El DerbyCo

[BramcoteRam84]

24 minutes ago, Kingpin said:

Let’s not try to re write history though. The bulk of GSE’s time was pretty dire. 
You can’t really cheer on a balance sheet. 

And that’s the problem! Right here!! You slag off Mel because of the position we are in now yet why are we here?! Because he tried to compete against teams with parachute payments. Went about it the wrong way but he tried. Wednesday did exactly the same look where they are. Reading will be the next one, if they don’t get up next season I would then say the red dogs would be next. 
 

Run the club sustainability- no ambition sack the board. Spend money trying to get promotion against teams with more resources - sack the board.

We all need a reset of expectations because ultimately we want a football club to support at the end of the day that we feel connected to, whatever division we are in.

[Steve How Hard?]

21 hours ago, DazaDunn said:

They didn’t pass up. They approached us under Rowett but GR didn’t want it.

 

20 hours ago, desirelines said:

Is that true? Wow! 

I fink the reality is that he didn't want them in the building. 

[ariotofmyown]

3 minutes ago, BramcoteRam84 said:

And that’s the problem! Right here!! You slag off Mel because of the position we are in now yet why are we here?! Because he tried to compete against teams with parachute payments. Went about it the wrong way but he tried. Wednesday did exactly the same look where they are. Reading will be the next one, if they don’t get up next season I would then say the red dogs would be next. 
 

Run the club sustainability- no ambition sack the board. Spend money trying to get promotion against teams with more resources - sack the board.

We all need a reset of expectations because ultimately we want a football club to support at the end of the day that we feel connected to, whatever division we are in.

And the only metric used to judge the approach is do we go up. Zamora meant the GSE approach failed. A Lampard at Wembley, that home playoff to Hull, rubbish performance at Fulham, the final day throwaway before Mac went....they all meant the other way was a failure.

[BramcoteRam84]

34 minutes ago, ariotofmyown said:

And the only metric used to judge the approach is do we go up. Zamora meant the GSE approach failed. A Lampard at Wembley, that home playoff to Hull, rubbish performance at Fulham, the final day throwaway before Mac went....they all meant the other way was a failure.

And in both those finals we had no right to win because of what the other teams had at their disposal and the money they spent to get there. Even the Villa game whatever money we had spent in the years leading up to the final, it pales into insignificance with what Villa threw at it. 
 

This season given Bournemouth’s form right  now there is a strong possibility the teams that came down will all go up. Next season there is a very good chance it will be the same and so on. The premier league will become a closed shop due to the disparity between the finances unless clubs are prepared to face ruin or break FFP just to compete!

[Kingpin]

1 hour ago, BramcoteRam84 said:

And that’s the problem! Right here!! You slag off Mel because of the position we are in now yet why are we here?!

No. There has to be a balance. It’s the people claiming that GSE were almost godly that I’m getting at. It was never that good. A good base to work from yes but they weren’t messiahs. 

[BramcoteRam84]

10 minutes ago, Kingpin said:

No. There has to be a balance. It’s the people claiming that GSE were almost godly that I’m getting at. It was never that good. A good base to work from yes but they weren’t messiahs. 

No one is saying that. But they ran the club within our means which meant mediocrity until we could build a team. But that led to a few dire seasons. Expectation resets are needed because it’s becoming more difficult to compete every year. 

[IlsonDerby]

If someone could work out the budget and have us running at cost (probably impossible) I’d put in £4k as part of a fan led buyout, I just wouldn’t be able to reasonably keep paying £2k per annum to make up our short falls. 
 

If the articles are believed then there is a £5m fee plus an obligation to take on the debt (£30m to Dell?) so that’d be less than 10k fans paying the 4k or 20k fans paying less than £20k. So the initial proposal of £4K x 20000 would give cash reserves of £40m. 
 

ahh a pipe dream. 

[IlsonDerby]

4 minutes ago, BramcoteRam84 said:

No one is saying that. But they ran the club within our means which meant mediocrity until we could build a team. But that led to a few dire seasons. Expectation resets are needed because it’s becoming more difficult to compete every year. 

Weren’t we still losing £6m per year under the North American’s??? 

[Kingpin]

16 minutes ago, BramcoteRam84 said:

But they ran the club within our means

This shouldn’t be too much to ask of any owner. A bare minimum requirement. 

[ilkleyram]

Just over 30 years ago an event occurred that I think all of you would consider to be of greater import than the current struggles of our beloved football club.  In July 1988 the captain of USS Vincennes panicked and let loose 2 surface to air missiles. He brought down an Iranian passenger plane.  290 souls were killed including babes in arms and it is believed, with some justification, that some were conscious as they fell 10,000 feet into the Gulf. Imagine.

Robert Fisk was a proper journalist working for a proper newspaper, The London Times.  He didn’t buy the American versions of events (they changed as evidence changed) and he investigated the story as a good journalist does, using his many contacts in the area.  He wrote a story that destroyed many of the American lies. When it was published all the points contradicting the American versions of events were missing, taken out by Fisk’s editor. What was left was largely anodyne drivel. Fisk left for the Independent. Their gain.

Our match today is, for various reasons, a big story, played in a febrile off field atmosphere and always was going to be - two big clubs with big traditions fallen on hard times; our manager; a takeover; the financial consequences; and the football ones too.  And yet many appear to be surprised by the drivel that is being written about us; and, worse, appear to be believing it; and, worse still, appear to be repeating it, giving it a life of its own.  There are negative comments about the tabloids and the Daily Mail and yet, apparently we’re more than prepared to take as gospel what Craig Hope and others are feeding us.

What do we actually know about the takeover and Erik Alonso’s finances?   Diddly squat is what.  We know Mel has agreed a deal and with whom; we know that’s with the EFL for the owner’s test. That is pretty much it.  And that is all anyone actually knows apart from the 3 parties involved (plus their advisors).  

All the rest is guesswork and rumour, pure and simple. But there are plenty who might want to disrupt us in this week of all weeks.  Mr Chansiri for one.  Might he be Craig Hope’s source? Not beyond the bounds of possibility. 

If a paper like The Times can distort the truth about the death of 290 people why do we accept the word of hacks whose sole aims are to get clicks on an article, names on the stories and followers on twitter?  That’s now a job apparently. We don’t have to help them.

There are times too when not only am I glad that I have no social media presence but I’m also happy not to be a moderator of this board; when I feel so out of sync with my fellow fans that I question my sanity.  This is one of them.  Imagine having to read all the codswallop that’s being spouted in the name of ‘it’s my opinion therefore I’m entitled to express it’. There are very few, I suspect, that would say much of what they have written on these pages to the faces of the players, the manager, coaching staff, recruitment team or our current owner.  There are more than a few contributors to these boards who allegedly espouse treating people with respect, who say they believe that mental health is important (and we have at least two players who have publicly described their own mental health challenges) but who have joined in the general pile on with apparent alacrity. Apparently it’s even worse elsewhere. An opinion is not necessarily correct just because you’re willing to die for it (Oscar Wilde). ‘Chancer’ is the latest adjective being liberally bandied around about a bloke none of us have met and none of us know.  What if he isn’t? Why can’t we give him a chance, if he is, eventually, to take us over? 

We have no say in who runs the club we support.  It is not in ‘our’ gift to choose our next owner whether we like it or not. Never has been. Whether that’s right or wrong is a legitimate point of discussion.  In the meantime we have a team to support and a match to win and a future that will take care of itself, win, lose or draw. And I hope it’s the first of those.

[Arsene Titman]

16 hours ago, RoyMac5 said:

 

 

On 04/05/2021 at 11:01, RoyMac5 said:

Would these stats make you feel better?

6 October 2020 to Present: Played 43 Won: 13 Drawn: 16 Lost: 14 Win percentage: 30.2%

Chris Hughton at F*rest.

 

16 hours ago, RoyMac5 said:

 

On one of the photos on the Twitter thread, is that Mel Morris with Southall? The bloke with the mobile phone looks dodgy as well.

[RoyMac5]

1 hour ago, Kingpin said:

No. There has to be a balance. It’s the people claiming that GSE were almost godly that I’m getting at. It was never that good. A good base to work from yes but they weren’t messiahs. 

Yes. They left us in a position where we were still 'affordable' to another owner. An owner that even paid over the odds for us! Who do we have lining up to buy us out of our financial misery now?! 

[RadioactiveWaste]

I miss the competance of GSE more than the austerity football.

But I think most of us would appreciate some quiet professional ownership.

[FlyBritishMidland]

1 hour ago, BramcoteRam84 said:

No one is saying that. But they ran the club within our means which meant mediocrity until we could build a team. But that led to a few dire seasons. Expectation resets are needed because it’s becoming more difficult to compete every year. 

Totally agree.  I’d settle for a few mediocre seasons if you can see there’s a plan.  We were ran properly, spent wisely on players, sold wisely and developed players.  By the time they left we’d had a Wembley season, come close again and had a team on the pitch worth far more than we paid.  They definitely left us in far better shape than they found us an not many owners of any club can say that.

[duncanjwitham]

League positions over the last 2 decades. Red line is GSE. Blue line is Mel Morris.

Edited May 8, 2021 by duncanjwitham

[DCFC1388]

[Coneheadjohn]

Can I bring my own pork pie when the takeover goes through?

[richinspain]

29 minutes ago, Coneheadjohn said:

Can I bring my own pork pie when the takeover goes through?

Only if it's from Birds!

[Spanish]

1 minute ago, richinspain said:

Only if it's from Birds!

are we off to Holland today or can we stay in Spain.  Hate those return journeys with everybody taking the wee

[richinspain]

2 minutes ago, Spanish said:

are we off to Holland today or can we stay in Spain.  Hate those return journeys with everybody taking the wee

About to check "the weather" here in Spain. If it's "raining" I'll be popping over to Holland to sit in a pub there ?. Have you checked what it's like yet?