Ramballs

Bye Bye Tito

News has come in that Tito Villa will be leaving Derby County for Mexican side Cruz Azul.  Yahoo! Sports are reporting a deal has been reached between the two teams. “We have reached an agreement with Derby County of England for the transfer of Emmanuel Villa, who will arrive (in Mexico) on Tuesday to undergo a medical and sign a contract,” Cruz Azul said in a statement.

Tito Villa looks set to leave Derby County

Popside strikes again

Internet football forums are strange, but brilliant, places. Unlike many other forums on the internet, such as digital photography, pc gamer or butterfly murderer forums, football forums bring in a real cross section of society prepared to discuss all of lifes many aspects. Take, for example, the typical PC gamer forum. It’s filled with 15-30 year old guys who can spend hours debating the pros and cons of the lily power magic potion in the latest “Fairies and Daisies: Wrath of Pollen” MMORPG. You might find the odd female gamer on there but she probably looks like a man and thinks a snog is a character from World of Warcraft. Likewise, on a specialist photography forum you’d find a group of yawn inducing dullards patting each other on the back as they all understand why the Nikon D700 is worth £600 more than the Olympus E-30. Boring.

Football forums provide people tend to draw people in from a larger pool. From your middle class sorts, with their tickets in the west stand lower and a flask of organic fair trade coffee with garbaldis for dunking in their half time drinks, to the working class joe bloggs who eats pies, drinks watered down lager and leaves 5 minutes before full time so they can get back to the pub and to the bar before the crowds arrive. These people come together on the internet to discuss general stuff with the occassional word about football thrown in for good measure. And sometimes, just sometimes, you get a genuinely quality post that will make your day. Read on…

Popside.com is my first choice Derby County message board. Good banter, reasonably efficient modding (occassionally bordering on Nazism) and it has, as all good messageboards should, a resident rival fan. Hello Russ!

Last week saw the discovery of a post by Russ P, now Pablo due to his post count getting worryingly high for a Forest fan on a Derby message board, from back in 2005. As a rule Russ has an opinion that he wants everyone to hear so in this instance, I’ll do my bit to make it heard by a wider audience.

Russ said 
“If you ever saw JJ [Jermaine Jenas] in Forest shirt, you would know that there was no gamble; he’s the English Patrick Vieira, and he’ll be captain of his country within the next three years. He’s that good, Paul Hart said when he broke into the Forest first team that he had the ability to be the player of his generation and he genuinely wasn’t exaggerating. He will, I believe, go on to be better than Lampard; Jenas and Gerrard will be the first choice England midfield by the time of the European Championships in 2008.”

I won’t be asking for Russ’ lottery numbers, stock market investments or racing tips anytime soon. Thanks JR for uncovering that gem from the archives.

Fotheringham Joins Derby For a Trial

Mark Fotheringham will be joing Derby County for a Trial

Mark Fotheringham will be joining Derby County during the pre-season period for a trial period. Nigel Clough has brought him in as the rams only have Paul Green, Robbie Savage and Stephen Pearson who can play in the centre midfield position. Fotheringham started his career with Celtic before moving to to the swiss team Aarau, Rangers and then Norwich. During his time at Norwich he became club captain and scored 4 goals in 76 appearances. Read more about Mark Fotheringham here.

Wordpress & Derby County

This blog appears to be one of the few dedicated Derby County blogs on wordpress so when I started searching from Derby County related blogs I wasn’t expecting much. That’s why I want to show you this little piece which is a great write up about the appointment of Nigel Clough as our glorious leader. This article cuts through a lot or the tabloid nonsense and tells a more likely story.