Predictably after the home defeat by a slick and competent QPR, we have the usual outpouring of despair and despondency.

Like everyone else associated with the Rams, I didn’t feel too good about the result but let’s look at the overall picture.

The Rams centre back was their fifth choice (after Leacock, Buxton, McEveley and Addison) and that choice made one error, which led to a goal by the Championship in-form team.

Their free-kick was a nonsense as the ref was conned, the penalty was a soft one akin to the one at the Riverside, when Johnson ran into Barker and fell down.

Things just aren’t going our way at the moment, but that is the rub of the green – it will all even out (despite what a grandfather of 8 believes who can throw a tantrum worthy of a two year old).

And of course there are the injuries. These are part and parcel of the game sometimes and it can be no more than sheer luck that a team goes through a whole season, without losing key players.  It then also has to be bad luck when there’s a devastating succession of injuries that destroys a team and debilitates a squad.

That’s exactly what’s happening to us at the moment – it’s been impossible to have a settled centre back pairing, a settled strike force or for that matter a midfield of any description.

Those who decry Teale and sometimes Croft for their lack of skill / effort / guile (take your pick) often forget that teams need shape and this helps other players to know that when they need to pass out wide, those two will be there ready for the pass.

Personally I thought we did well to get two goals past the team of the month, and I also thought Barker is looking to be a great buy (at long last) and at times on Saturday looked as if he were holding the fort alone.

Sooner or later, some of the injuries will clear up and we will start to get a better idea of the real worth of Clough and his management team.  The nucleus of the team will then hopefully start to emerge and we shall see whether we are really improving or not as a club. Those inclined to the ‘half-empty’ philosophy will (and are already) say ‘not’.

Part of the assessment of the management team will be in seeing who they move on.  For my part, I can’t get rid of the nagging feeling that Jewell was diddled by Forest (or was it an astute piece of business on their part) in acquiring Commons.  I remember all those posts from Forest fans telling us: “great player on his day, but too often injured”.

In all, there is still a great deal of work to be done by Clough and his team, not least in getting players who stay fit for most of the season while crafting them into a team that plays football and wins games.

But back to the injuries – there was a poignant story based on a newly published book (Football Nation: Sixty Years of the Beautiful Game” by Andrew Ward & John Williams) in the October issue of “When Saturday Comes” (the one with David James on the cover shouting – ‘Help I’m still here!’). 

It concerned Leon Leuty, one of Derby’s all-time classy defenders, who had been sold to Notts County, and was taken ill.  He went into pre-season training and “shuffled along like an old man”, and the trainer told him that he wasn’t trying.  Leuty went home and cried.  Within a matter of five months he was dead from lymph sarcoma. The trainer apologised to Leuty’s family as he had no idea Leuty was so ill.

The other fascinating titbit in the article was the one about the Matthews final – what I didn’t know was that Bolton had eight fit men on the field in the last fifteen minutes when Blackpool overcame them to win the FA Cup.  This is why we now have substitutes.

So injuries have always been with us and in some cases, permanent disability has resulted.  I’d suggest that Stamps’ blindness was a result of heading those heavy balls, and possibly McMinn’s loss of his limb arose from one of his injuries. That’s the downside of football that we rarely get to see.  People maimed for the rest of their lives after undergoing several operations.

For my part, I very much hope that we soon see our walking wounded back on the field and can have a settled team to assess who needs to go, stay, and who will be part of a steady successful team over the next five years.

But for now most of us, including me, are having great difficulty in accepting that like everything else, this crisis will pass. When it does we will be able to, as they say nowadays, ‘move on’, instead of the old timers’ who bark: “Run it off, son!”.

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Paul Redfern

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