Quote Originally Posted by swaledale View Post
One can be very knowledgeable about football and not be a very good manager!

Frank had one season at the club and by wheeling and dealing got the team into the Play Off final where we lost narrowly to Villa a recently relegated team. Its unfortunate for us that Chelski were in a position to offer him a job, but thats football.

His transfer dealings have certainly been no worse (and arguably with less expenditure) than the managers that preceded him, Marriott was hardly fit during his tenure (well he has been hardly fit during his time at the club) and theres a long history of Derby buying much feted players who fail to produce for the club! Not sure what evidence you have that he encouraged a "drinking culture" prior to "drinkgate" I don't remember other incidents.

Anyway this was the season you predicted the youngsters would come through, develop and we could push for promotion, so I'm very gald we didn't get into the playoffs and fluke promotion last season, I mean picking up £90 million even if we were the the prems whipping boys would have not done the clubs finances any good at all.. we'd have pissed it away on expensive ****e players!!
Not sure about Frank’s ‘wheeling and dealing’ Swale. Whatever success he had, which was no more than another unsuccessful Wembley appearance, was largely down to bringing in Tomori, Mount and Wilson on loan and having a fit leader in Keogh.
He brought us Marriott - who looked excellent for three months and then disappeared only to rediscover his confidence at Elland Road before being inexplicably dropped for Wembley - and he brought us Evans and FloJo for which I shall never be grateful.

One of the most frustrating things about being a DCFC supporter is our inability to spot and buy emerging talent at the right time.
Two examples...I distinctly remember us being strongly linked - probably during Rowett’s reign - with Ollie Watkins (then at Exeter) and local boy Che Adams. They weren’t considered good enough for us but have both recently arrived in the Premier League for combined fees of around £43m!
If only we had the ability to scout emerging, affordable and ‘hungry’ talent...but, it seems, we don’t.