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Reasons why we are where we are .


NottsRammy

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8 hours ago, cannable said:

I only think he’d have ever got us up if he built a side whose squad was far too good for the division - as his namesake did at Leicester.

Possibly. But the club are in a worse state than when he was sacked. 

There's been a bit of excitement since, play offs and so on but considering the debt and current position the club are in, personally I don't think it's been worth it. Maybe Nigel's steady approach would heve got us there eventually. 

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10 hours ago, Bearwood Ram said:

Sacking Nigel Clough. 

Jeezus, that footballing management giant. I’d have this in the top 5 things we have done.

We were awful against everyone bar the odd Forest and Leeds games.. People need to get past a name. It really was not that good.

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20 minutes ago, Angry Ram said:

Jeezus, that footballing management giant. I’d have this in the top 5 things we have done.

We were awful against everyone bar the odd Forest and Leeds games.. People need to get past a name. It really was not that good.

Same question was asked on Radio Derby last night. Would we as fans have put up with just treading water and being satisfied with achieving the magical 50 points year after year? 

Chances are we would have gone down anyway at some point because if you don't try to move forward, you just stagnate.

To see fans now saying it wasn't worth trying to change things for the better is shocking to me. Where's the ambition in that?

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One of the most interesting points PRIDE raises is whether or not we would have “got there in the end” under Clough.

Seems like the players felt we would, or at least that was my reading of the comments made. We were getting (slowly) better, or more technical at least. What could Nigel have done with a big pot of cash to spend? Hmm.

Truth is we’ll never know. I’d of loved to have seen it, though. 

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10 minutes ago, Nuwtfly said:

One of the most interesting points PRIDE raises is whether or not we would have “got there in the end” under Clough.

Seems like the players felt we would, or at least that was my reading of the comments made. We were getting (slowly) better, or more technical at least. What could Nigel have done with a big pot of cash to spend? Hmm.

Truth is we’ll never know. I’d of loved to have seen it, though. 

Buying more players like Connor Sammon?

He signed many good freebies and cheaper ones, but his biggest signing was terrible.

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1 hour ago, angieram said:

Same question was asked on Radio Derby last night. Would we as fans have put up with just treading water and being satisfied with achieving the magical 50 points year after year? 

Chances are we would have gone down anyway at some point because if you don't try to move forward, you just stagnate.

To see fans now saying it wasn't worth trying to change things for the better is shocking to me. Where's the ambition in that?

I did like Nigel as a manager, but those years under him weren't consistently entertaining. He built the best team we've had in the past 20 years, but without Mel all I'd have seen in my lifetime would have been us struggling to survive every year with a brief gap for Billy Davies and then us setting the records in the Prem. Steve McClaren got a lot more out of the players that Nigel had and whilst it didn't quite work out in the end it was still the best season I have seen as a Rams fan. If we're not even going to bother trying to get promoted what is the point of it all. Even if we were in the Prem I'd be expecting us to try and win the league - it would never happen, but I wouldn't want to just hover in the same place every season with no signs of progression. If we're in League one I expect us to aim for top spot - not just be content with merely surviving.

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12 minutes ago, Dimmu said:

Buying more players like Connor Sammon?

He signed many good freebies and cheaper ones, but his biggest signing was terrible.

Maybe. Or Maybe not. We'll never know.

You're right to point out that stinker. Before Sammon, his most expensive signing was Shaun Barker. Not a bad one right?

Then there's Bryson, Keogh, Buxton, Forsyth, Eustace, Chris Martin...not to mention academy products like Will Hughes and Jeff Hendrick. I think that's at least one category you can say Nigel Clough did a pretty good job in. 

As I said though, we'll never know. I'd just have liked to seen it happen. 

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34 minutes ago, Nuwtfly said:

One of the most interesting points PRIDE raises is whether or not we would have “got there in the end” under Clough.

Seems like the players felt we would, or at least that was my reading of the comments made. We were getting (slowly) better, or more technical at least. What could Nigel have done with a big pot of cash to spend? Hmm.

Truth is we’ll never know. I’d of loved to have seen it, though. 

I think this brings another reason as to why we are here though to me. The people like Rush and Morris have fed the idea that we are a big club and pushed for an ambition we weren’t overly prepared for. With Rush, the sacking of Clough and appointment of Mclaren fast tracked a slow and steady plan that the club and fan base were quite happy to follow.
 

Although that season was exceptional, by trying to push beyond our means we paid the price ultimately and arguably didn’t let players like Hughes reach what was their true value because development fell behind ambition.

What Clough got about Derby, in my opinion, is what the club is at its heart which is a community club that serves the county (and beyond). We aren’t an overly big club or sleeping giant and if we wanted to make the next step forward we would need a solid base of ambitious players who worked hard. With the core fans, aslong as we see improvement then i think we are largely happy. What Rush and Morris did, in very different ways, was to push the idea that we were something that we weren’t  

I’ll always remember a fans forum thing in Matlock I went to in the pre season before Clough was sacked and Rush straight asked the question whether us fans were happy with Clough as manager. The look on his face was of shock when a pub took of Derby fans told him that they were. A few months later Clough was gone.

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2 minutes ago, TuffLuff said:

I think this brings another reason as to why we are here though to me. The people like Rush and Morris have fed the idea that we are a big club and pushed for an ambition we weren’t overly prepared for. With Rush, the sacking of Clough and appointment of Mclaren fast tracked a slow and steady plan that the club and fan base were quite happy to follow.
 

Although that season was exceptional, by trying to push beyond our means we paid the price ultimately and arguably didn’t let players like Hughes reach what was their true value because development fell behind ambition.

What Clough got about Derby, in my opinion, is what the club is at its heart which is a community club that serves the county (and beyond). We aren’t an overly big club or sleeping giant and if we wanted to make the next step forward we would need a solid base of ambitious players who worked hard. With the core fans, aslong as we see improvement then i think we are largely happy. What Rush and Morris did, in very different ways, was to push the idea that we were something that we weren’t  

I’ll always remember a fans forum thing in Matlock I went to in the pre season before Clough was sacked and Rush straight asked the question whether us fans were happy with Clough as manager. The look on his face was of shock when a pub took of Derby fans told him that they were. A few months later Clough was gone.

Interesting take. You were around a different set of fans to me then. 

 

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51 minutes ago, Nuwtfly said:

One of the most interesting points PRIDE raises is whether or not we would have “got there in the end” under Clough.

Seems like the players felt we would, or at least that was my reading of the comments made. We were getting (slowly) better, or more technical at least. What could Nigel have done with a big pot of cash to spend? Hmm.

Truth is we’ll never know. I’d of loved to have seen it, though. 

You'd only really be able to suggest it could have happened if Clough "got there in the end" with another club. You could argue his achievement with Burton was impressive but, at the end of the day, all it did was got them to the same level we are at. He had never achieved what we expected of him and likely never will. 

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18 minutes ago, angieram said:

Interesting take. You were around a different set of fans to me then. 

 

I’m not talking about groups of fans having a bit of a grumble. Whilst attendances were down, the core base were going week in week out (I don’t think ST numbers were ever really down under Clough, it was the walk up numbers that suffered) and I don’t remember any calls for Clough to go like there was recently with Cocu. 
 

Shall I rephrase to say fans for the most part were willing to go along with Clough’s slow and steady plan?

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19 minutes ago, TuffLuff said:

  

I’ll always remember a fans forum thing in Matlock I went to in the pre season before Clough was sacked and Rush straight asked the question whether us fans were happy with Clough as manager. The look on his face was of shock when a pub took of Derby fans told him that they were. A few months later Clough was gone.

Very interesting. I remember finding out he’d been sacked on a bus with a mate of mine. I was absolutely devastated. So shocked. And yet I’d spent the whole of the journey beforehand complaining about him.

I’d like to imagine there’s a universe where Clough didn’t get sacked, but got backed, and we eventually went up. I’m not sure if it was ever going to happen, but it’s nice to dream.

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2 minutes ago, TuffLuff said:

I’m not talking about groups of fans having a bit of a grumble. Whilst attendances were down, the core base were going week in week out and I don’t remember any calls for Clough to go like there was recently with Cocu. 
 

Shall I rephrase to say fans for the most part were willing to go along with Clough’s slow and steady plan?

Yes, I'd agree with that, although I do think there is a good core support at Derby who will still be around whatever. Doesn't mean we are liking what we are seeing, though.

We can debate forever whether Clough would have done it or not but we can never prove it either way. I think there is only a very small minority actually wished we had stuck with him before the last eighteen months.

That number is now increasing with hindsight. I think a lot of people who are calling Mel out now were more than happy to get on the rollercoaster ride of the last few years.

If you're one of the few, well done for your consistency, but I think most are just reacting to where we are now.

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20 minutes ago, TuffLuff said:

What Rush and Morris did, in very different ways, was to push the idea that we were something that we weren’t

What Rush did was, at best, worthy of an out of court settlement. What Morris did was try to fund a push to the Premiership. To take the latter, Morris funded the transfers but you can't have it both ways. On one hand he's a fool for letting the manager buy Butterfield, on the other he's an idiot for going into the team dressing room.

Chairmen fund the journey, they need to ensure the plan is fiscally responsible but if the answer is Nick Blackman and Bradley Johnson that is not the Chairman's fault - it's the managers, the agents, the backroom staff who proposed the solution.

As for who we are, we are a professional football club so should strive to be the best that we can, no more no less. We have no right to be in any division and probably not a strong enough legacy in any division to claim to be a particular size club. Look at the clubs in all division and more than half could claim to have history in the top flight. We've missed the boat in terms of Sky, EPL and being established in this era - we have no claim at all to be a top flight EPL club but we certainly can claim to be a club that aspires to be there.

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