Same As Ever, it's All Change at Derby
As the January window opens, most teams are looking for those killer signings to make or break their season. However, having as much chance of staying up as Britney has of winning mum of the year, Derby are effectively starting pre-season for next season's promotion campaign.
Being that our short pre-season was everyone's favourite excuse for our dismal Premiership performance, six months should do nicely for Paul Jewell this time around.
This window will undoubtedly see five or six new faces at Derby and we already have some interesting names in the frame. Titto Villa, £2m unknown Argentinian striker and ex England mentalist Danny Mills are already on board. The mercurial but moody Laurent Robert should be next and we are also going in hard for Robbie Savage and Hossam Ghally (remember the guy Steve Bruce canned after one training session for refusing to join in?). If Jewell wants characters, he's on the right track with that lot!
After the heartbreak of gift wrapping Bolton's injury time winner last week, things couldn't feasibly get any lower for Rams fans (although after 25 minutes of todays cup game agast Sheff Wednesday it looked like it could). A rake of new signings is just what the doctor ordered. One things for sure they can't feasibly do any worse than the players they are replacing.
With 4 months of the season to go, Paul Jewell can start to mould a new team and if we have any remote success, we should definitely beat the Mackems 15 point record lowest points total.
I'd say Billy got them playing above themselves and as Matt said, they had a few sneaky 1-0 wins. I was at the Wigan game on saturday and there is hope though, they need time to get match fit. But when I say hope, that's for next year. Oh, and could anyone explain to me why Nyatanga hasn't been given a go?
Posted by: Tom | January 14, 2008 at 07:39 PM
What a good column, it hadn't occurred to me that this is now our pre season but I suppose it is!
Rich, in answer to your question: there are two main reasons I think as to why we have struggled so badly this season 1) for large parts of last season we scraped 1-0 wins in games we should probably have lost, we were a good mid-table side that got lucky (and defended very well). The play-off final was a good example of how our season went: outplayed by a better team for the majority of the game but managed to sneak a winner against the run of play. 2) a criminal lack of investment. Robert Earnshaw was signed for £3.5m by the board, a player Billy didn't want and his performances have showed that. The majority of the other signings were ones that I would expect a Championship side with ambitions to beat the drop to League 1 would make.
Posted by: Matt | January 09, 2008 at 09:31 AM
Why are Derby doing so much worse than the other promoted teams? You looked good in the Championship last year and I thought that with Billy Davies, who clearly had something about him, you'd do alright.
It's just been awful though hasn't it?
Posted by: rich | January 06, 2008 at 11:24 PM