Your glass might be half full but, it seems, your head is half empty ;) - why the selective memory on what I've written. In something like 4 posts in this thread I've written that we were as much to blame as you. The first half was pretty full of head tennis and, yes, we played our part in that. Now, how anybody can take that as a one sided swipe is amazing, unless you are entrenched in an underdog role or maybe even playing the victim. I'm starting to think that the latter is the more likely as most of you are taking a few words and turning them on their head. Quite why is a mystery. Not much point in conversing with people who cherry pick in order to validate their own distorted narrative.
Here's a sentence I just read on a Rams forum.... The Wycombe fans I met were very friendly and helped me navigate my way back to my car which was parked in the nearby housing estate at the top of a very steep hill... it seems some of you CAN be civil.
If your fans and your manager could just go and spread the word that we hoof it loads, and waste time and don't play much football that would be great, thank you.
Despite a complimentary pre- game post, you have gone on to prove that you are unable to accept losing to Wycombe without resorting to tired cliches about our tactics. Sadly, you then use a personal insult when this is pointed out. Enjoy the rest of your season.
First time back at AP for a while. Really enjoyable game with all the amusing subplots which make live sport so enjoyable. Two quality teams - the Derby no10 was outstanding - won by the better team overall. Wouldn’t mind watching that every week….
Another random thought, spawned by @floyd's comment above - I don't think I've ever looked forward to a trip to Accrington so much before... They've always been tough battles, sometimes on real 'leveller' surfaces, and they haven't always gone our way. Because guess what, Coleman is smart enough not only to "know what we do", but actually try to do something about it, with whatever he has at his disposal. So I'm not expecting an easy ride by any means. But I just like the fact that we are travelling there full of confidence, while they are finding wins hard to come by. In recent memory, they've tended to have been the form team when we've gone up there.
Have to say that I thought that @Raminpeace was pretty reasonable by opposition fan standards. A bit one-eyed, but aren't we all? I was slightly disappointed by the reaction of one or two on here, although @railwaysteve and others provided balance.
The thing that really irritates me is that even the relatively reasonable @Raminpeace did not say "Yes, we cheated financially and we deserved our punishment". I have yet to see a single Derby fan make this simple admission.
Back to the fun on the pitch I just enjoyed our third goal a few times again. It has been mentioned that Tjay was looking to get a corner off the defender. Nope. He looked up several times before delivering an absolute peach of a cross. Wing immediately acknowledged that as it was an absolute pin point pass. Lovely goal.
I think @Raminpeace did pretty well overall. We all have biases towards our team, and he didn't descend into the abuse that 99% of Derby fans might have. I am glad we are welcoming enough for someone to stay on for a protracted period before and after a match and actually have some debate in what is a very emotional clash. If we can do that with a Derby fan, we can do it with anyone.
The funniest thing about this weekend is Derby fans descending to calling us a small club who can't fill our stadium, as if being a small club is an insult. It becomes even funnier when they are not self aware enough to realize they just lost to this tiny club in the same division, so there is a lesson in there about levels of achievement versus size.
I wasn't going to post until we meet again but.... here goes. Morris vastly overspent and put us in trouble. Trouble he, eventually, decided he either couldn't or wouldn't fund any longer. Upshot of it is he wrote off around £140M he'd "lent" the club and sold the ground for around £60M less than he paid for it. He put the club in administration and we got a 12 point deduction for that. Fully deserved. No argument even vaguely possible.
Where I do have double feelings is this. The other 9 point deduction came from using a different amortisation method. The method used is legal in UK Law under FRS102. The first tribunal found we hadn't done anything amiss. That committee contained accountants judging an accounting issue. The EFL decided to appeal, as was their right. The appeal committee contained zero accountants. Strange for a group of people judging an accounting question. The method used wasn't against any specific rule. The appeal committee found us guilty. We were ordered to pay a small fine, amend several year's accounts to reflect linear amortisation, and resubmit those accounts. That led to us exceeding FFP limits and the 9 points were deducted. No specific offence but they found that there is a blanket caveat allowing them to find clubs guilty of things not specified if it's viewed to be somehow unfair. Considering Morris' reckless spending it was unfair to other clubs. However, I still struggle with it a little because Morris informed the EFL he was making the accounting change back in 2015. Why did it take them until 2019 to decide it was "iffy". The EFL failed in its duty of care to DCFC, IMO. We certainly fell into the parameters of the blanket clause so a punishment was right. I also think that the EFL's complicity in not acting sooner should have been taken into consideration. They were told what was happening. they failed to loom at it and decide if it was OK or not.
Since the appeal, EFL rules have been changed to ban the amortisation method used
Hopefully you can see why I am in dubio over the 9 points. Basically, not innocent but not alone in guilt. I'd be much happier if the EFL had taken their "involvement" into account. Having said that, they might have taken it into account but not said so.
Make of it what you will. Not the blanket acceptance you might have thought of @OakwoodExile but hopefully a setting out of my feelings towards it that you can see something in.
Raminpeace's explanation is the clearest I've seen on this topic. Thank you.
And thank you for bothering to come on and engage with such a range of topics without rising (too much) to the occasional sly digs In my opinion, your views have enhanced the build up and fall out from a fantastic game and, subject to our respective clubs' positions next year, you will be more than welcome.
Trigger warning for @eric_plant - more banging on coming. Feel free not to read it.
Hi @Raminpeace. As @Thicketblue says, that's a very clear explanation. And I'd find it a great deal more convincing if it didn't completely ignore the question of motive. As I understand it, Derby had previously used the straight line method of amortising player contracts and only switched to the valuation method as a means to get round the FFP rules. I can fully understand that a panel of accountants might approach this from the perspective of "Does this method comply with the generally accepted principles of commercial accountancy?". But I can equally accept that a more football-oriented appeals committee would ask itself (1) "Was this a blatant attempt to get round the rules?" and (2) "Do we have a rule to hand that allows us to stop it?". That they declined to allow Derby County to continue to play silly buggers is, in my view at least, entirely to their credit.
Unfortunately it's just more excuses and continuing to blame someone else. The League Arbitration Panel decision covers it all in detail. While FRS 102 allows residual values to be used for amortisation of intangible assets in certain specific circumstances, it is highly doubtful that it was appropriate in Derby's case, and even if it was applicable they weren't correctly applying their own accounting policy in practice.
a. The approach that was adopted was operated, on the Club’s own evidence, so informally and with such a lack of evidential basis that it generated, in the course of three whole accounting years in operation, not a single document indicating how or on what basis the Club had determined for each player whether to allocate an ERV at all, at what point in time during the contract it hoped to sell the player and how much it hoped to receive by way of a transfer fee.
b. The only document from which it could be inferred that these determinations had even taken place was a very brief set of ‘Amortisation Schedules’ produced by the Club after the EFL’s specific disclosure application [see DC decision 16(a)] and [58]. But as the DC acknowledged, “…although the (sole) amortisation schedule provided by the Club referenced, on a player by player basis, the figures applied by the Club to those players on a year by year basis, the mechanics or “maths” behind those figures was not readily discernible from that schedule.” In fact the Amortisation Schedules offered no way in which to work out how the Club might have gone about making the determinations required by its amortisation method at all.
c. Mr Pearce said that the Club’s determination of the ‘expected recoverable values’ reflected “the Club’s own view of such matters, consultation by the Club with agents and agencies and by a consideration (from online databases on websites such as TransferMarkt.de and Kicker.de) of transfer prices being achieved in the market for comparable/similar players” [54]. This evidence makes it all the more surprising that no documents exist evidencing the process.
d. Comparison between the values provided by the Club and online websites such as www.transfermarkt.com does not enable one to understand the process utilised by the Club in any way; on the contrary, the values utilised by the Club seem to have been consistently in excess of the values placed by such websites.
@Chris here's some more background for you. When Morris bought the club off the 3 amigos in September 2015, he paid off what debt the club had and that left us with only the £15M mortgage on Pride Park. He informed the EFL that the club was going to change the amortisation method used. No debt apart from the mortgage. No FFP issues which goes against your thoughts that the change was solely to avoid FFP issues. There weren't any at that time.
Why did it take the EFL 4 years to decide there was a problem? Surely, any organisation in the position of the EFL and with their responsibilities to both their entire membership and to protecting some clubs against themselves (should they have "helped" us not get in the mess in line with the duty of care they have towards member clubs?), should look at changes a member club informs them of in order to ensure that it doesn't infringe on that organisations rules. In my previous post I wrote that Morris was reckless. I wrote that his recklessness put the club in trouble. I wrote that there can be no argument whatsoever about the 12 points. I also wrote that the blanket clause is there and that the club did fall into that blanket. The only thing I have said is should the EFL have taken into account their own complicity in this. IMO they really should have had a good look at what Morris was doing re amortisation back in 2015. I also added the caveat that they might have but haven't publicised it.
Why do salient parts of my posts appear to get serially ignored on here? As I also wrote, not 100% guilty due to, what I see as, but not innocent either.
It's taken the league 4 years to bring charges against Man City for goodness sake. So it's no surprise it can take that long for smaller time dodgy dealings.
Comments
Maybe, just maybe… Wycombe are quite a good League 1 football team and that is why other managers struggle against us.
This is calculated on League 1 results only.
Your glass might be half full but, it seems, your head is half empty ;) - why the selective memory on what I've written. In something like 4 posts in this thread I've written that we were as much to blame as you. The first half was pretty full of head tennis and, yes, we played our part in that. Now, how anybody can take that as a one sided swipe is amazing, unless you are entrenched in an underdog role or maybe even playing the victim. I'm starting to think that the latter is the more likely as most of you are taking a few words and turning them on their head. Quite why is a mystery. Not much point in conversing with people who cherry pick in order to validate their own distorted narrative.
Here's a sentence I just read on a Rams forum.... The Wycombe fans I met were very friendly and helped me navigate my way back to my car which was parked in the nearby housing estate at the top of a very steep hill... it seems some of you CAN be civil.
Have a good rest of the season. See you next season if we're still in the same League.
If your fans and your manager could just go and spread the word that we hoof it loads, and waste time and don't play much football that would be great, thank you.
Despite a complimentary pre- game post, you have gone on to prove that you are unable to accept losing to Wycombe without resorting to tired cliches about our tactics. Sadly, you then use a personal insult when this is pointed out. Enjoy the rest of your season.
zzzzzzz
League 1 is mad isn’t it? We beat Derby County on Saturday, next week we host Bolton Wanderers, but in between we travel to Accrington Stanley.
I love the pyramid.
I've noticed how the "in peace" brigade always hang around way longer than is comfortable after a game.
There's a point when it starts feeling a bit weird and uncomfortable. Almost 'needy'...
Indeed, I can’t imagine many gasroom posters bothering to frequent an opposition club chat room.
‘In peace’ type posters are usually passive aggressive self-publicists with a messiah complex 😉
Anyway, enjoying life behind enemy lines in Derby today!
First time back at AP for a while. Really enjoyable game with all the amusing subplots which make live sport so enjoyable. Two quality teams - the Derby no10 was outstanding - won by the better team overall. Wouldn’t mind watching that every week….
Another random thought, spawned by @floyd's comment above - I don't think I've ever looked forward to a trip to Accrington so much before... They've always been tough battles, sometimes on real 'leveller' surfaces, and they haven't always gone our way. Because guess what, Coleman is smart enough not only to "know what we do", but actually try to do something about it, with whatever he has at his disposal. So I'm not expecting an easy ride by any means. But I just like the fact that we are travelling there full of confidence, while they are finding wins hard to come by. In recent memory, they've tended to have been the form team when we've gone up there.
Well that’s jinxed it!
Have to say that I thought that @Raminpeace was pretty reasonable by opposition fan standards. A bit one-eyed, but aren't we all? I was slightly disappointed by the reaction of one or two on here, although @railwaysteve and others provided balance.
The thing that really irritates me is that even the relatively reasonable @Raminpeace did not say "Yes, we cheated financially and we deserved our punishment". I have yet to see a single Derby fan make this simple admission.
@OakwoodExile agreed and also gives this place a bit of life rather than everyone saying the same thing.
Would like to have seen @Raminpeace turn proper villain and lose it but maybe next time.
Back to the fun on the pitch I just enjoyed our third goal a few times again. It has been mentioned that Tjay was looking to get a corner off the defender. Nope. He looked up several times before delivering an absolute peach of a cross. Wing immediately acknowledged that as it was an absolute pin point pass. Lovely goal.
I think @Raminpeace did pretty well overall. We all have biases towards our team, and he didn't descend into the abuse that 99% of Derby fans might have. I am glad we are welcoming enough for someone to stay on for a protracted period before and after a match and actually have some debate in what is a very emotional clash. If we can do that with a Derby fan, we can do it with anyone.
The funniest thing about this weekend is Derby fans descending to calling us a small club who can't fill our stadium, as if being a small club is an insult. It becomes even funnier when they are not self aware enough to realize they just lost to this tiny club in the same division, so there is a lesson in there about levels of achievement versus size.
I wasn't going to post until we meet again but.... here goes. Morris vastly overspent and put us in trouble. Trouble he, eventually, decided he either couldn't or wouldn't fund any longer. Upshot of it is he wrote off around £140M he'd "lent" the club and sold the ground for around £60M less than he paid for it. He put the club in administration and we got a 12 point deduction for that. Fully deserved. No argument even vaguely possible.
Where I do have double feelings is this. The other 9 point deduction came from using a different amortisation method. The method used is legal in UK Law under FRS102. The first tribunal found we hadn't done anything amiss. That committee contained accountants judging an accounting issue. The EFL decided to appeal, as was their right. The appeal committee contained zero accountants. Strange for a group of people judging an accounting question. The method used wasn't against any specific rule. The appeal committee found us guilty. We were ordered to pay a small fine, amend several year's accounts to reflect linear amortisation, and resubmit those accounts. That led to us exceeding FFP limits and the 9 points were deducted. No specific offence but they found that there is a blanket caveat allowing them to find clubs guilty of things not specified if it's viewed to be somehow unfair. Considering Morris' reckless spending it was unfair to other clubs. However, I still struggle with it a little because Morris informed the EFL he was making the accounting change back in 2015. Why did it take them until 2019 to decide it was "iffy". The EFL failed in its duty of care to DCFC, IMO. We certainly fell into the parameters of the blanket clause so a punishment was right. I also think that the EFL's complicity in not acting sooner should have been taken into consideration. They were told what was happening. they failed to loom at it and decide if it was OK or not.
Since the appeal, EFL rules have been changed to ban the amortisation method used
Hopefully you can see why I am in dubio over the 9 points. Basically, not innocent but not alone in guilt. I'd be much happier if the EFL had taken their "involvement" into account. Having said that, they might have taken it into account but not said so.
Make of it what you will. Not the blanket acceptance you might have thought of @OakwoodExile but hopefully a setting out of my feelings towards it that you can see something in.
Raminpeace's explanation is the clearest I've seen on this topic. Thank you.
And thank you for bothering to come on and engage with such a range of topics without rising (too much) to the occasional sly digs In my opinion, your views have enhanced the build up and fall out from a fantastic game and, subject to our respective clubs' positions next year, you will be more than welcome.
Interesting read, @Raminpeace. Really it should have just been the 12 points and a season earlier, and we'd all be happy (I couldn't resist, sorry).
Blimey, this was tedious enough when it was just our own fans banging on about it
Trigger warning for @eric_plant - more banging on coming. Feel free not to read it.
Hi @Raminpeace. As @Thicketblue says, that's a very clear explanation. And I'd find it a great deal more convincing if it didn't completely ignore the question of motive. As I understand it, Derby had previously used the straight line method of amortising player contracts and only switched to the valuation method as a means to get round the FFP rules. I can fully understand that a panel of accountants might approach this from the perspective of "Does this method comply with the generally accepted principles of commercial accountancy?". But I can equally accept that a more football-oriented appeals committee would ask itself (1) "Was this a blatant attempt to get round the rules?" and (2) "Do we have a rule to hand that allows us to stop it?". That they declined to allow Derby County to continue to play silly buggers is, in my view at least, entirely to their credit.
Unfortunately it's just more excuses and continuing to blame someone else. The League Arbitration Panel decision covers it all in detail. While FRS 102 allows residual values to be used for amortisation of intangible assets in certain specific circumstances, it is highly doubtful that it was appropriate in Derby's case, and even if it was applicable they weren't correctly applying their own accounting policy in practice.
https://www.efl.com/contentassets/873a8914e09740d3b3a8848131ea10b8/efl-v-derby-county---appeal-decision.pdf
One particular highlight at paragraph 84:
a. The approach that was adopted was operated, on the Club’s own evidence, so informally and with such a lack of evidential basis that it generated, in the course of three whole accounting years in operation, not a single document indicating how or on what basis the Club had determined for each player whether to allocate an ERV at all, at what point in time during the contract it hoped to sell the player and how much it hoped to receive by way of a transfer fee.
b. The only document from which it could be inferred that these determinations had even taken place was a very brief set of ‘Amortisation Schedules’ produced by the Club after the EFL’s specific disclosure application [see DC decision 16(a)] and [58]. But as the DC acknowledged, “…although the (sole) amortisation schedule provided by the Club referenced, on a player by player basis, the figures applied by the Club to those players on a year by year basis, the mechanics or “maths” behind those figures was not readily discernible from that schedule.” In fact the Amortisation Schedules offered no way in which to work out how the Club might have gone about making the determinations required by its amortisation method at all.
c. Mr Pearce said that the Club’s determination of the ‘expected recoverable values’ reflected “the Club’s own view of such matters, consultation by the Club with agents and agencies and by a consideration (from online databases on websites such as TransferMarkt.de and Kicker.de) of transfer prices being achieved in the market for comparable/similar players” [54]. This evidence makes it all the more surprising that no documents exist evidencing the process.
d. Comparison between the values provided by the Club and online websites such as www.transfermarkt.com does not enable one to understand the process utilised by the Club in any way; on the contrary, the values utilised by the Club seem to have been consistently in excess of the values placed by such websites.
@Chris here's some more background for you. When Morris bought the club off the 3 amigos in September 2015, he paid off what debt the club had and that left us with only the £15M mortgage on Pride Park. He informed the EFL that the club was going to change the amortisation method used. No debt apart from the mortgage. No FFP issues which goes against your thoughts that the change was solely to avoid FFP issues. There weren't any at that time.
Why did it take the EFL 4 years to decide there was a problem? Surely, any organisation in the position of the EFL and with their responsibilities to both their entire membership and to protecting some clubs against themselves (should they have "helped" us not get in the mess in line with the duty of care they have towards member clubs?), should look at changes a member club informs them of in order to ensure that it doesn't infringe on that organisations rules. In my previous post I wrote that Morris was reckless. I wrote that his recklessness put the club in trouble. I wrote that there can be no argument whatsoever about the 12 points. I also wrote that the blanket clause is there and that the club did fall into that blanket. The only thing I have said is should the EFL have taken into account their own complicity in this. IMO they really should have had a good look at what Morris was doing re amortisation back in 2015. I also added the caveat that they might have but haven't publicised it.
Why do salient parts of my posts appear to get serially ignored on here? As I also wrote, not 100% guilty due to, what I see as, but not innocent either.
zzzzzzz
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I switched my phone on just now and saw that. Life’s too short !
ZZZZZZ indeed.
Derby cheated and their fans are upset they got caught. That's all there really is to it.
It's taken the league 4 years to bring charges against Man City for goodness sake. So it's no surprise it can take that long for smaller time dodgy dealings.
QED