Next Derby owners face extra £1m legal bill as Middlesbrough and Wycombe compensation claims head for ugly court battle

Norman_Conquest said:
First and foremost I want to make it clear that I have no love for Derby County and their ex-chairman Mel Morriss, the latter being everything you hate about professional football. I understand Derby cheated and in my eyes have only received a slap on the wrist with the 12 points deduction they received, of which three are suspended.

The whole of the Championship community knew what was going on at Derby and so did the people who sit at the top of the EFL. These people are not interested in fair play, they want the world to believe their league is exciting and are willing to turn a blind eye for this to happen. You only have to look at the teams who have previously broken the FFP rules to see that and the lack of punishment have they received. Will the Boro go after Villa, they beat Derby in the final.

The governing body of the EFL needs shaking up and the way the FFP rules are applied needs looking at. For me, any team in breach of these rules should be automatically relegated to the division below. At present we are allowing teams to claim sanctuary of the Premier League and the rules that apply to a Championship club cannot be enforced on any team reaching the 'church door.' All this needs to change with both the EFL and the Championship working in unison to prevent it.

I personally don't think our claim against Derby will change the thinking of the EFL, they knew what was going on that season and did nothing to prevent it. Even when they issued the points deduction they allowed it to be suspended, knowing this would keep Derby in the division at the expense of Wycombe Wanderers. It is the EFL we should be going after.
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we can’t go after the EFL unfortunately
 
So far, the punishment nowhere near matches the crime.

I don't think a points deduction or relegation further down the EFL is fair on the teams below Derby (in the whole of the EFL structure).

For example, if the current Derby team started playing in EFL League 2, they would probably take the top spot from another team who have built a team over time, within the rules.

As far as I know, the old administration have been found to have systematically flaunted the rules over many years, and even continued to do so, flying in the face of the EFL and its member clubs.

I think they should have ALL their assists stripped, 3 points awarded to all opponents they've played so far this season and 3 points given to the opponents of their remaining fixtures. Then kicked out of the EFL altogether. This won't account for the wrong they've done to teams in previous seasons but I think too much water has gone under the bridge to apply this awarding 3 points to all opponents for the last 5 years or whatever it was.

Once the administrators have sold all the assets, laid off all staff and registered a new company, they can then rehire staff, using the restraints imposed upon the lower leagues and then have to apply to any league that would have them.

If I'd had been caught conducting such nefarious activities with my old business in France, I'd expect 60 years in the Bastille (OK, its an opera house now, but you get my point)

The French don't mess about when it comes to business fraud or tax evasion.

I even knew a self-employed artist who got time for fiddling her tax returns.

Its time, we had a revolution in this country.
 
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Apologies for the essay, but the main hope I have is that all those on this thread who disagree with Gibson's legal strategy never called for the manager to go, or Gibson to sell the club, because of the failure to stay in the playoff places or "be more like Derby" (and Leicester, Bournemouth, Burnley, Huddersfield, Stoke, Sheff Utd, Wolves, Villa, Brentford, Wigan, Portsmouth, Charlton, notloB, Swindon, Bradford and, dare I say it, in the era of Bob 'the taps are made of gold in the Stadium of Light' Murray, Sunderland). There is a consistent dissatisfaction present among most Boro fans (a bit more bitter than the usual 'typical Boro') which I do not share, and is definitely not in line with Gibbo's "Sporting Glory" strapline. Spending the most, or more than your rivals, is a big factor in promotion from the Championship. As for many that is the only measure of success, it leads directly to what Derby are going through now, and other clubs have gone through in the past, and others are doing now and others still have got away with. When a cheat is caught bang to rights in a sport, it is usually complex if they have achieved some sporting success by cheating. Real Madrid cheated their way to La Liga titles and the early version of the European Cup, by dint of being the poster boys for the Spanish government. Boro players were caught up in early betting scandals, and by some accounts Cloughie was unpoular as a player 'cos he didn't like playing with cheats who made sure they let enough goals in to negate the ones he scored to ensure their bets came in. If the EFL had a properly constituted forum for these matters, Boro and Wycombe could let it lie, but there is not, and deliberately so. I too do not 'want' to see Derby liquidated, but to avoid that they need to be open and honest where before (and perhaps now) they were deliberately 'come and take my lawyers on if you think you're hard enough' in order to try and outspend their rivals unfairly (by the FFP rules, and the justice that is in them as a system is open to question). The only redress open to us and Wycombe is this one, and it will be interesting to see how/if the rules are changed after this matter is settled around this type of case within the EFL. It will show what the other clubs think of the possibility of actual legal scrutiny coming upon them for financial misdemeanours, rather than the FFP rules Mel Morris (and others) laugh at.
 
Cogeur_le_Conq said:
For example, if the current Derby team started playing in EFL League 2, they would probably take the top spot from another team who have built a team over time, within the rules.
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Good point. This happened in Scotland when Rangers were re-formed in the 4th tier.
 
Rofesleg said:
Good point. This happened in Scotland when Rangers were re-formed in the 4th tier.
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Opportunity missed there in my opinion SPL1 & SPL2 with Rangers in SPL2 for 4/5 seasons.

I thought they would have pulled a fast one trading places with someone like Darlo to join the EFL
 
The EFL have been woeful at enforcing rules that are themselves too loose.
The PL simply don't care what a club has done to get up. The examples of Aston Villa and Bournemouth are scandalous.
In fairness, how we escaped FFP scrutiny in 2016 is an interesting one based on our losses.

Derby are one of a number of clubs who cheated and messed up. The EFL should have acted earlier and the punishments are still paltry. It should be instant relegation by at least one league. When a cheating club is relegated from the blind eyed PL, they should go down to League One at least.

Of course I feel for the Derby fans and I don't want their club to go bang, but Gibson has taken the only course of action he can and should be applauded.
£45m is logical based on 25% of guaranteed revenue uplift from promotion and PP's. It has little chance of being awarded, as the probability of 6th place Boro winning a Play Offs we were nowhere near equipped to win would be considered. I would guess the Bookies odds would have been far longer than the 1 in 4 the claim represents.
Even if Gibson just gets costs covered, it has been the right thing to do to shed light on the EFL's incompetence/corruption.

What Stoke City have done in taking all amortisation in one season and writing all player's book value to zero is the worst of the lot for me.
No equity injected by owners, no revaluation of assets, yet an £88.4m loss in year to June 2020, following £15.4m loss in year to 2019 and a £30.2m loss in year to 2018.
With no amortisation to deal with, and being no longer hampered by impairment from the wages of players whose contracts have been written off but who they can't shift, they have a massive unfair advantage over the rest of the league.
Obscenely rich owners and the financial decks cleared, it is much worse than what Derby did.
 
newyddion said:
what do we go at them for?
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A vote of no confidence in them and a huge shakeup at the top would be a start for me.

Rick Parry is no mug, his background is in chartered accountancy, he helped to form the Premier League and negotiated deals with Sky, etc. for television rights worth millions, he advised two of our major cities on bidding for the Olympics, yet he sat back and allowed this debacle go on under his watch.

You cannot tell me that a man so knowledgeable about running a business didn't know what was happening.
 
Has the idea of us taking this case to court and us losing been discussed ? Wouldn't be happy with money being wasted on Derby's lawyers.
I don't see any realistic chance of us getting a successful outcome. Pretty sure a Judge would point to punishment already applied by EFL even if they agreed with our argument.
 
Starbuck said:
Has the idea of us taking this case to court and us losing been discussed ? Wouldn't be happy with money being wasted on Derby's lawyers.
I don't see any realistic chance of us getting a successful outcome. Pretty sure a Judge would point to punishment already applied by EFL even if they agreed with our argument.
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The flipside of that is that the punishment by the EFL has already confirmed that they are guilty? The case to answer then, is whether we were financially disadvantaged by the actions of Derby?

If we can prove that we were, which you would assume that missing out on revenue of at least two play-off games we can, then they'll come up with a figure plus costs.

Maybe?
 
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