Melvyn Morris fan club

[Turnstile]

6 hours ago, RAM1966 said:

It probably comes as no surprise that I am no fan of Mel, I was initially, but, when I saw the players arriving for the fees they were and the salaries they were being paid, it immediately set alarms bells ringing with me.  That day was when we signed both Butterfield and Johnson in the final hours of the TW for a combined fee of around £10M.

Where has Mel failed:

Firstly he has wasted far too much money recruiting managers to then sack them, meaning he got the appointments wrong.  Each manager, wants to build there own team and as such it cost £10Ms each time we do this, as a complete rebuild from players to formations and style of play is required.  I was particularly unimpressed with the majority of his appointments, he should of gone for someone like Warnock which knows his way out of this division and proved it on numerous occasions.   

Clement was a poor choice a talented No2 but no experience in managing, let alone in the Championship and his football was negative and dire.  Pearson was an enigma and I think there was a bust up behind the scenes, well what else can you assume from the Derby Way comments?  McLaren was a great appointment but sadly it did not work out the second time, but, we played the best football under him since Jim Smiths era.  Rowett was a complete farce, dire boring negative football and thankfully we did manage to offload him to Stoke at a profit (Only for him to be sacked as I predicted to a Stoke fan I know).  Then there was the one season gamble with Lampard, who sold the talent to fund a 1 season loan strategy to get us up.  Firstly it was always going to be risky employing a rookie, secondly what if it failed we were going to be left with a depleted squad, which is exactly what happened when Frank selected the wrong team at Wembley.  Cocu another gamble, although the guys CV looked good, he could not gasp the pace of the English game and particularly in the Championship.  History is repeating itself with Rooney on the rookie front, to be fair though Wayne has become a quick wheeler and dealer under these tough embargo conditions we are under and I wish him well.    

Then there is the financial side of things, either he has appointed a poor CFO who has badly advised him on the finances, or Mel has ignored the sensible approach to keeping the books within the EFLs P&S limits, we have had to take the nuclear option to sell the ground to stay within the rules, it also appears we have been creative with our accounting policies.  I understand the last point is perfectly legal, yet the other 23 clubs in the league were using a differing method, now the EFL have revisited our methods and we are in this endless embargo and disciplinary process. 

There is also meddling Mel, the man who allegedly enters the dressing room at HT to administer to rift the players, cancelling training camps in the sun, flies drones around Moor Farm to allegedly spy on Nigel Pearson's training methods as was reported in a national newspaper.  This is not inspirational leadership, its overpowering and the fundamental reason why the teams performance dipped as the players did not take kindly to the interference.

The communications from the club has been nothing short of a disgrace, inviting a small selection of fans into a forum and making them sign NDAs was a grave error of judgement, the only thing to come out of it was a few sentences from Rams Trust and the more detailed version from Punjabi Rams that actually told us anything (Thanks Guys).  Rams trust assured us that all was well, yet a short time later we have another open letter to the board.  That's aged well then, it fills me with even less confidence than I had before!  

Which leads me to the ticket office debacle, its still closed, many older fans with no internet can't get tickets and are missing games.  Why on earth do we still have an unmanned ticket office that could be generating income for the club.  Maybe its because we are rolling in money and don't need it?

My view is that Mel has been far too hands on, not kept an eye on the balance sheet and gambled by spending far beyond the clubs means.  How the debts are parked; with Mel personally or against the club is immaterial, everything is going to have to go through the accounts and this is going to take years to put our house back in good order.   

However you dress it up, he's the man that appoints the people in the key positions to make the key decisions, he's made poor appointments, he's sanctioned the overspending at the club to the extent we no longer own the ground.  How anyone can defend his actions is beyond me, I suspect when the accounts are all filed and up to date, there are many more that are going to desert him.  I'm sorry but the buck stops at Mel's door and the whole club from top to bottom is nothing short of a shambles which smacks of sheer incompetence.  Can anyone think of a more embarrassing situation for a football club than we are in right now?

What talent did Lampard sell ?

[ColonelBlimp]

Can't  wait to read it if and when one is ever written.

Should be a best seller round these parts.

I wonder, what should a Mel Morris autobiograhy be called?

Cashflow Conundrums?

[DCFC27]

6 hours ago, RAM1966 said:

It probably comes as no surprise that I am no fan of Mel, I was initially, but, when I saw the players arriving for the fees they were and the salaries they were being paid, it immediately set alarms bells ringing with me.  That day was when we signed both Butterfield and Johnson in the final hours of the TW for a combined fee of around £10M.

Where has Mel failed:

Firstly he has wasted far too much money recruiting managers to then sack them, meaning he got the appointments wrong.  Each manager, wants to build there own team and as such it cost £10Ms each time we do this, as a complete rebuild from players to formations and style of play is required.  I was particularly unimpressed with the majority of his appointments, he should of gone for someone like Warnock which knows his way out of this division and proved it on numerous occasions.   

Clement was a poor choice a talented No2 but no experience in managing, let alone in the Championship and his football was negative and dire.  Pearson was an enigma and I think there was a bust up behind the scenes, well what else can you assume from the Derby Way comments?  McLaren was a great appointment but sadly it did not work out the second time, but, we played the best football under him since Jim Smiths era.  Rowett was a complete farce, dire boring negative football and thankfully we did manage to offload him to Stoke at a profit (Only for him to be sacked as I predicted to a Stoke fan I know).  Then there was the one season gamble with Lampard, who sold the talent to fund a 1 season loan strategy to get us up.  Firstly it was always going to be risky employing a rookie, secondly what if it failed we were going to be left with a depleted squad, which is exactly what happened when Frank selected the wrong team at Wembley.  Cocu another gamble, although the guys CV looked good, he could not gasp the pace of the English game and particularly in the Championship.  History is repeating itself with Rooney on the rookie front, to be fair though Wayne has become a quick wheeler and dealer under these tough embargo conditions we are under and I wish him well.    

Then there is the financial side of things, either he has appointed a poor CFO who has badly advised him on the finances, or Mel has ignored the sensible approach to keeping the books within the EFLs P&S limits, we have had to take the nuclear option to sell the ground to stay within the rules, it also appears we have been creative with our accounting policies.  I understand the last point is perfectly legal, yet the other 23 clubs in the league were using a differing method, now the EFL have revisited our methods and we are in this endless embargo and disciplinary process. 

There is also meddling Mel, the man who allegedly enters the dressing room at HT to administer to rift the players, cancelling training camps in the sun, flies drones around Moor Farm to allegedly spy on Nigel Pearson's training methods as was reported in a national newspaper.  This is not inspirational leadership, its overpowering and the fundamental reason why the teams performance dipped as the players did not take kindly to the interference.

The communications from the club has been nothing short of a disgrace, inviting a small selection of fans into a forum and making them sign NDAs was a grave error of judgement, the only thing to come out of it was a few sentences from Rams Trust and the more detailed version from Punjabi Rams that actually told us anything (Thanks Guys).  Rams trust assured us that all was well, yet a short time later we have another open letter to the board.  That's aged well then, it fills me with even less confidence than I had before!  

Which leads me to the ticket office debacle, its still closed, many older fans with no internet can't get tickets and are missing games.  Why on earth do we still have an unmanned ticket office that could be generating income for the club.  Maybe its because we are rolling in money and don't need it?

My view is that Mel has been far too hands on, not kept an eye on the balance sheet and gambled by spending far beyond the clubs means.  How the debts are parked; with Mel personally or against the club is immaterial, everything is going to have to go through the accounts and this is going to take years to put our house back in good order.   

However you dress it up, he's the man that appoints the people in the key positions to make the key decisions, he's made poor appointments, he's sanctioned the overspending at the club to the extent we no longer own the ground.  How anyone can defend his actions is beyond me, I suspect when the accounts are all filed and up to date, there are many more that are going to desert him.  I'm sorry but the buck stops at Mel's door and the whole club from top to bottom is nothing short of a shambles which smacks of sheer incompetence.  Can anyone think of a more embarrassing situation for a football club than we are in right now?

I actually have no problem with the managers he brought in sort from the fact none of them continued a style of play. For example, no one minded Rowett when we were 2nd in the league at Christmas. If we had then signed Warnock or Dyche etc we would have been able to move on from a style of play without ripping the team out. 
 

If we had gone from Mac to Cocu or Thomas Frank. We wouldn’t have been signing Butterfield Johnson Anya Blackman etc. We would have just signed players that complimented what we had. 
 

Unfortunately, every manager we have brought in wanted to rip the squad out and we ended up with Deadwood players that in all honesty we probably ruined their careers as well. 
 

I do think he should have constantly had scouts looking for the next manager who could have worked with the players we had rather than just reacting to the scenarios. 

[duncanjwitham]

6 hours ago, RAM1966 said:

Where has Mel failed:

Firstly he has wasted far too much money recruiting managers to then sack them, meaning he got the appointments wrong.  Each manager, wants to build there own team and as such it cost £10Ms each time we do this, as a complete rebuild from players to formations and style of play is required.  I was particularly unimpressed with the majority of his appointments, he should of gone for someone like Warnock which knows his way out of this division and proved it on numerous occasions.   

Clement was a poor choice a talented No2 but no experience in managing, let alone in the Championship and his football was negative and dire. 

I'll skip over the horrendous contradiction I've highlighted there...

The big issue wasn't just the fact we kept sacking managers and kept letting them rebuild the squad, it's the fact we kept appointing managers with a radically different style to the previous one.  If we'd gone the equivalent of like McLaren->Lampard->Cocu we'd have been in much better shape. They all play vaguely similar styles of football, with similar players in similar systems.  They're not identical obviously, but there's more similarity that not.  Instead we basically alternated between managers who wanted to play possession and managers who wanted to be very direct.

Looking from the outside, the whole thing just screamed reactionary thinking, with no clear sign of having an actual plan.  Players wilted second half of the season, get a manager in to kick up the backside. Bryson got injured, sign the most expensive midfielder we can find.  We need more goals, sign the top scorer in the league, even though he plays in a different position in a different system and hasn't scored for 3 months.  Our promising young left back isn't quite ready for the first team yet, so spend £3m+, prem wages and a long contract on Malone.  Just endless random decisions that don't tie up with any other decision being made at the club.

And the really frustrating thing is, Mel described the right plan almost exactly when he took over (the Derby Way stuff). He either never had the balls to follow through on it (being willing to say no to managers etc), or the knowledge to know why it wasn't working. 

[Ram-Alf]

22 minutes ago, ShoreRam said:

Sometimes, less is more.....

Well that's rubbish.

MM net worth circa £500 million

Unlucky Alf net worth circa £5k in cash 

 

[RAM1966]

1 hour ago, G STAR RAM said:

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

On the whole there isn't much to disagree with but there are a few things that I'd like to pick up on.

The alarm bells started ringing for you when you saw players arriving in huge salaries...where did you find out the salaries they were on? 

The drones spying on Pearson story was laughable, and if you honestly believe that, I feel for you.

My favourite in all of this though is that you think the football played under Clement and Rowett was dire, only to go on and say we should have appointed Warnock ???

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I think a fair few could see we were in trouble well before the pandemic (which is being rolled out as a convenient excuse by some),  don't forget we sold the ground and it was included in 2018 accounts.

Maybe alarm bells is a little strong that far back, but I certainly had concerns that we could splash £10M in transfer fees, add the salaries, that pretty much could take you over for the season even if we were running at a even at the time, which I do not think we were.

The drones, I do not necessarily believe, but, it would not surprise me if it had happened in the crazy world of Mel Morris....

Whether you like Warnock or not, his players all work hard, look at some of the lacklustre performances we've had under certain managers.  I agree his style of play and time wasting tactics are not great including player rolling around the floor and him bullying referees to get player sent of is not attractive.  I have no doubts though with the money thrown at the differing managers, that Warnock would have achieved the aim with the same resources at his disposal.  

[duncanjwitham]

1 minute ago, RAM1966 said:

The drones, I do not necessarily believe, but, it would not surprise me if it had happened in the crazy world of Mel Morris....

I've always thought the drone thing was probably just a storm-in-a-teacup type of thing.  Given what we spent developing the training ground, I reckon there's a decent chance we had cameras installed so the coaches could review training afterwards if they wanted.  And maybe that includes drones - there's an argument that overhead views are the best way to review player positioning in training games etc.  And maybe Morris watched the footage from time-to-time - it's his money being spent, he's got a right to see how it's being spent, or maybe he was just interested in watching as a football fan (I reckon there's a few on here that have been to watch training before). Is there anything wrong with any of that, not really IMO.

[RAM1966]

31 minutes ago, Turnstile said:

What talent did Lampard sell ?

Here is a list of Lampards transfer business

Ins

Mason Mount (season-long loan, Chelsea)

Harry Wilson (season-long loan, Liverpool)

Florian Jozefzoon (undisclosed, Brentford) - Flop waste of money

Jack Marriott (undisclosed, Peterborough United) - Lazy bad attitude turned out ot be a waste of money as Frank didn;t have the experience to motivate him.

George Evans (undisclosed, Reading)

Fikayo Tomori (season-long loan, Chelsea)

Martyn Waghorn (undisclosed, Ipswich Town) - Massively Over priced

Scott Malone (undisclosed, Huddersfield Town) - Poor

Duane Holmes (undisclosed, Scunthorpe United)

OUTS

Andreas Weimann (undisclosed, Bristol City) 

Matej Vydra (undisclosed, Burnley) - Sold to fund Marriott and the Wilson, Mount and Tomori

Charles Vernam (undisclosed, Grimsby Town)

Offrande Zanzala (undisclosed, Accrington Stanley)

Jamie Hanson (undisclosed, Oxford United)

Nick Blackman (season-long loan, Sporting Gijon)

Jonathan Mitchell (loan, Oxford United)

Matt Yates (loan, Gloucester City)

Kellan Gordon (loan, Lincoln City)

Luke Thomas (loan, Coventry City)

Max Lowe (loan, Aberdeen)

Alex Babos (loan, Real Union)

Chris Martin (season-long loan, Hull City) - Should of kept him

Timi Elsnik (season-long loan, Mansfield Town)

Callum Guy (loan, Blackpool - to become permanent in January)

Lewis Walker (released)

Cameron Jerome (undisclosed, Goztepe)

[RAM1966]

21 minutes ago, duncanjwitham said:

I'll skip over the horrendous contradiction I've highlighted there...

The big issue wasn't just the fact we kept sacking managers and kept letting them rebuild the squad, it's the fact we kept appointing managers with a radically different style to the previous one.  If we'd gone the equivalent of like McLaren->Lampard->Cocu we'd have been in much better shape. They all play vaguely similar styles of football, with similar players in similar systems.  They're not identical obviously, but there's more similarity that not.  Instead we basically alternated between managers who wanted to play possession and managers who wanted to be very direct.

Looking from the outside, the whole thing just screamed reactionary thinking, with no clear sign of having an actual plan.  Players wilted second half of the season, get a manager in to kick up the backside. Bryson got injured, sign the most expensive midfielder we can find.  We need more goals, sign the top scorer in the league, even though he plays in a different position in a different system and hasn't scored for 3 months.  Our promising young left back isn't quite ready for the first team yet, so spend £3m+, prem wages and a long contract on Malone.  Just endless random decisions that don't tie up with any other decision being made at the club.

And the really frustrating thing is, Mel described the right plan almost exactly when he took over (the Derby Way stuff). He either never had the balls to follow through on it (being willing to say no to managers etc), or the knowledge to know why it wasn't working. 

That is bang on the nail, I think this may demonstrate who has been picking the signings?  I'm asking this because what you pointed out, has happened under several managers not just one or 2.  This leads me into thinking that the players incoming may not have been decided by the manager. 

I suspect that's why Stevie Mac is back to perhaps advise Mel in this department, as Rooney 'claims' he has nothing to do with training, tactics or picking the team.

[Ram-Alf]

21 minutes ago, RAM1966 said:

 I have no doubts though with the money thrown at the differing managers, that Warnock would have achieved the aim with the same resources at his disposal.  

This is my Auntie Christal Ball, She was sacked by Mel Morris for not predicting what you knew.

[i-Ram]

1 hour ago, ColonelBlimp said:

Can't  wait to read it if and when one is ever written.

Should be a best seller round these parts.

I wonder, what should a Mel Morris autobiograhy be called?

Cashflow Conundrums?

Accrual World

[duncanjwitham]

14 minutes ago, RAM1966 said:

That is bang on the nail, I think this may demonstrate who has been picking the signings?  I'm asking this because what you pointed out, has happened under several managers not just one or 2.  This leads me into thinking that the players incoming may not have been decided by the manager. 

I suspect that's why Stevie Mac is back to perhaps advise Mel in this department, as Rooney 'claims' he has nothing to do with training, tactics or picking the team.

I don't think they necessarily need to be "decided by the manager". Obviously, the manager should have the final call on whether to sign them or not, but I don't think they always have to be involved from the start.  If Morris was dead-set on making this Derby-Way stuff work, it shouldn't really matter if the manager is involved anyway - everyone should be pulling in the same direction.  We should have a style of play in mind and be appointing managers that play that way, signing players that play that way, and developing academy players to fit too.

I genuinely have no idea who was in charge of transfers in those early Morris days, and I'm not sure it was one single person.  We seem to know Blackman was a Clement request.  We know Weimann and a few others were lined up (but not confirmed, obviously) before Clement was given the job.  There's various suggestions/allegations about Sam Rush's approach to transfers.  A few of the signings honestly feel like Morris either wanting to get the boys back together(Ince, Shackell, Wisdom), or basically have a new train set to play with (Johnson).  There was definitely a too-many-cooks problem somewhere there.

I have no idea what McClaren's job actually entails, but I think someone like him in charge of making sure the Derby-Way happens is absolutely what we need.  Someone that actually understands football, understands youth-development and is willing to make hard decisions ("we are *not* signing Malone when we have Buchanan and Lowe in line, you can have a loan for a year if we need it" etc).

[Stive Pesley]

2 hours ago, Carnero said:

Yes but he's still made donations of £12.5m at a net cost to him of £10m. He's not "saved" anything.

Unless you count all the other taxable income he's avoided paying tax on as a result of his donation

https://www.buzzacott.co.uk/news/gift-aid-how-giving-to-charity-can-reduce-your-tax-bill

Lots of things about this setup make me raise an eyebrow, but I don't suppose he's much different to any other incredibly wealthy person who can afford to pay accountants to maximise their assets and reduce their tax bill

You only have to look at the 58 directorships listed against him on Companies House and the labrynthine manner in which they interconnect (incidentally 2 of these are subsidiary undertakings of the MStart charity - which seems to be some way of lowering your corporation tax bill) - it's really no wonder the club's finances have ended up in the state they are

 

 

 

 

 

[Carnero]

16 minutes ago, Stive Pesley said:

Unless you count all the other taxable income he's avoided paying tax on as a result of his donation

https://www.buzzacott.co.uk/news/gift-aid-how-giving-to-charity-can-reduce-your-tax-bill

Lots of things about this setup make me raise an eyebrow, but I don't suppose he's much different to any other incredibly wealthy person who can afford to pay accountants to maximise their assets and reduce their tax bill

You only have to look at the 58 directorships listed against him on Companies House and the labrynthine manner in which they interconnect (incidentally 2 of these are subsidiary undertakings of the MStart charity - which seems to be some way of lowering your corporation tax bill) - it's really no wonder the club's finances have ended up in the state they are

 

 

 

 

 

I repeat, he hasn't saved anything, he may have reduced his tax burden by donating to charity but the net position is that he's given money away, not received money.

Unless you think the charity then distributes money back into Mel's pocket of course?

You're point is either disingenuous or completely lacking in understanding.

End of conversation.

[May Contain Nuts]

All aboard!

[ossieram]

49 minutes ago, Carnero said:

I repeat, he hasn't saved anything, he may have reduced his tax burden by donating to charity but the net position is that he's given money away, not received money.

Unless you think the charity then distributes money back into Mel's pocket of course?

You're point is either disingenuous or completely lacking in understanding.

End of conversation.

Totally agree. By saving on tax, he can afford to put more into the charity pot.

He could have put £5 million into the pot and gave the taxman more, but he didn't. 

[FlyBritishMidland]

Good posts @duncanjwitham.  The problems we have now stem from the signings made when Clement was appointed and Mel took sole control.  We gambled on going up and it didn’t pay off.  It was a here and now approach rather than a strategic plan.  And moving between managers and style of play at a rate of knots.

From what we know of the meeting a few weeks back is that one of the things Mel said is that he couldn’t understand why managers wanted to sign players rather than give chances to our own talent.  When Johnson signed I seem to remember in the January time (?) Mel saying it was too good an opportunity to miss.  Three signings summed up the change in attitude - Shackell, Butterfield and Johnson.  Previously we’d never have signed a player for >£3M let alone a 32 year old centre half who’ll you’ll never get your money back on.  And when Hughes and Bryson were injured, previously we’d have dipped in the loan market (e.g. replacing Thorne with Mascarell).

The only manager who really aligned with Mel’s view of bringing your own through was Cocu.  He even said he’d rather loan a player for a year to let a player develop rather than buy someone, give them, a 3 or 4 year contract and end up losing the academy player because they don’t get a chance.

We can blame the EFL, Gibson or whoever for our current plight but ultimately that’s pointing the finger at the symptom.  The cause started a few years ago because we gambled and lost.

[duncanjwitham]

3 minutes ago, FlyBritishMidland said:

Three signings summed up the change in attitude - Shackell, Butterfield and Johnson.  

Those 3 are also the ones for me that really epitomise everything that went wrong.  I remember a Norwich fan coming on here as we signed Johnson, who basically said he's divisive - half your fans will love him for his effort etc, but the others will get wound up by his lack of technical ability, and how often he gives the ball away.  That was an immediate red flag for me, because we had a team that had spent the last few seasons playing pass-and-move football through midfield, and you just can't do that if your main midfielder can't pass the ball consistently.  If a random fan from Norwich could spot the problem, why couldn't we?

Exactly the same with Shackell. I'm pretty sure Clough bombed him out because he wasn't good enough on the ball for a team that wanted to play possession football, yet we go straight back and get him.  And we never really understood what Butterfield was good or bad at. We used him in the same way 'Boro used him (where he struggled), not in the way he was used at Huddersfield (where he was very good).  He played much further forward for Huddersfield and had mobile guys running off him, we sat him in front of the back 4, with a massive gap to the forwards and just hoped something would happen.

At no stage in that early rush of signings did we ever seem to stop and think about what players where good and bad at, whether they could do what we needed from their position, and whether they were going to replicate what they had done well at previous clubs when they got here.  

[cheron85]

2 hours ago, Carnero said:

I repeat, he hasn't saved anything, he may have reduced his tax burden by donating to charity but the net position is that he's given money away, not received money.

So many people don't seem to understand how tax write off on charity donations work it's depressing

(appreciate you know this but feel the need to clear it up) Charity tax write offs make it seem better to donate cos you can give money to a cause you like and look like a great person and then the government give you money back to the equivalence of the tax you would have paid earning that donation (as far as I'm aware) - Meaning that regardless of the tax relief you still end up with LESS money in your account than you would have done if you gave no money to charity

I'm not sure why people seem to think that charity tax write offs mean you somehow end up with more money - The incentive isn't financial for the person who makes them, it's perceptual 

[CBRammette]

2 hours ago, Carnero said:

I repeat, he hasn't saved anything, he may have reduced his tax burden by donating to charity but the net position is that he's given money away, not received money.

Unless you think the charity then distributes money back into Mel's pocket of course?

You're point is either disingenuous or completely lacking in understanding.

End of conversation.

Exactly. Have worked with many high net worth individuals. Those just wanting to reduce tax bill choose to do so by many means other than donating to charity, especially such large sums.  Only those that actually want to donate do so. Having seen/prepared the tax returns of many HNWIs you would (or perhaps wouldnt!) be surprised at how few do give significant amounts to charity. For many its the sort of amounts we may give. So Mel's charitable giving is just that and he should be applauded for it