Mel Morris fan club

[Rampage]

4 minutes ago, oomarkwright said:

Jeff Bridges. 

I knew that. He calls himself 'Dude' in the Big Lebowski. Sort of a joke. Great film.

[Rampage]

Who will be the first to write a book on this. Not me. Anyone want to borrow a pen.

[PistoldPete]

1 hour ago, i-Ram said:

They were funded by sales - Hendrick from memory financed other purchases - but the sales did give some opportunity for Mel to consider some rebalancing of the finances. He chose not to, and gave the wheel another spin or three. Didn’t get a great return on investment from the round of spend post Rush. 
I am not sure who would have got the credit if we had won a playoff final but I can think of one bloke who would have been all over TV, Radio, social media and printed press if it had of happened.

I'm not disagreeing with you, it was another roll of the dice. Lampard's permanent signings were poo. Maybe Morris should have told Lampard to stick with the loan signings and get someone else to do recruitment. Easy to say now.  

But it really is no good blaming Morris for everything. We have been incredibly unlucky year after year. Losing four play off ties by a single goal each time. What if QPR hadn't cheated in 2014, injuries wrecked our run in 2015, Thorne breaking his leg just before play offs in 2016, Vydra not fit for the play offs in 2018 , no fully fit strikers for the 2019 play off final except for Mason Bennett.    

If the dice had rolled fairly for us then nobody would have been blaming Morris for anything.

 

 

 

Edited October 19, 2021 by PistoldPete

[Van der MoodHoover]

5 hours ago, i-Ram said:

 Tom Lawrence, Andre Wisdom, Tom Huddlestone, Cameron Jerome, Curtis Davies, Martyn Waghorn, Jack Marriott, Florian Jozefzoon, Duane Holmes, Scott Malone, George Evans, Krystal’s Bielik and Kamil Jozwiak. Oh and a significant chunk on loan signings too. Maybe Rush hypnotised Morris. That might explain it.

Krystals what? ?

[kevinhectoring]

7 hours ago, Red Ram said:

There was only one way that story was ever going to end

Yeah, promotion or trouble 

[Red Ram]

4 hours ago, PistoldPete said:

I'm not disagreeing with you, it was another roll of the dice. Lampard's permanent signings were poo. Maybe Morris should have told Lampard to stick with the loan signings and get someone else to do recruitment. Easy to say now.  

But it really is no good blaming Morris for everything. We have been incredibly unlucky year after year. Losing four play off ties by a single goal each time. What if QPR hadn't cheated in 2014, injuries wrecked our run in 2015, Thorne breaking his leg just before play offs in 2016, Vydra not fit for the play offs in 2018 , no fully fit strikers for the 2019 play off final except for Mason Bennett.    

If the dice had rolled fairly for us then nobody would have been blaming Morris for anything.

 

 

 

Yes agree a lot of that was unfortunate but all teams have injuries. What I really don't get is why you apparently (in one of your earlier posts) think Kieran Maguire is somehow partly blame though? Surely that's just shooting the messenger?

[PistoldPete]

7 hours ago, Red Ram said:

Yes agree a lot of that was unfortunate but all teams have injuries. What I really don't get is why you apparently (in one of your earlier posts) think Kieran Maguire is somehow partly blame though? Surely that's just shooting the messenger?

He Is someone who snitched on our amortisation policy.. which EFL turned into a big issue… far bigger than it actually is. If they didn’t like the amortisation policy they should have changed the rules , which I think they now intend to , not pursue Derby years after the event.
 

and continually makes out Mel Morris is some sort of rogue and Derby the biggest cheats of all time. 
 

that may be his message, but it’s an entirely false one that together with EFL’s dodgy briefing of the media just whips up a huge poo storm against Derby … a baying lynch mob that ultimately could bring their pitchforks and have us expelled from the League.it doesn’t exactly help the administrators trying to sell the club or reach a satisfactory solution with EFL either.

Expulsion from the league is what the likes of Mr Plop want and it seems that is what Maguire wants as well.. a big story that will help sell his books , continue to ingratiate himself with his cronies at the EFL and he will in his eyes be able to say .. I told you so.

[Crewton]

16 hours ago, Angry Ram said:

Exactly but it was all Rush's fault.. Shakes head.

That post was a response to mine, in which I didn't say that it was "all Rush's fault" rather that IF Mel entrusted the running of the club to his £500,000+ p.a Chief Executive (as you'd expect, otherwise what's the point of paying that much for a monkey to sit at a desk scratching it's anorak), then that CEO should shoulder his SHARE of the blame. 

I understand the anti-Mel stuff, because ultimately it's his car-crash, but that doesn't mean others in positions of trust and responsibility should be immune from criticism. 

[PistoldPete]

19 minutes ago, Crewton said:

That post was a response to mine, in which I didn't say that it was "all Rush's fault" rather that IF Mel entrusted the running of the club to his £500,000+ p.a Chief Executive (as you'd expect, otherwise what's the point of paying that much for a monkey to sit at a desk scratching it's anorak), then that CEO should shoulder his SHARE of the blame. 

I understand the anti-Mel stuff, because ultimately it's his car-crash, but that doesn't mean others in positions of trust and responsibility should be immune from criticism. 

I don’t think anyone said it was all Sam Rush’s fault . But plenty of people involved in recruitment must take a share of the blame especially Rush who was there before Morris even came on board.

[Angry Ram]

21 minutes ago, Crewton said:

That post was a response to mine, in which I didn't say that it was "all Rush's fault" rather that IF Mel entrusted the running of the club to his £500,000+ p.a Chief Executive (as you'd expect, otherwise what's the point of paying that much for a monkey to sit at a desk scratching it's anorak), then that CEO should shoulder his SHARE of the blame. 

I understand the anti-Mel stuff, because ultimately it's his car-crash, but that doesn't mean others in positions of trust and responsibility should be immune from criticism. 

I agree completely. Rush may well have needed raining at certain times. Even at £500k p/a you are answerable to someone, owner, shareholders etc. There are checks and balances in all businesses. If some are to be believed, we had none and poor Mel is a victim of Rush and others. If we had none, then that is his fault as well. The whole mess has multiple factors, of course it does. 

We will never know what actually went on behind closed doors and who did what and under what circumstance. BUT Morris was the captain to the ship, essentially it was his money and everyone was banging on about how good a businessman he was.

I was concerned at the beginning that it was all a vanity/ego project. Nothing made sense, the sound bites, the signings, the appointments, nothing and that is all down to Morris. 100% his responsibility. Still I was told he was a local lad and a Derby fan, like that was some sort of guarantee of success.. Really!!! Bollx then, bollx now. 

[Raich Carter]

This whole 'paying Paul Ince's mum for scouting' thing... I imagine it was actually just a signing-on fee paid to his mum for tax reasons (i.e. his dad's earnings would put him into higher tax bracket) so whilst it's a catchy title, in reality I suspect it's just a tax-efficient way of paying a signing-on fee.

Having said that, looking back at some of the decisions made by a number of key people involved, they do seem particularly stupid so who knows.

With regard to who's fault all this is - the buck stops with Mel but he does seem spectacularly unlucky in terms of key staff selection, signings, injuries, COVID, pub crawls, etc. Overall, he seems to have had his fair share of luck so perhaps, in the bigger picture, it was karma.

[PistoldPete]

10 hours ago, Red Ram said:

Yes agree a lot of that was unfortunate but all teams have injuries. What I really don't get is why you apparently (in one of your earlier posts) think Kieran Maguire is somehow partly blame though? Surely that's just shooting the messenger?

 

 

For a few grand a year you too  could be lectured at Liverpool University in Sports business, by Kieran Maguire , and Dr Rick Parry , members of the same department. their profiles were shown in their website as shown above.

Hmm.. curioser and curioser. 

 

 

[Red Ram]

48 minutes ago, PistoldPete said:

 

For a few grand a year you too  could be lectured at Liverpool University in Sports business, by Kieran Maguire , and Dr Rick Parry , members of the same department. their profiles were shown in their website as shown above.

Hmm.. curioser and curioser. 

 

 

 

So let's get this straight. Kieran Maquire, who's job (as shown above) is specifically to analyse football finances, noticed that our amortisation policy was an outlier in comparison with the rest of the league and pointed this out, which makes him partly to blame for Derby's financial crisis. Apparently he should have just kept quiet, not done his job properly and crossed his fingers that no one else noticed? Because his primary concern should obviously have been to try and ensure that Derby got away with it? Not that there was anything wrong with Derby's amortisation policy of course but he shouldn't have mentioned it anyway, just in case the EFL thought there was.

I've listened to all of his (absolutely excellent, by the way) Price of Football podcasts where they've covered Derby. He's not anti Derby or even anti Mel Morris, he simply points out that the underlying cause of Derby's financial crisis is the tripling of the wage bill over a 3 to 4 year period between 2014 and 2018. It's indisputable that that's the case. 

He quite rightly called out Morris's failure to take adequate responsibility for the crisis. So did Wayne Rooney - presumably he's a 'snitch' too??

Sorry but this playground level stuff...

 

 

[PistoldPete]

22 minutes ago, Red Ram said:

 

So let's get this straight. Kieran Maquire, who's job (as shown above) is specifically to analyse football finances, noticed that our amortisation policy was an outlier in comparison with the rest of the league and pointed this out, which makes him partly to blame for Derby's financial crisis. Apparently he should have just kept quiet, not done his job properly and crossed his fingers that no one else noticed? Because his primary concern should obviously have been to try and ensure that Derby got away with it? Not that there was anything wrong with Derby's amortisation policy of course but he shouldn't have mentioned it anyway, just in case the EFL thought there was.

I've listened to all of his (absolutely excellent, by the way) Price of Football podcasts where they've covered Derby. He's not anti Derby or even anti Mel Morris, he simply points out that the underlying cause of Derby's financial crisis is the tripling of the wage bill over a 3 to 4 year period between 2014 and 2018. It's indisputable that that's the case. 

He quite rightly called out Morris's failure to take adequate responsibility for the crisis. So did Wayne Rooney - presumably he's a 'snitch' too??

Sorry but this playground level stuff...

 

 

I don’t think commenting on our amortisation policy is the problem in itself. I don’t believe for a minute that the policy breaks any rules but it probably was a sign that we were being reckless, fair comment.

But that’s as far as it goes. Man City spent way way more than us , and broke the rules. So did Chelsea. Then there’s Barcelona.

how come Maguire focuses on Derby of all clubs? His tweets are clearly biased against us .
 

Derby’s administrators think our  crisis is due to COVID . They presumably have more info than Maguire.

 

[RAM1966]

On 19/10/2021 at 02:24, PistoldPete said:

You say he was trigger happy , yet say Rowett should have been sacked after getting us into the playoffs. How many managers have forest had? Or Watford? Wassell was always a temporary appointment and he is still at the club. 

Stuff about the training ground and so on, pure gossip. 

Maclaren, Wassell, Rowett and Lampard all got Derby into the playoffs where they lost to teams in receipt of parachute money, with much bigger spending than ours. QPR bust the spending limits blatantly way more than we ever did, and both they and Villa spent two to three times our wage bill in order to defeat us in the play off finals.   Rowett went to Stoke because he thought he could do better there than at Derby  as they had more money than us. So how come Stoke finished below Derby the next season?

For all Morris reckless spending we actually overachieved within our budgets when compared to clubs around us who were spending far more. That is what even Rick Parry recognises is the fundamental problem with the Championship,  and that needs to be fixed. 

 

 

 

I wasn't calling for Rowett to get sacked, I said he would of ended up being sacked.... 

The fact he did so poorly with money at Stoke proved my point he's poo, why do you think Mel told him he was getting no budget and he left?   He's not tearing up any trees at Millwall.......................         

It matters not one jot what budgets other clubs had, the point is Mel recklessly gambled and overspent, we are now in the poo we are, the debts were mounting long before covid...........

[PistoldPete]

1 hour ago, RAM1966 said:

I wasn't calling for Rowett to get sacked, I said he would of ended up being sacked.... 

The fact he did so poorly with money at Stoke proved my point he's poo, why do you think Mel told him he was getting no budget and he left?   He's not tearing up any trees at Millwall.......................         

It matters not one jot what budgets other clubs had, the point is Mel recklessly gambled and overspent, we are now in the poo we are, the debts were mounting long before covid...........

Businesses generally do not go bust solely because of overspending. Do you really think Morris just signed players with  no idea of how he was going to pay for them? that it was promotion or bust , and in our case it ended up as bust?

No way.

Morris knew we had revenue of £30 million a year and if that didn’t cover the planned costs he knew how much money he could offer in soft loans to cover any shortfall. What blew his plans out of the water was a sudden unexpected drop of two thirds of our revenue. 

[RAM1966]

6 hours ago, PistoldPete said:

Businesses generally do not go bust solely because of overspending. Do you really think Morris just signed players with  no idea of how he was going to pay for them? that it was promotion or bust , and in our case it ended up as bust?

No way.

Morris knew we had revenue of £30 million a year and if that didn’t cover the planned costs he knew how much money he could offer in soft loans to cover any shortfall. What blew his plans out of the water was a sudden unexpected drop of two thirds of our revenue. 

They do eventually when they fail to ever make a profit.  If Mels master plan was so good how come:

He had to sell the ground back to himself?

How come he's had to borrow money off MSD with high interest rates?   

How come he had no contingency plan for funding the ground if the sale failed to go through?

To blame this all on yhe pandemic is utter rubbish, only fools and the blinkered believe the rubbish he spouted.

Morris saw this as a money making opportunity as he though a large onjection of cash woul deliver PL football, to be fair he nearly got us to the promised on a few occasions.

His fatal error though was not to reduce costs and regroup the war chest in the FFP 3 year cycle.

£200m+ (And rising) loses reported by himself over a 6 years, is reckless, its incompetence at a level tgat would get any CEO the sack and cave a company in any other walk of life.

Those that do not want to face up to the reality that thier savour Morris could possibly have done anything wrong, are blaming Signings & Wages and spiraling costs on others.  The buck stops with the owner who not only allowed but encouraged this reckless approach.

Mels fatal mistakes summed up:

1.  Set a budget and stick to it, allowing the wage bill to get to 161% of the clubs turnover was only ever going to end in administration if he did not reign in spending.

2.  Surrounded himself with poor advisors, he's made some shoking decisuons, ultimately on his managerial appointments.  He's  made too many and the wrong ones.  He claims to have wamted more players blooded from the academy.  He should of told managers to make is happen.

3.  Failure to allow people to make the right decisions....  No right minded CFO would of recommended the path we've gone down.

4.  Interfering in every aspect of the club, micro management does not produce the best results.

5.  Finally and most importantly no business continuity plan or exit strategy.  Through reckless oversoending and mounting debts, he made the club unattractive to buy.

Finally, you may say that there are plenty of interested parties in buying the club.  This on the face of it appears to be true, but, why has Mel failed to se previously?  one huge negative is the points deduction, trust me if we get - 21 with no success on the appeal, what the numbers of intrested parties drastically reduce!!!!!

 

[PistoldPete]

1 minute ago, RAM1966 said:

They do eventually when they fail to ever make a profit.  If Mels master plan was so good how come:

He had to sell the ground back to himself?

How come he's had to borrow money off MSD with high interest rates?   

How come he had no contingency plan for funding the ground if the sale failed to go through?

To blame this all on yhe pandemic is utter rubbish, only fools and the blinkered believe the rubbish he spouted.

Morris saw this as a money making opportunity as he though a large onjection of cash woul deliver PL football, to be fair he nearly got us to the promised on a few occasions.

His fatal error though was not to reduce costs and regroup the war chest in the FFP 3 year cycle.

£200m+ (And rising) loses reported by himself over a 6 years, is reckless, its incompetence at a level tgat would get any CEO the sack and cave a company in any other walk of life.

Those that do not want to face up to the reality that thier savour Morris could possibly have done anything wrong, are blaming Signings & Wages and spiraling costs on others.  The buck stops with the owner who not only allowed but encouraged this reckless approach.

Mels fatal mistakes summed up:

1.  Set a budget and stick to it, allowing the wage bill to get to 161% of the clubs turnover was only ever going to end in administration if he did not reign in spending.

2.  Surrounded himself with poor advisors, he's made some shoking decisuons, ultimately on his managerial appointments.  He's  made too many and the wrong ones.  He claims to have wamted more players blooded from the academy.  He should of told managers to make is happen.

3.  Failure to allow people to make the right decisions....  No right minded CFO would of recommended the path we've gone down.

4.  Interfering in every aspect of the club, micro management does not produce the best results.

5.  Finally and most importantly no business continuity plan or exit strategy.  Through reckless oversoending and mounting debts, he made the club unattractive to buy.

Finally, you may say that there are plenty of interested parties in buying the club.  This on the face of it appears to be true, but, why has Mel failed to se previously?  one huge negative is the points deduction, trust me if we get - 21 with no success on the appeal, what the numbers of intrested parties drastically reduce!!!!!

 

Morris has never pretended to be running the club to make a profit. And he has made lots of wrong decisions . And been unlucky . But these are all contributory factors. 
 

the cause of our administration is the pandemic . That is the legal case and it is a strong one .

[RAM1966]

12 minutes ago, PistoldPete said:

Morris has never pretended to be running the club to make a profit. And he has made lots of wrong decisions . And been unlucky . But these are all contributory factors. 
 

the cause of our administration is the pandemic . That is the legal case and it is a strong one .

The pandemic accelerated this situation, we were always going down this route!!!!

[VulcanRam]

7 hours ago, PistoldPete said:

Businesses generally do not go bust solely because of overspending. Do you really think Morris just signed players with  no idea of how he was going to pay for them? that it was promotion or bust , and in our case it ended up as bust?

No way.

Morris knew we had revenue of £30 million a year and if that didn’t cover the planned costs he knew how much money he could offer in soft loans to cover any shortfall. What blew his plans out of the water was a sudden unexpected drop of two thirds of our revenue. 

I'm sorry but that just isn't true. Well before Covid we couldn't pay the staff or playing staff, and we were relying on scrabbling around looking for short term bails outs from the likes of Gabay and Dell because Mel either wasn't willing to fund or didn't have the available funds.

Yes Covid was a significant contributory factor but let's not pretend the the business wasn't in severe trouble well before it.