The League of Enjoyment

[Jimbo Ram]

11 minutes ago, Magicman said:

My top 5 

Clough & Taylor 

Dave Mackay 

Jim Smith 

Arthur Cox 

Steve MacLaren 

Arthur above the BE, two promotions and got us in the top 6. Loved the Saunders/Goddard partnership along with the Tin Man, Mark Wright and Shilts.

[plymouthram]

2 hours ago, Ram-Alf said:

All time ☺️in my time👍

1. Brian Clough

2. Dave Mackay

3. Arthur Cox

4. Jim Smith

5. Steve Mac 1

As the song went...

Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way...But times have changed 👎

 

 

I'm glad you named Dave Mackay, after Brian Clough the football was just as good with him in charge, plus we won the title for our 2nd and last time.

[Jourdan]

44 minutes ago, tomsdubs said:

Being a kid from a football zero interest family I never really got to see Bald Eagle days just the highlights I saw if I managed to commondeer a TV for MOTD. I'll list my top few for the ones I actually attended to see though:

1. Steve Mac - Incredible season that deserved so much more. Seasons after were still fun if dissapointing.

2. George Burley - Soon as we got Rasiak, Idiakez and Bisgaard we were rockin and rollin. Idiakez best freekick taker i've ever seen live. Leon Osman kept us up season before with some crucial goals, remember us chanting Leon sign for us after FT last day. Also coffee cup game...

3. Lampard - Had some bad runs especially when Mount was injured but the games were exciting.

4. Rooney/Rosenoir - Fun games against the odds, good atmosphere.

5. Wassall - He wasn't that bad really.

6. Clement - This guy was the total antithesis of Warne, loads of passes and possesion but we were cruising it before a wobble and a certain Melephant hitting the big red button.

Rest I struggle to differentiate, honestly couldn't stand Davies.

 

I never really understood the hate for Davies. I think in the promotion season, he really did an excellent job. Whatever happened in summer 2007 between him and the board, we’ll probably never truly know. There is probably fault that lies on both sides.

But before that, he put together a really honest, hardworking, organised team with a sprinkle of quality in the right areas. Leacock, Oakley and Barnes were excellent that season. Howard had the kind of season Collins is having now but with far more adulation.

I think it was a really fun season. There were some quality away days. Howard’s last minute winner v Wednesday, Howard again v Southampton, Howard at the double v Preston, for example. Even going up to Sunderland and despite losing in the dying seconds, all the talk was about that goal from Barnes.

Yes, we didn’t play the same quality of football as Wolves, West Brom and Southampton as regularly, but we had our moments. We absolutely blew away Colchester on a Friday night as I recall.

We definitely didn’t play the same kind of football we did under Burley but we were very adaptable and could find different ways to win.

You always felt like Billy would do his homework and get us set up in a way that would give us a chance against anyone.

[Nuwtfly]

1 minute ago, Jourdan said:

I never really understood the hate for Davies.

It was the constant veering for other jobs that annoyed me. 

I remember him denying the reports that he was going to Celtic in an interview. 

There were no reports 🤣

[Tyler Durden]

The worst football I've ever seen fact was under Cocu when he contrived to play a system which I assume was meant to bore the opposition players so much that they fell asleep and allowed us to advance up the pitch unhindered and score.

Only it didn't work. Apart from being boring. And it wouldn't have mattered whom the opposition were or what division they were in as would still be crap. 

It was that effective that he got bulleted when we were what bottom of the Championship?

In this context I find it weird reading the comments about the worst football I can remember under Warne.

Unless the same posters have had a good old dose of brain bleach. Or it doesn't suit their narratives. Whatever. 

[Jourdan]

17 minutes ago, Nuwtfly said:

It was the constant veering for other jobs that annoyed me. 

I remember him denying the reports that he was going to Celtic in an interview. 

There were no reports 🤣

In fairness, he had to strike while the iron was hot. It was some job he did in that first year.

I remember the first away game of the season. We lost to Stoke and made them look world-class. Pericard and Sidibe it was who bullied us, not Fuller. On the coach back, I was dreading Hull away a few days later.

I never would have imagined we’d be going to Anfield just over a year later.

Edited January 28 by Jourdan

[JuanFloEvraTheCocu'sNesta]

2 hours ago, Nuwtfly said:

Some of the football Warne serves up is topped only by the likes of Jewell and Phil Brown for me. And Warne is managing it in League One. All the others have had tougher opposition to deal with.

Hopefully you have interacted with me over the years enough times to know I don't say stuff like that about managers flippantly. 

We are in the worst division we have been in for decades and have been outplayed at times by the likes of Cheltenham and Shrewsbury. I have seen some of the most clueless, ineffective hoofball I've ever seen from a Rams team. 

Nailed it.

[Jourdan]

8 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

The worst football I've ever seen fact was under Cocu when he contrived to play a system which I assume was meant to bore the opposition players so much that they fell asleep and allowed us to advance up the pitch unhindered and score.

Only it didn't work. Apart from being boring. And it wouldn't have mattered whom the opposition were or what division they were in as would still be crap. 

It was that effective that he got bulleted when we were what bottom of the Championship?

In this context I find it weird reading the comments about the worst football I can remember under Warne.

Unless the same posters have had a good old dose of brain bleach. Or it doesn't suit their narratives. Whatever. 

In fairness, we did have some promising moments under Cocu.

Didn’t we beat Stoke 4-0 on a Friday night and it looked like it had all suddenly clicked but then as the end of the season got nearer we ran out of steam?

It was potentially a massive egg on my face moment as I remember being hugely against Cocu from about December 2019 onwards.

But yes, it wasn’t the best of times. I did find that first half-season under Rooney much worse though. How we stayed up, I’ll never know.

[Bris Vegas]

My top two by a clear margin are:

1) George Burley

2 Steve McClaren 

After that, the Lampard season was often fun to watch. I had some joy watching Cocu’s side but it was mainly down to the youngsters.

I couldn’t stand Nigel Clough’s first few years here and that clouded my judgement for the his final season which was actually decent looking back. 

Winning under Billy Davies was great. The performances were not. Similer under Rowett and Clement.

Pearson, Brown and Jewell were just horrible.

Warne isn’t terrible, but considering the resources and level of opposition, we should be playing far better.

[Bris Vegas]

23 minutes ago, Tyler Durden said:

The worst football I've ever seen fact was under Cocu when he contrived to play a system which I assume was meant to bore the opposition players so much that they fell asleep and allowed us to advance up the pitch unhindered and score.

Only it didn't work. Apart from being boring. And it wouldn't have mattered whom the opposition were or what division they were in as would still be crap. 

It was that effective that he got bulleted when we were what bottom of the Championship?

In this context I find it weird reading the comments about the worst football I can remember under Warne.

Unless the same posters have had a good old dose of brain bleach. Or it doesn't suit their narratives. Whatever. 

When people have a fixed opinion which is so strong, clear evidence which flies in the face of that is just ignored altogether.

We actually broke a 50+ year club record under Phillip Cocu in scoring at least once in over 20 consecutive games.

There is this great myth that we never looked like scoring under Cocu. Yet if that is the case, how do you explain the scoring record? 

Edited January 28 by Bris Vegas

[Ambitious]

From purely an enjoyment point of view:

Steve McClaren
George Burley
Frank Lampard
Billy Davies
Liam Rosenior
Philip Cocu
Wayne Rooney 
Nigel Clough
Gary Rowett
Paul Warne
Terry Westley
Darren Wassall
Paul Clement 
Nigel Pearson
John Gregory
Paul Jewell
Phil Brown

[ariotofmyown]

These enjoyment charts see a rather strong correlation with success.

[Jourdan]

4 minutes ago, Bris Vegas said:

When people have a fixed opinion which is so strong, clear evidence which flies in the face of that is just ignored altogether.

We actually broke a 50+ year club record under Phillip Cocu in scoring at least once in over 20 consecutive games.

There is this great myth that we never looked like scoring under Cocu. Yet if that is the case, how do you explain the scoring record? 

In fairness, we did experience some really poor spells under Cocu which probably stick in the memory more than the failed late charge for the top six in 19-20.

I remember we started the 19-20 season very poorly and we were desperate for any kind of result to kick start the season so much so that Martin scoring a late equaliser v Leeds felt like a win.

Then in the 20-21 season, we started in an even worse way, and looked like a long way off survival. Didn’t we win just once in our first 13 games and lose 4-0 at home to Blackburn?

[Van der MoodHoover]

4 minutes ago, Jourdan said:

In fairness, we did experience some really poor spells under Cocu which probably stick in the memory more than the failed late charge for the top six in 19-20.

I remember we started the 19-20 season very poorly and we were desperate for any kind of result to kick start the season so much so that Martin scoring a late equaliser v Leeds felt like a win.

Then in the 20-21 season, we started in an even worse way, and looked like a long way off survival. Didn’t we win just once in our first 13 games and lose 4-0 at home to Blackburn?

Memories.....cocu season 1 I think correlated with the arrival of Rooney who lifted us in terms of performances after December.

Then in season 2 of cocu, Rooney turned up after holidays about 2 stone overweight and cocu started him every game leading to febrile speculation on here that.....

- Rooney had a clause in his contract saying he must play

- Rooney was angling for the managers job.

That's how I recall things....

[Leicester Ram]

2 hours ago, Nuwtfly said:

Some of the football Warne serves up is topped only by the likes of Jewell and Phil Brown for me. And Warne is managing it in League One. All the others have had tougher opposition to deal with.

Hopefully you have interacted with me over the years enough times to know I don't say stuff like that about managers flippantly. 

We are in the worst division we have been in for decades and have been outplayed at times by the likes of Cheltenham and Shrewsbury. I have seen some of the most clueless, ineffective hoofball I've ever seen from a Rams team. 

 

1 hour ago, Nuwtfly said:

All the managers that you are so keen to have us compare Warne to were all managing a club in either the Premier League or the Championship.

Warne is the only one on that, other than Rosenior, who has managed us in League One.

On that basis the only fair comparison is between those two managers and I would take Rosenior back over Warne in a heartbeat, with hindsight. 

If you’re going to hold the quality of opposition against him, then you have to admit he also doesn’t have the same quality of players at his disposal that managers in the league above had

If you *really* want to play that game, Paul Warne has a better win percentage at Derby than Brian Clough and Dave Mackay

And he doesn’t have Roy McFarland and Kevin Hector available for selection 🤷🏻‍♂️

Say what you want about your ideal style of play but your argument here doesn’t hold water, the same way me pointing out he has a better win % than Brian Clough doesn’t hold water either

[May Contain Nuts]

Levels of enjoyment will surely also depend on what stage of your 'supporting life' you're at. I'm not really sure I was casting a critical eye over the specifics of our play under Davies for example, I was just there for the ride and don't really recall making much of anything in the way of an assessment as to whether it was good football or whether it was entertaining me or not.

I enjoy watching us play entertaining football, sure, but enjoyment and entertainment aren't mutually exclusive 

There have been things to enjoy when watching most managers.

Jim Smith obviously had us playing some lovely football in the PL but it was before I was really attending games, only really saw us on TV. Bloody loved watching players like Wanchope, Baiano, Sturbridge and we were regularly, at least for a few season,  getting good results against some excellent competition while playing some amazing football.

Gregory I have very little recollection of tbh. 

Burley's spell is right near the start of my ST holding days. Enjoyed that for similar reasons as Smith, we had some class overseas signings, played pretty football and were competing for promotion for a place back at the top table. That was ruined by the ownership, without whom we could have built something that got us back to where we had been under Smith.  It was exciting to me.

Brown was a crazy time, we were a mess, he was out of his depth, but it oddly intriguing and I can't say that in some small way I didn't enjoy it.

Davies, on reflection the football wasn't pretty but we had a number of players you could really get behind, there was the iconic Stevie Howard, the graft and experience of Oakley, the skill of David Jones, magic moments from an academy product in Giles Barnes. Big Dave Darren Moore need I say more. Leacock came from nowhere and looked a classy defender. Above all though we were an excellent TEAM and the goal in sight (and achieved) was the Premier League. It mattered not whether it was entertaining.

Jewell oh god Jewell. Still, we knew we were s*** but we made the most of it as a fanbase, before relegation at least. Gallows humour provided some light relief. Second season it just snowballed, even though on paper some of our signings were pretty decent, Commons & Hulse would go on to be bright sparks in Cloughs early days and even though he's divisive, I quite liked having Robbie Savage here.

Clough I have massive respect for given the job he had on. It's such a long period of time he was here it's hard to distill it into one paragraph, but slowly and surely he built the team that McClaren would enthrall us all with. There were bumps, many, along the way but all throughout you knew he was doing it all for the benefit of Derby County, on a genuinely shoestring budget whilst trying to compete with teams with far greater spending power than us. The intent was always there to play good football, but he seemed to lose sight of it too easily when things went awry

He also lead us to 10 straight victories over Leeds and some memorable games against Forest. He'd just taken us as far as he could though IMO.

McClaren I don't think I need to say much about tbh, great times even if we didn't make it up - one bloody kick differently in the QPR game, or George Thorne's knees holding up, or Ibe not being recalled and we were on the verge of potentially another Smith-style era of playing attractive football at the top level.

Clement not great, not awful, we still had most of the McClaren stalwarts so there was still a clear bond with the team, so it was still enjoyable and we still had hopes of PL football.

Pearson simply got it all wrong but his time was brief enough to not leave me with (m)any lasting mental scars.

Wassall knew exactly what we wanted to see, and he got us playing some very enjoyable stuff but he was maddeningly naive tactically. Enjoyment and frustration equal.

Rowett, similar to Davies. Not pretty but again it was all about the team. Not entertaining but still enjoyable, Championship playoffs with Vydra unplayable at times, a massively clinical, goalscoring marvel.

Lampard through sheer quality of loans  was enjoyable.

Cocu had a really good spell before all the rugs were pulled, and his work bringing through the academy players was excellent, it was a delight to see them coming through and showing their worth at Championship level.

Rooney/Rosenior... first season dire, utterly dire but punctuated by the elation. of staying up on the final day. 2nd season the us against the world mentality made for some.memorable and enjoyable games.

Warne... very little of the above applies. We don't play nice football, there's no sense that we're onto something good we can build on in years to come, we aren't a good 'team' despite having some good players, the tactical management is almost as naive as Wassall's and what seems to constitute entertainment is 'going toe to toe' with some piss poor teams so that it's nice for a neutral to watch. That sort of entertainment does not (to me) enjoyment make.

[nottingram]

59 minutes ago, Jourdan said:

In fairness, we did have some promising moments under Cocu.

Didn’t we beat Stoke 4-0 on a Friday night and it looked like it had all suddenly clicked but then as the end of the season got nearer we ran out of steam?

It was potentially a massive egg on my face moment as I remember being hugely against Cocu from about December 2019 onwards.

But yes, it wasn’t the best of times. I did find that first half-season under Rooney much worse though. How we stayed up, I’ll never know.

Covid hit just as we were hitting a head of steam. We beat Blackburn 3-0 with Sibley scoring a worldie on his full debut which was near enough the last game in this country before everything stopped. We then weren’t quite the same when things resumed coinciding with tough fixtures as well.

The next season was awful and he had to go, although he didn’t have the luxury of using Bielik or CKR before he went.

Do wonder where Sibley and Bird would be if he’d been allowed to ride it out. Sibley certainly was not handled well by Rooney in my opinion. And it’s not like we got much better.

 

[Bris Vegas]

1 hour ago, Jourdan said:

In fairness, we did experience some really poor spells under Cocu which probably stick in the memory more than the failed late charge for the top six in 19-20.

I remember we started the 19-20 season very poorly and we were desperate for any kind of result to kick start the season so much so that Martin scoring a late equaliser v Leeds felt like a win.

Then in the 20-21 season, we started in an even worse way, and looked like a long way off survival. Didn’t we win just once in our first 13 games and lose 4-0 at home to Blackburn?

Cocu had a poor run away from home, and struggled first half of his debut year. 

But we really turned it around. 64 points that season was IMO a better performance than Lampard’s the season before considering Cocu didn’t have Mount, Wilson, Tomori, BJ and Keogh. Huddlestone was injured too.

We were dire at the beginning of Cocu’s next season, with Martin’s absence telling. Playing an unfit Rooney was like playing with 10 men out of possession, and Waghorn’s form nosedived. 

Cocu wasn’t great. And only a great manager would have had any success in those circumstances.

[Sparkle]

7 hours ago, Jimbo Ram said:

1. Steve Mac

2. Uncle George

3. Frank Lampard

Obviously Arthur and the Bald Eagle would be in the top 3…

Nailed it 

[Comrade 86]

1. Uncle George - Perhaps a tad misty-eyed, but we played some wonderful stuff under George and it was a lot of fun

2. Steve McClaren (#1) - The only team in recent history that I literally never worried about conceding the first goal - Meh, we'll score more! Undone in the end though and a bittersweet memory now

3. Frank Lampard - Leeds 2nd leg was just unbridled joy and the way we played that night!!! Mostly though, only did what he should have having a strong team and then adding Wilson, Mount and Tomori to the mix. 

4. Nigel Clough - had a few misfires but also got in some of our best value signings and the team was starting to play some really good stuff when they sacked him. I felt sorry for him. I thought he was poorly treated.

5. Darren Wassall - Nowhere near as bad as some made out at the time. Possibly not as good either.

6. Paul Warne - Jekyll and Hyde football, sometimes in the same game, but has produced two runs that were lovely while they lasted.

7. Gary Rowett - Kick and run, but he did manage a run to the play-offs. A bit meh, on balance.

8. Paul Clement - I'd love to have been a fly on the wall for **that** convo with MM.  He wasn't bad, just a bit beige.

9. Liam Rosenior - had just started to click in incredibly difficult circumstances when released from his duties. Argued this was a big mistake on here and still believe that now.

10. Philip Cocu - was so happy when he arrived - undermined at every turn by players who could not grasp their role and a conniving Rooney who fancied the job as his own. On reflection, probably not the coach I assumed he was.

11. Wayne Rooney - He gets credit for the season when bar under Jewell, I felt we were most together as fans. The football was poor, given the personnel, but the enjoyment, oddly, was plentiful despite this. and our horrible circumstances. He's a sneaky **** though.

12. Paul Jewell - Absolute shyte, but it was great fun pretending we'd scored and singing nonsense and at least the fans were united and still capable of humour. 

13. Phil Brown - Bit of a tart really, what did he bring?

14. Terry Westley - Who? I'd literally wiped him from memory

15. Nigel Pearson - Very briefly came around to thinking he might be alright. WTAF! Got plenty wrong in my life, but this was an absolute doozy. Wanted him gone almost from the off. Apparently came close to throat-punching MM though, so that kept him off the bottom place.

16. John Gregory - I can't! 

17. Billy Davies - Made my skin crawl. Remember thinking after the play off win that we might be bang in trouble and so it proved. The wee man flashed his knickers at everyone and was as poisonous and toxic as managers come, but he did bring 'success' of sorts.