Mel Morris fan club

[Ellafella]

3 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

Mostly, over the last few seasons Derby have competed at the top of the Championship consistently, which is an incredibly tough thing to do. We have been in the playoffs more than any other team. But for a few sliding doors moments, we would have been in the Premier League. 

Mel has also created a Premier League class academy. We should have won the FA Youth Cup but we did win the English youth league and made impressive progress in the Champions League equivalent.

Football is broken and the rules are written so that you're not allowed to spend money to buy success nowadays, but fans want success so on the whole they're OK with an owner who tries to find a way around the rules to reach the promised land of the Premier League. Almost every Championship club that gets there has had to break the rules to do so, but because they have escaped EFL jurisdiction in the process, they can get away with it. 

Something went wrong. Maybe it's simply funding too many campaigns to reaching the playoffs, but not getting over the line, and the EFL then catches up with you? Or maybe it's Mel's health and he has been forced to prioritize that and his family above the club? Or maybe it's something else again? It's very hard to understand from the outside looking in, and I think we're currently in the middle of the storm, but I won't judge Mel until the situation has become clearer, which might not be for quite a long time yet. 

 

The best summation by a country mile. Hear! Hear! @Carl Sagan

[RoyMac5]

9 minutes ago, Ellafella said:

The best summation by a country mile. Hear! Hear! @Carl Sagan

But Mel wasn't even smart enough to play the game - he thought he was but nearly all the mistakes in the recent past find their way back to him. He's been bloody awful for the club. Meanwhile what's he going to do with a football stadium? 

[S8TY]

There is one thing that to me is in excusable…NOT PAYING HMRC…..he’s supposed to be an astute businessman yet fails to pay the tax bill ….if he had cleared this and left then so be it…but to try and get a buyer to take on his debts to the HMRC is laughable …imagine any of us getting a job and the employer saying oh by the way the previous incumbent didn’t pay his taxes so you’ve got to pay them ….joke …no sympathy …taken us into admin and he’s not short of money ….good riddance and before anyone says he spent money he tried his best …we as fans trusted him as the club was under his control to run it properly …not run it into the ground!!!!! ?

[Yani P]

22 minutes ago, GenBr said:

This every step you take would be a suitable punishment i think

Diver..

[vonwright]

Hate is way too strong for me, but definitely angry. 

Complains about spending £200m of his own money on the club - well couldn't you have spent some of that not saddling us with a crippling, and possibly fatal mountain of debt? Fails to pay £26m of tax, fails to submit accounts, defends to the hilt accounting policies that appear to have hidden our slide into complete unsustainability. Says nothing to the fans for months, letting them  believe all is fine. Then bails, leaving us with a 12-point penalty (with more to follow), huge debts, and no stadium or assets to speak of. Staff out of jobs, suppliers out of pocket and the club facing the very real prospect of failing to find a buyer and going out of business.

This would be bad enough with any company. With a football club it's much worse. It means a lot to a lot of people. There is a reason Google don't get an open-topped bus tour through San Francisco every time they end the year as America's top search engine.

[MaltRam]

Few have defended Mel as solidly as I, and I don't blame him for wanting out. Pulling the plug is inexcusable though, when he presided over the accumulation of the debt. The honourable thing would be to settle the debt, and leave the club with dignity, a thing he is probably capable of doing without going hungry.  To inflict this on the thousands of us who feel it so deeply is shameful, despicable and from a Derby fan, sickening.

I don't know how he sleeps. I'd sooner die than be responsible for this. I know that sounds a touch dramatic, but I stand by it. Death over this much dishonour.

 

Edited September 22, 2021 by Needlesh

[oldtimeram]

The man has been a complete and utter idiot and has destroyed the club.  The sooner he has gone the better

 

 

 

 

 

[OoooMarkWright]

7 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

Mostly, over the last few seasons Derby have competed at the top of the Championship consistently, which is an incredibly tough thing to do. We have been in the playoffs more than any other team. But for a few sliding doors moments, we would have been in the Premier League. 

Mel has also created a Premier League class academy. We should have won the FA Youth Cup but we did win the English youth league and made impressive progress in the Champions League equivalent.

Football is broken and the rules are written so that you're not allowed to spend money to buy success nowadays, but fans want success so on the whole they're OK with an owner who tries to find a way around the rules to reach the promised land of the Premier League. Almost every Championship club that gets there has had to break the rules to do so, but because they have escaped EFL jurisdiction in the process, they can get away with it. 

Something went wrong. Maybe it's simply funding too many campaigns to reaching the playoffs, but not getting over the line, and the EFL then catches up with you? Or maybe it's Mel's health and he has been forced to prioritize that and his family above the club? Or maybe it's something else again? It's very hard to understand from the outside looking in, and I think we're currently in the middle of the storm, but I won't judge Mel until the situation has become clearer, which might not be for quite a long time yet. 

 

Something going wrong is an understatement. That man has destroyed this football club. Stuart Webb summed it up - he is clueless about how to run a football club. Administration is enough to judge Morris on. He has left us right in it and put the future of this great club in doubt. Can’t stand the bloke. His rubbish spouted on the wireless made by blood boil. 

Also, on the academy. Your points are spot on. The academy is currently saving our skin. Sibley, Bird, Buchanan, Knight are really good prospects. But - is it as great as people make out? We never benefit financially from our starlets like other clubs do. Look at an Oli Burke for example. Forest sold him for more money than we have ever got for our products. A successful academy nowadays is about selling your best stars for 20-30 million. We haven’t done that, and so unfortunately our academy isn’t as successful as it could/should have been. Two of our starts left for compo. What’s the point of being Cat A if that happens? So, although folk praise Morris for the academy, even that hasn’t been that successful. 

Edited September 22, 2021 by enachops

[RadioactiveWaste]

I'm pretty sure Steve GIbson's a fan. or stalker.

[Ramley Apple]

[ossieram]

9 minutes ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

I'm pretty sure Steve GIbson's a fan. or stalker.

A falker!

[SaffyRam]

6 hours ago, S8TY said:

There is one thing that to me is in excusable…NOT PAYING HMRC…..he’s supposed to be an astute businessman yet fails to pay the tax bill ….if he had cleared this and left then so be it…but to try and get a buyer to take on his debts to the HMRC is laughable …imagine any of us getting a job and the employer saying oh by the way the previous incumbent didn’t pay his taxes so you’ve got to pay them ….joke …no sympathy …taken us into admin and he’s not short of money ….good riddance and before anyone says he spent money he tried his best …we as fans trusted him as the club was under his control to run it properly …not run it into the ground!!!!! ?

This! This is the one thing over everything else which keeps making me really, really angry. There’s no excuse for it. That amount has built up over time, it hasn’t suddenly landed as a big surprise. You can forecast what your Vat and PAYE liability is going to be for months, even years ahead. Absolutely no excuse.

[IlsonDerby]

“Mel got us cat 1 academy” well yeah because the administrators will agree to us continuing to pay the high fees associated with cat 1 status won’t they ?. 
 

I despise him. The way he was talking on that radio interview you’d think he was down to his last million but I’m sure that isn’t the case. 

[GenBr]

2 hours ago, enachops said:

Something going wrong is an understatement. That man has destroyed this football club. Stuart Webb summed it up - he is clueless about how to run a football club. Administration is enough to judge Morris on. He has left us right in it and put the future of this great club in doubt. Can’t stand the bloke. His rubbish spouted on the wireless made by blood boil. 

Also, on the academy. Your points are spot on. The academy is currently saving our skin. Sibley, Bird, Buchanan, Knight are really good prospects. But - is it as great as people make out? We never benefit financially from our starlets like other clubs do. Look at an Oli Burke for example. Forest sold him for more money than we have ever got for our products. A successful academy nowadays is about selling your best stars for 20-30 million. We haven’t done that, and so unfortunately our academy isn’t as successful as it could/should have been. Two of our starts left for compo. What’s the point of being Cat A if that happens? So, although folk praise Morris for the academy, even that hasn’t been that successful. 

Our academy has so far produced some ok players for us, but anyone who was even remotely good got sold for pennies to one of the big six and theres not really anything we can do about it. We might produce a Bellingham or a Grealish, but its pretty pointless if they disappear basically for free without playing for us...

May as well stop wasting money on an academy as far as i'm concerned and just have a reserve team who can fill slots in the first team as required

[Abu Derby]

He won’t have any fans left after he single handedly ruined our football club in a very short time. 
He will forever be remembered as the owner who had no idea whatsoever with respect to running a professional football club. 

[LeedsCityRam]

10 hours ago, StarterForTen said:

Mel Morris is often described as a businessman but I don't think that is quite right; he is an entrepreneur in the purest form.

Entrepreneurs achieve great things and I admire them for that, but in general, they also struggle to see where the corporate cliff edge is. Their drive to succeed and burning belief in themselves can form huge blindspots and I am convinced that is why we are where we are.

This 'project' was going to end either with Derby pushing for the Premier League top six or a car crash.

Sadly, it's the latter and the flashing blue lights are gathering.

Totally agree. I was looking at his business track record few days ago & came to a very similar conclusion. He starts companies/buys startups with an innovative tech idea then sells them to a larger company for his payout. Very astute way to make money but not correlated with how to successfully manage a football club. Typically his type will have a big vision (short of actual detail), comfortable with a lot of risk taking & pragmatic view that not everything works & there is a time to walk away...not an option at a near 140 year old football club though.

The allegations of interference particularly early in his reign are also sympomatic of entrepreneurship...thats the approach that brought him success so will have made sense to him to replicate it.

Like others have said, Im not sure I could live with the shame of putting my football club in this position..particularly after promising to pay the bills until we were sold. Might be some interesting reactions on here if we hear he's invested in another bright tech startup.

Edited September 22, 2021 by LeedsCityRam

[Ramley Apple]

10 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

Mostly, over the last few seasons Derby have competed at the top of the Championship consistently

Yes. By cheating, as it turns out.

[BondJovi]

10 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

Mostly, over the last few seasons Derby have competed at the top of the Championship consistently, which is an incredibly tough thing to do. We have been in the playoffs more than any other team. But for a few sliding doors moments, we would have been in the Premier League. 

Mel has also created a Premier League class academy. We should have won the FA Youth Cup but we did win the English youth league and made impressive progress in the Champions League equivalent.

Football is broken and the rules are written so that you're not allowed to spend money to buy success nowadays, but fans want success so on the whole they're OK with an owner who tries to find a way around the rules to reach the promised land of the Premier League. Almost every Championship club that gets there has had to break the rules to do so, but because they have escaped EFL jurisdiction in the process, they can get away with it. 

Something went wrong. Maybe it's simply funding too many campaigns to reaching the playoffs, but not getting over the line, and the EFL then catches up with you? Or maybe it's Mel's health and he has been forced to prioritize that and his family above the club? Or maybe it's something else again? It's very hard to understand from the outside looking in, and I think we're currently in the middle of the storm, but I won't judge Mel until the situation has become clearer, which might not be for quite a long time yet. 

 

I agree with a lot of that but have a few issues.

One of my long standing issues under the reign of Mel has been a lack of responsibility running through the club. Managers have taken the fall but the players barely seemed to be held accountable for their performances. An air of arrogance ran through the club. Joiners gate exposed it all. By the time Mel learnt, he had already started to pull the plug. His recent interview just highlights this issue. This ethos had to run from top to bottom, never did. Someone I know who had his sources, frequently told me it was a doddle working at Derby. 

 

[G STAR RAM]

10 minutes ago, Ramley Apple said:

Yes. By cheating, as it turns out.

What were we found guilty of that was cheating?

[Simon84]

How anyone can stick up for the guy is beyond me. It takes a special breed of person to run your own team into the ground and jump the sinking ship. Good riddance Morris hopefully his legacy stops at financial ruin and one relegation.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Simon84