Easter brought us points – three precious points that made for the eating of chocolate eggs amongst the Rams faithful especially enjoyable but after the defeat by Wolves, possibly none too digestible with the all too predictable defensive errors.

Knowing Nigel and his team, they won’t have spent much time savouring chocolate eggs, they will have already started preparations for next season.  They will have started to draw up fitness targets and regimes for those staying, made phone calls letting people know that so and so is available and gone on scouting trips and probably already pencilled in one or two transfer targets.

They will have also decided on those who are not going to stay and we can expect fairly early departures for a number of people. The scouting will probably intensify over the next few weeks to ensure that as soon as the transfer window opens we are in there first, trying to outbid any potential Premiership teams looking for young players to add to their reserves.

I stated back in January that there would be some players that fans rated who would depart and players that fans hated or didn’t rate who would stay.  I think it’s fairly evident who is probably going, and who is probably staying.  It is those players in the grey area – that no-one is sure whether or not they will stay or go.  A lot of course depends if a club comes in with a decent offer that may enable Clough to go and get someone more to his liking.  Other factors come into play – families or being able to get on with team mates for example – these things we often don’t know about.  Or perhaps more important, the willingness to listen and learn from the Clough management team.

But in the main, for me, it has become gradually clear that a pattern is emerging.  It is that older players with hefty wage slips are going to be on their way out, while we get in some younger players who have higher fitness levels and are more willing to listen and learn from the management team.

A big issue naturally is the ability of the club to pay off those players surplus to requirements and this is where Clough has the benefit of an extra year as opposed to Jewell who was unable to offload those who would have been too costly to issue P45’s to.

I am fairly sure that come the pre-season training regime, there will be very little of the squad left behind by the little Scot now ducking and diving and generally making a nuisance of himself down the road from us.

What I’m also hoping for is some indication of a youth policy – I am firmly of the opinion that in modern day football, we have to develop a good system from the bottom upwards so we can generate income for sales and keep those who are good enough.  I feel that our youth system has been hit and miss for several seasons – depending on the chap in charge and while we have had some notable successes, it has not been consistent enough for the club to really benefit from it.

Of course, this will take time and it will probably be around five or more years before we see some real indication of success but if Clough is any good, by then we will be in the Premiership and the last thing we need is a repeat of the Smith years when his transfers started to cost more and deliver much less.  It is then we need to be blooding youngsters ready to take on the Premiership with their pace and athleticism.

So I am very much hoping that the next few weeks we will see at least one or two Academy players coming on – after all that’s when we started to see Addison last season – towards the end.  But of course, it may be that there aren’t any good enough in which case I expect the Clough team to taking a hard look at why not.  

The focus has to be not only the 20 or so players for the first team squad but also a hinterland of Academy players ready to play for the reserves for when we join the reserve league.  The paucity of our lack of planning under the Davies regime was starkly illustrated by the number of wins and losses by the reserves – it closely mirrored far too uncomfortably the hapless results of the first team, and no doubt contributed in no small way to the prevailing sense of hopelessness and gloom over the whole club that is only just beginning to be dispelled.

But for now, we are just about safe – perhaps - and we can start to look forward to watching how Clough goes about building his dynasty, hopefully for the next ten years.  And perhaps one day, Clough will be mentioned in the same breath with the likes of Wenger as someone who has built from within and developed young players.

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Paul Redfern

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