Will Lady Luck Ever Shine On Derby Again?

[ram59]

There are a number of things that you need to have success, lady luck being an important one. Over the last 10 years, we've had more than our share of bad luck.

It seemed to start with that play off final, the most one sided final that was won by the 'wrong' team. Then we made our key signing in Thorne, who was forever injured, who knows what could have been with a fit George. This was to be repeated with Bielik, again another key player who could have made a difference. We then lost 3 managers due to 'interest' from other teams, SM, who's head was turned by Newcastle, Rowett poached by Stoke and the drawn out saga with Frank going to Chelsea. None of them went on to succeed at any of those clubs, as we could have told them before hand. 

Constant new managers required constant changes to playing personnel and MM was only too happy to fork out the club's money, to back them, in doing so, trying to be clever with EFL rules. Then on top of this, we had Covid, an unforeseeable occurrence which it could be argued affected Derby more than any other club, having the biggest gates outside the premier league and parachute teams.

To compound these problems, MM decided to pull the plug, instead of following through with his promises, no administration would be no 12 points deduction, in fact he should have stuck to his guns and challenged the other 9 points in court. Without these deductions we should still be in the championship and not lost a generation of young talent that our academy had nurtured. It's a crying shame when you thing of all those young players that we lost for nothing or next to nothing. Other 'bad' owners have not let this happen to a big club, they've either continued to back the club until they could get shot of it, without pulling the plug. It doesn't help that the EFL seem to be more vindictive against us when compared with other clubs' misdemeanours. 

We are at the start of a new era, but have been dogged by poor refereeing decisions over the last 14 months and now we have suffered 5 long term injuries to our small squad, only 6 games into the season.

It's about time we got some good fortune, even average fortune would do.

I'm trying my best, I'm already on my third 'lucky' shirt for home games and my second for away matches.🙄

[Pikeyram]

It's that flipping baseball ground curse!!

I genuinely think we have much more bad luck than any other team...

[TomTom92]

Without doubt the unluckiest team in football. 

Worth noting over Covid that every other club got a bail out by the EFL. Whereas we didn’t because Mel upset them.

[ap04]

This must the most hideous thing I have ever heard, on the contrary you'd struggle to find teams as lucky as Derby in recent years on the pitch (not talking injuries financial poaching and whether these are bad luck or any worse than others). On refs we haven't had one bad year and are still in in debit from previous seasons.

On the pitch the only unlucky season was last year when we were circa 17 points net worse off and should have easily made the playoffs if not promotion; 20-21 was about even.

Other than that

2017-18: ~8 points better off - 9th on the xG made the playoffs
2018-19: ~12 points better off - 14th on the xG made the playoffs (!)
2019-20: ~15 points better off (9 lucky wins out of 17) - 20th on the xG finished 10th (!)
2021-22: ~20 points better off (10 lucky wins out of 14!) completely wiping out the EFL charge

[JuanFloEvraTheCocu'sNesta]

7 minutes ago, ap04 said:

This must the most hideous thing I have ever heard, on the contrary you'd struggle to find teams as lucky as Derby in recent years on the pitch (not talking injuries financial poaching and whether these are bad luck or any worse than others). On refs we haven't had one bad year and are still in in debit from previous seasons.

On the pitch the only unlucky season was last year when we were circa 17 points net worse off and should have easily made the playoffs if not promotion; 20-21 was about even.

Other than that

2017-18: ~8 points better off - 9th on the xG made the playoffs
2018-19: ~12 points better off - 14th on the xG made the playoffs (!)
2019-20: ~15 points better off (9 lucky wins out of 17) - 20th on the xG finished 10th (!)
2021-22: ~20 points better off (10 lucky wins out of 14!) completely wiping out the EFL charge

Using xG as a metric to measure something intangible such as luck is daft.

xG measures efficiency in front of goal. Not every single facet of the game.

[Gee SCREAMER !!]

5 minutes ago, ap04 said:

This must the most hideous thing I have ever heard, on the contrary you'd struggle to find teams as lucky as Derby in recent years on the pitch (not talking injuries financial poaching and whether these are bad luck or any worse than others). On refs we haven't had one bad year and are still in in debit from previous seasons.

On the pitch the only unlucky season was last year when we were circa 17 points net worse off and should have easily made the playoffs if not promotion; 20-21 was about even.

Other than that

2017-18: ~8 points better off - 9th on the xG made the playoffs
2018-19: ~12 points better off - 14th on the xG made the playoffs (!)
2019-20: ~15 points better off (9 lucky wins out of 17) - 20th on the xG finished 10th (!)
2021-22: ~20 points better off (10 lucky wins out of 14!) completely wiping out the EFL charge

[RadioactiveWaste]

You make your own luck. And if you're skilled with VooDoo, you make other peoples as well.

Who sent @Red_Dawna lock of hair? It wasn't sentimental reasons he wanted it......

[uttoxram75]

2 hours ago, ap04 said:

This must the most hideous thing I have ever heard, on the contrary you'd struggle to find teams as lucky as Derby in recent years on the pitch (not talking injuries financial poaching and whether these are bad luck or any worse than others). On refs we haven't had one bad year and are still in in debit from previous seasons.

On the pitch the only unlucky season was last year when we were circa 17 points net worse off and should have easily made the playoffs if not promotion; 20-21 was about even.

Other than that

2017-18: ~8 points better off - 9th on the xG made the playoffs
2018-19: ~12 points better off - 14th on the xG made the playoffs (!)
2019-20: ~15 points better off (9 lucky wins out of 17) - 20th on the xG finished 10th (!)
2021-22: ~20 points better off (10 lucky wins out of 14!) completely wiping out the EFL charge

You have gone to a lot of trouble with your detailed wumming pal.

Derby must be really important to you to put this much effort in.

[ap04]

14 hours ago, JuanFloEvraTheCocu'sNesta said:

Using xG as a metric to measure something intangible such as luck is daft.

xG measures efficiency in front of goal. Not every single facet of the game.

I only used xG to back the numbers up so that they don't get dismissed as nonsense (they still do but hey), it's the next best thing esp. if one can't follow every team and fairly representative over a season.

Luck in football is not 'intangible', it is closeness to goals -the only facet that matters, which can be estimated- over actual goals, and impact on results.

'Efficiency in front of goal' usually means that the above hasn't regressed to the mean.

[maydrakin]

There has been some bad luck, yes.  However, I would suggest that the majority of woes that we had during that timescale were down to “user error”.