Thanks to Mel. We are in this mess.

[DerbyAleMan]

13 minutes ago, The Last Post said:

So if David Clowes didn't come along with his white horse we would have gone...Bang...and there would have been no other buyer, Not forgetting Clowes owns the stadium, Bought it for circa £22million, Owns DCFC who must be worth...god knows how many millions, So if he sold tomorrow I'd doubt he'd be out of pocket

Your just repeating your opening post...Keep off the Ale 😁

You want to stick up for the man who nearly destroyed us, up to you, but I hate the man for what he DID, to DCFC, hope Mel goes bust. 

[DCFC Kicks]

6 hours ago, YouRams said:

Its when you see teams like Brighton and how well they are doing, reminiscing on the playoff semi's and thinking what could've been. Sickening really. 

Luton were in the National League when we go the 13/14 POF. When you see some really average former DCFC players who make it to the Prem,(Adam Smith, Cyrus Christie, Kieran Dowell etc.) I makes you think what our 13/14 team could have done there. How have Luton and Sheff Utd manged to get promoted almost by accident and we never manged it once in Mel's time? 

[alram]

7 hours ago, Jram said:

Reading this forum is really eye-opening for me. Helps me realise how it’s so easy for the Government to scapegoat immigrants and poor people. 
 

People will literally search for anyone to blame for their inability to regulate their emotions after a loss. 
 

Agree with many posters- Mel’s running of the club was catastrophic but not unlike a lot of Championship owners in the 2010s. Intentions were good, execution was poor. He’s not an evil man and deserves to be laid to rest. 
 

Derby will lose more games again in the rest of their history. Sorry to have to break that to you guys 

he never had good intentions, he waned to be loved and did it for his own ego.

 

if you have good intentions you dont use PAYE tax to keep buying players, you dont keep taking out loans, break FFP rules and start a civil war within the EFL and you most certainy dont seperate club from stadium all with no intention of paying any of these debts back.

 

it was completely unlike other championship owners, stop trying to normalise what he did to our club and pretend it was something other people do

[alram]

6 hours ago, YouRams said:

Its when you see teams like Brighton and how well they are doing, reminiscing on the playoff semi's and thinking what could've been. Sickening really. 

problem is to compare with teams like them is our foundations were built on sand and would have ended up in the same result it did eventually. did brighton ever get into a situation where they put the future of their club at risk? no absolutely not

[deanoakaram4life]

People don’t remember that Brighton played some dross under Hughton! He got them up and they scraped survival once they went up! It was once they sacked Hughton when they really flourished! 

[alram]

1 minute ago, deanoakaram4life said:

People don’t remember that Brighton played some dross under Hughton! He got them up and they scraped survival once they went up! It was once they sacked Hughton when they really flourished! 

they basically did what forest did in there first few years in the prem and brought about 20 players every summer they were a completely different club that they are now

[Ram-Alf]

33 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

I was going to reply to a similar post on the Notts Forest playtime thread....Brighton owe Tony Bloom around £500 million, would he ever ask for the money back or stop bankrolling the club via loans thus allowing it to enter administration?

Oooo you've changed to story around from MM to TB, When we weren't even talking about Brighton, Funny how people can change a story to fit their post...nice try tho 😁

[Turnstile]

Yes it is Morris’s fault we can only shop for bargain basement players .Appointing Warne means we will only ever be a mirror image of his Rotherham teams which in all honesty were crap.Does Warne’s coaching team inspire anyone ? (It doesn’t me ).Mr Clowes decision to save us was wonderful but his second one to appoint Warne was a mistake.

[jimtastic56]

1 hour ago, The Last Post said:

So if David Clowes didn't come along with his white horse we would have gone...Bang...and there would have been no other buyer, Not forgetting Clowes owns the stadium, Bought it for circa £22million, Owns DCFC who must be worth...god knows how many millions, So if he sold tomorrow I'd doubt he'd be out of pocket

Your just repeating your opening post...Keep off the Ale 😁

I do think that David did buy us just to save us. With all the legal fees he would not get his money back now if he had to sell. We certainly have very little , player wise in saleable assets. ( mostly journeymen on 2 year deals). 4 year contracts for Warne and his team was a decision he may regret.

[Ram-Alf]

13 minutes ago, jimtastic56 said:

I do think that David did buy us just to save us. With all the legal fees he would not get his money back now if he had to sell. We certainly have very little , player wise in saleable assets. ( mostly journeymen on 2 year deals). 4 year contracts for Warne and his team was a decision he may regret.

I'm not disputing that, He's a fan and perhaps emotions took over reality...I do not know, He's in it for around £50million, Stadium, Moor Farm, DCFC et al will recoup a big chunk if not profit, If we get promoted this season the value will be higher... Mike Ashley was/could have been an alternative.

The OP can't have it all his own way without knowing MM lost money on his journey when buying DCFC, For me, He purchased DCFC in the hope of getting to the EPL and then sell at a healthy profit, Covid got in the way and the rest is history, He's still a very wealthy man.

[Foreveram]

2 hours ago, The Last Post said:

How many 10s of millions did he write off? it was he who paid out to the Curley one, Where were the Axe grinders when Morris spunked £6million on Bradley Johnson, He Brought in Philip Cocu, Then Wayne Rooney, And low and behold Frank Lampard with the help of Uncle Harry, Who lambasted him when he was bouncing at Ellend Road after we beat Leeds 4-2.

Covid caught him out financially, HMRC went unpaid, Things started to unravel, Quatuma took the piss, Had their bellies tickled by the EFL, I'm no fan of MM and I'm not going to dislike him either, If you're looking for someone to take the flack...blame the Romans...what did they ever do for us ☺️  

The Aquaduct.

[RAM1966]

13 hours ago, WystonRam said:

Frank Lampard has a large slice of blame too. I’ll never understand his Wembley line up and how that probably cost us a very good chance to go up 

100% spot on!!!!!

[RAM1966]

3 hours ago, The Last Post said:

I'm not disputing that, He's a fan and perhaps emotions took over reality...I do not know, He's in it for around £50million, Stadium, Moor Farm, DCFC et al will recoup a big chunk if not profit, If we get promoted this season the value will be higher... Mike Ashley was/could have been an alternative.

The OP can't have it all his own way without knowing MM lost money on his journey when buying DCFC, For me, He purchased DCFC in the hope of getting to the EPL and then sell at a healthy profit, Covid got in the way and the rest is history, He's still a very wealthy man.

MM like many owners, ignored sound financial planning that got him where he was when he bought DCFC.  I do not buy covid, he was already reigning in spending.  Maybe covid brought it to a head a little quicker, but we were only going one way.  Mel spunked 💰 like an 18 year old kid whose Grandmother left them a small fortune!!!!

[RAM1966]

15 hours ago, Bris Vegas said:

Mel was awful in the circumstances. But the number one cause of our plight is FFP. If that never came into light, we wouldn’t have needed to try and get around the rules to financially compete with parachute payment clubs.

I’m not a fan of Mel. But on the face of it, all he did was plough loads of his own money into the club he loved and naively thought that would be enough to get us promoted. 

The way we spent the money was just ridiculous. Clueless. But was that Mel’s fault or those spending his money?

When you look at the spend in today’s market. How do you spend £25m+ in fees like we did in 2015/16 and actually get worse? I’m convinced Derby, Everton and Man Utd are the three worst spenders in English football over the past decade. 

He didn't plough if of his money in though to clear the debts, he sold the ground to himself, holding the only asset left.  He's lucky Clowes was feeling charitable or we would if ended up a pheonix club, with Ashley buy the ground for 🥜 

[ram59]

Like many things in life, MM definitely was not perfect but he was also not unlike many other owners trying to get their clubs to the premier. The way it ended, I couldn't forgive him for letting us go into admin, even though nobody could have foreseen an event like covid and the effect that it had on the club's finances.

But those claiming that he was the only owner playing fast and loose with the rules, are just wrong. Yes, he tried to 'bend' the rules, the same rules that clubs like Villa, QPR, Bournemouth, Brighton, Wolves, Watford etc shattered, but got away with it by getting promoted. MM's crime was not getting promotion, close but not quite there. After all, the amortisation rule didn't actually come in until years after we supposed to have committed it. He should stuck it out and fought that ruling, had he stuck it out we wouldn't have entered admin either and we'd still be in the championship, that, I can't forgive. Regarding the ownership of the ground, there are quite a few clubs who don't own their own ground. Brighton, who seem to be everyone's idea of the perfect club, don't own their own ground. The club's owner owns the ground and charges the club a peppercorn rent, with the company owning the ground getting deeper and deeper into debt, owing nearly £200m when I last looked. My local team, Blues have been playing with only 2 stands open for a few years now because their recent owner wouldn't stump up the cash for repairs. WBA's owner has took money out of the club and hasn't paid it back. What's going on at Reading and then there's the situation with the company owning Peterborough's ground, just to name a few.

MM wasn't perfect and we seem to have suffered more than virtually every other set of fans except Bury, but to claim that he's out there on his own, is simply untrue.

[RAM1966]

7 hours ago, ram59 said:

Like many things in life, MM definitely was not perfect but he was also not unlike many other owners trying to get their clubs to the premier. The way it ended, I couldn't forgive him for letting us go into admin, even though nobody could have foreseen an event like covid and the effect that it had on the club's finances.

But those claiming that he was the only owner playing fast and loose with the rules, are just wrong. Yes, he tried to 'bend' the rules, the same rules that clubs like Villa, QPR, Bournemouth, Brighton, Wolves, Watford etc shattered, but got away with it by getting promoted. MM's crime was not getting promotion, close but not quite there. After all, the amortisation rule didn't actually come in until years after we supposed to have committed it. He should stuck it out and fought that ruling, had he stuck it out we wouldn't have entered admin either and we'd still be in the championship, that, I can't forgive. Regarding the ownership of the ground, there are quite a few clubs who don't own their own ground. Brighton, who seem to be everyone's idea of the perfect club, don't own their own ground. The club's owner owns the ground and charges the club a peppercorn rent, with the company owning the ground getting deeper and deeper into debt, owing nearly £200m when I last looked. My local team, Blues have been playing with only 2 stands open for a few years now because their recent owner wouldn't stump up the cash for repairs. WBA's owner has took money out of the club and hasn't paid it back. What's going on at Reading and then there's the situation with the company owning Peterborough's ground, just to name a few.

MM wasn't perfect and we seem to have suffered more than virtually every other set of fans except Bury, but to claim that he's out there on his own, is simply untrue.

The reason MM sold the ground to himself was through piss poor management.  He signed players on over inflated fees and wages.  Selling the ground to himself was a work arounf FFP.  In the end he used the ground to get a chunk of money he should have left with the club to clear yhe debts that he caused through reckless overspending!

[G STAR RAM]

19 hours ago, DerbyAleMan said:

Just a quick note to some, Mel spent Dcfc money, not his. he put us into debt, plus local business into debt, and lets remember, he had 500 plus million in the bank when he left, so let's not talk about him putting his own money in, he put it onto the club debt, also he would have seen this club die. Thats why Clowes is a hero. 

This isn't me defending Mel but what you've said here is just incorrect.

[Ram-Alf]

12 hours ago, RAM1966 said:

MM like many owners, ignored sound financial planning that got him where he was when he bought DCFC.  I do not buy covid, he was already reigning in spending.  Maybe covid brought it to a head a little quicker, but we were only going one way.  Mel spunked 💰 like an 18 year old kid whose Grandmother left them a small fortune!!!!

MM sold his dating site for a few million, Then bought into "Candy Crush" sound advice or good fortune?, Multi millionaires/Billionaires will all have advisors to channel money in the right direction, They might have even been told by those who talk about "sound financial planning" that it's time to pull the plug on DCFC, Unless you were at his table when this sound advice was or wasn't given then you're like every other poster on here...we get it from the press and social media, Or if lucky from a 3rd party that is ITK, It's for those to sort out the wheat for the BS to come to a conclusion.

The man who pays the piper gets to call the tune, Steven Pearce was the accountant and Steven Pearce was told what to do and what not to do, MM through his tenure not only reigned in the money he also made several attempts to sell to some very unscrupulous people, Then he put DCFC into Admin as his money tree had shed a fortune...you say you don't buy into Covid, Then go on to say maybe Covid bought it a little quicker...so Covid had an effect.

Again it doesn't detract that he forgave 10 of millions of £s, Paid off the Curley one which enabled Clowes to purchase DCFC

[Anon]

On 03/09/2023 at 07:33, MaltRam said:

Time to move on was some while ago.

Forget Mel, and if you want my advice, forget football for a couple of weeks.

We definitely shouldn't forget. Some of us were questioning the expenditure that very first summer when we spent a combined 10 million on Johnson and Butterfield. The vast majority of fans were happy to blindly trust the owner. I agree that a witch hunt against Morris is pointless, but we as fans need to remember to be more sceptical when someone comes in promising the moon and spending at levels that are obviously unsustainable.

[Barney1991]

Blame Mel but also blame the recruitment team as well. In the 10 years I’ve never seen such poor recruitment