model, it was the timing. We've probably needed a blend of experience alongside youth, but cut-backs mean the club can no longer afford to keep these experienced players, and one has also been injured (Davies).

I think Clough would have preferred to fast-track even more youngsters, but there is a high natural wastage in football . He could only play what was available to him and deemed of sufficient quality to make the difficult transition from Academy to first team.

I think you're advocating the kind of short-termism that led to the 11pts, Billy's quick build, get a team out of the PL. Whilst we all enjoyed the ride,  did that benefit the club in any particularly way, apart from paying off long-standing debts? Did it lead to anything sustainable? Ditto, Frank Lampard's exciting season, leading to another Play-Off. Built on what exactly? In fairness to Cocu, he inherited a challenging situation with three key performers taken out of the team. We relied too much on young players from other clubs, not our own.

I understand the point you are making and you may be proven right over time,  that the club may have to downgrade its Academy status to Category 2  if the worst occurs and we find ourselves in L1 and cuts have to be made. However, I feel it is wrong to cite the Academy's status as a major reason for our current predicament. 

We created in the short-term under Mel - 'you have to create in the short term' - and I'd argue that is precisely why we are in our current situation as flagged up by @LeedsCityRam, each managerial appointment making their own signings leading to a bloated squad & dilution of the club's ethos built up during the frustrating Clough years. I cited the example of Anya earlier to you, he would have paid for the running of the Academy single-handedly for practically two seasons, at £5m a season

What we have lacked, probably ever since GSE - who stumbled upon an on-going solution in spite of themselves - is an over-arching strategy/plan, easier said than done. We have thrown more money on mercenaries & compensation to managers than has ever been spent on the Academy. 

Other variables come into play, too, the pandemic, the loss of matchday revenue, key to the club in terms of approximately £1m a game. Nobody could legislate for what has happened or plan for such a volatile situation.

[CornwallRam]

2 minutes ago, Asanovic70 said:

You contradict yourself slightly as Forest haven't been in the PL for getting on 20 years + so you don't necessarily require PL funding to run a successful Academy. Their Academy has continued to produce players as if  operating independently from the on-going chaos often surrounding their ownership (Al-Hasawi) @RoyMac5 I agree with his points, there was nothing wrong with the model, it was the timing. We've probably needed a blend of experience alongside youth, but cut-backs mean the club can no longer afford to keep these experienced players, and one has also been injured (Davies).

I think Clough would have preferred to fast-track even more youngsters, but there is a high natural wastage in football . He could only play what was available to him and deemed of sufficient quality to make the difficult transition from Academy to first team.

I think you're advocating the kind of short-termism that led to the 11pts, Billy's quick build, get a team out of the PL. Whilst we all enjoyed the ride,  did that benefit the club in any particularly way, apart from paying off long-standing debts? Did it lead to anything sustainable? Ditto, Frank Lampard's exciting season, leading to another Play-Off. Built on what exactly? In fairness to Cocu, he inherited a challenging situation with three key performers taken out of the team. We relied too much on young players from other clubs, not our own.

I understand the point you are making and you may be proven right over time,  that the club may have to downgrade its Academy status to Category 2  if the worst occurs and we find ourselves in L1 and cuts have to be made. However, I feel it is wrong to cite the Academy's status as a major reason for our current predicament. 

We created in the short-term under Mel - 'you have to create in the short term' - and I'd argue that is precisely why we are in our current situation as flagged up by @LeedsCityRam, each managerial appointment making their own signings leading to a bloated squad & dilution of the club's ethos built up during the frustrating Clough years. I cited the example of Anya earlier to you, he would have paid for the running of the Academy single-handedly for practically two seasons, at £5m a season

What we have lacked, probably ever since GSE - who stumbled upon an on-going solution in spite of themselves - is an over-arching strategy/plan, easier said than done. We have thrown more money on mercenaries & compensation to managers than has ever been spent on the Academy. 

Other variables come into play, too, the pandemic, the loss of matchday revenue, key to the club in terms of approximately £1m a game. Nobody could legislate for what has happened or plan for such a volatile situation.

You are missing the distinction between a sensibly sized academy and a the behemoth that Mel has created. The former - as in Forest, is sensible, the latter is unsustainable outside the Premier League. 

You have also repeated the fallacy that Mel has acted for short term gain. Some of his appointments have turned out to be short term, but none were intended that way. Every manager got a long contract. If you look at the interviews around their appointments, everyone was told (unless they were all lying) that instant promotion was not the aim; they were here for the long term to build on the existing foundations. Even Lampard was supposed to be here long term.

Mel has consistently tried to develop his notion of the Derby Way and developing young players. Just because it didn't turn out like that, doesn't change the fact that that was his intention.

I reckon that Mel has always acted with the club's best interests at heart. He had a plan which is based upon the marginal gains idea of business management. I believe that his problem is that it doesn't translate well into football in the Championship. The thing is though, it's just my opinion. Mel's system hasn't worked, but maybe with some slightly different luck - Reading 2015, Fulham away Play-off semi and Wembley vs Villa, we would be celebrating his tenure. It could all just be down to the way things panned out on the day.

Personally in Mel's, I'd have kept off-field costs to an absolute minimum and hired Warnock at the first opportunity. I'd have backed him to the limit of FFP. In my head we'd have been promoted in two season and I'd have a lot more of my cash left than Mel. Yet that will never be tested.

[Asanovic70]

 

You cannot rely simply on luck or hard-luck stories. We failed to score a penalty against Reading at home in 2015 which subsequently saw Darren Bent rewarded for failure by being given a year's extension (Sam Rush).  We were beaten comprehensively at Fulham and were second best against Villa. Sometimes, the luck goes with you as it did under Billy, in the penalty shoot-out in the SF.

Instead, we should have had a strategy that ensured promotion by avoiding the lottery of the play-offs, or building upon losing in the play-offs by ensuring that we went one better the season after. That could be accomplished by bringing in a proven manager, vis your suggestion, Warnock, or Chris Hughton for instance.

 Mel's big failure is that he enjoyed publicity, he must be the only chairman who regularly appeared on TalkSport. Now we don't hear anything from him at a time when most of us would like some reassurance. Even if he emerged to say that his course was run and we may have to default ownership to MSD, he'd be excused for at least having faced the music. He wanted Derby to go up with stardust & by playing free-flowing football, and as you suggest (Warnock), someone more pragmatic would have got the job done in a division which is a marathon & digging out results when necessary. The Derby Way? I'm not sure anyone really knows, it sounds empty & vacuous, even more now as we do a good impression of wanting to visit Gillingham on a Tuesday next season.

So, I think it is a lack of a strategy/plan, over a couple of seasons, that has ultimately cost us promotion to the PL. Building a platform, aiming for the play-offs, then going one better if necessary after losing, vis Middlesbrough (Karanka) & Brighton (Hughton).  On all the occasions we have lost in the play-offs, we have not gone to follow it up. For me, that suggests the Forest jibe about us being bottlers is about right & possessed a squad lacking in character. 

As for the short-term, I was pleased when Pearson was appointed though they were fans against it. He came in & tried to change things too quickly. The players revolted and we reverted back to 4-3-3. If anything, we've been too wedded to the same formation or brought in players who cannot adapt (Marriott). 

Your criticism of the Academy and the expense incurred is one opinion, I just think the issues affecting our current malaise go deeper. Both are valid, IMO, I saw an article online where Ipswich were debating the value of a Cat 1 Academy as opposed to spending money on the team.

Milne: Cost Could Force Clubs Out of Academy Category One - Ipswich Town News | TWTD.co.uk

(I think the savings between Category 1 & Category 2 are not as great as people imagine, perhaps a £1m)

The Ipswich MD cited Bolton. What do all three of us have in common? They were all or have been dependent on a single benefactor, & you could argue all three lived beyond their means: Bolton in the PL, paying lavish wages to overseas stars; Ipswich spent big under Roy Keane; and ourselves splashing money around, like £10m on Butterfield & Johnson. It shows perhaps that it is better to have a number of people forming a strategy/consensus/a prudent business plan, rather than an individual with his own particular vision of how to run things, which may prove in the long-term to be detrimental.