Days When Clough Pulled A Rabbit From The Hat!
Wednesday, 8th Jun 2011 14:31 by Derby County Blog

It’s easy to forget it, amidst the morale-sapping afternoons, the bitter defeats and the winless runs, but there have been more than a couple of brilliant days for Derby County over the last couple of seasons.

Sure, they’ve been outweighed by the disappointments, but hard-fought victories against the likes of Forest, Leeds and Newcastle have studded the darkness like stars, sending Rams fans home exultant – and remembering why they bother turning up, week after sodding week.

My contention, from cherry-picking these great results from the Nigel Clough era and listing them in this blogpost, is that despite the sustained, vitriolic and sometimes valid criticism of some Derby supporters, Nigel Clough is not a bad manager.

He has never had a team of players he can really rely on – the odd player, maybe, but not eleven of them – to put in a good performances on a consistent basis, yet he has still managed to dredge up some superb wins along the way. Hampered by the loss of star players and the club’s failure to replace them, he has worked with inadequate squads, largely staffed with loanees and players he hadn’t signed and didn’t want.

The 2011/12 season will be different. Clough will finally, assuming the club can actually conclude the transfers, be in charge of a squad of his own players and must sink or swim with them.

That’s all any manager wants, surely – the opportunity to put his own team out on the park on a Saturday, rather than a hotch-potch, patched-up side – a glance through the line-ups below shows the variable nature of the players he’s had to work with since arriving in January 2009.

Hopefully, this season, we can look forward to many more enjoyable nights like the ones recounted in this article. Big games are to come against Forest, Leeds and Leicester again and the Pride Park faithful will be desperate to see the Rams succeed – especially against their traditional archrivals from Nottingham and Yorkshire.

For now, enjoy remembering a few of the good days – here’s hoping that there are more triumphs to add to this list 12 months from now.

31st January 2009 – Derby County 2 (Hulse, Commons) Coventry City 1

Team: Bywater; Connolly, Addison (McEveley), Albrechtsen, Stewart; Barazite (Sterjovski), Savage, Green, Teale; Commons; Hulse

In a crazy January which saw Paul Jewell throw in the towel, the euphoria of victory over Manchester United in the first leg of the League Cup semi final and a drawn FA Cup home game against Forest, Derby County failed to win in their first four matches under Nigel Clough.

Admittedly, one of those games was the return fixture at Old Trafford, but still, by the time Chris Coleman’s Coventry City came calling, the buzz from Clough’s emotional arrival at Pride Park was starting to wear off.

A poor performance by a scratchy looking side resulted in defeat to QPR in Clough’s first home game. Derby then unluckily lost at Birmingham City despite an improved performance, a result which sent the Rams tumbling into the relegation zone.

So Derby really needed to beat the Sky Blues – and they came out all guns blazing. It was 2-0 before Coventry could blink. Rob Hulse headed home the opener on the quarter hour, before Kris Commons, shifted into a new position in the hole, drilled in a second just two minutes later.

The much maligned Gary Teale was now playing on the left wing and suddenly looked like a different player. Miles Addison, who came off at half time through injury in this game, was moved from midfield to centre back, making room for Robbie Savage – who, according to Jewell, was finished as a footballer.

These changes to the team started to bear fruit very quickly. With Coventry dispatched, the Rams then came up with the mother of all results, recovering from 2-0 down to win 3-2 at the City Ground and knock Notts Forest out of the FA Cup. It was the Rams first win there since 1971 – and even better was to follow just weeks later.

21st February 2009 – Nottingham Forest 1 Derby County 3 (Nyatanga, Hulse, Davies pen)

Team: Bywater; Connolly, Albrechtsen, Nyatanga (Todd), McEveley; Barazite (Sterjovski), Savage, Green, Davies; Commons; Hulse (Villa)

By the time of Derby’s fourth game against Forest of the season, the Clough Bounce had accounted for Plymouth Argyle (3-0 at Home Park) and Blackpool (4-1 at Pride Park). Suddenly, the relegation fears engendered by Jewell seemed ridiculous. And by the time Forest had been easily, easily beaten at the City Ground, Derby looked truly reborn.

On a sunny afternoon in February, the Rams took the lead early on through Lewin Nyatanga. Rob Hulse bagged a second and Steve Davies sealed the deal by calmly slotting in a penalty.

Forest did score a late consolation goal, but I doubt it felt like much of a consolation to their supporters. The Red Dogs could do little more than wail, gnash their teeth and viciously berate Commons, because the game was no contest.

After failing to beat Forest away since the days of Clough senior, Derby had suddenly done it twice in a month. All we ever needed to do, it seemed, for one serene afternoon at least, was bring the Clough name back to make the impossible become possible.

28th December 2009 – Newcastle United 0 Derby County 0

Bywater; Connolly, Addison, Buxton, McEveley; Green, Savage, Pearson, Hendrie (Commons); Hulse, Campbell (Livermore)

It was only a point, but it was so much more important than your average goalless draw. Derby were struggling to overcome an awful start to the season and had just let the home fans down badly in a dispiriting 2-0 loss to Blackpool on Boxing Day – a performance of worrying torpor.

The Premier League-bound Tangerines had ripped the Rams to shreds and the game at St James’ Park just two days later had the air of a formality about it. Surely it was just a case of how many the promotion-bound Toon, who were unbeaten at home, would score.

Although Chris Hughton’s Magpies had made their home ground a true fortress, they could find no way past a Rams eleven who found a performance of inspiring resilience from somewhere, God knows where.

Jake Buxton and Miles Addison, who was clearly feeling the effects of his foot injury, defended manfully, aided by Robbie Savage, who was born for challenges such as this one. One superbly-timed, meaty sliding tackle just outside the penalty area will live long in the memory and was all the more impressive for the fact that Sav had already been booked.

Jay McEveley did see red, but even with ten men, Derby held out. Nile Ranger had a close-range shot tipped against the underside of the bar by Stephen Bywater late on, but arguably the best chance of the match fell to Derby, when DJ Campbell had a drive brilliantly saved by Steve Harper after Stephen Pearson got away down the left.

It was a terrific, battling performance and hinted at a turning of the corner for our beleaguered club. Nobody could have foreseen the chronically, cripplingly embarrassing cock-up that would follow in the next league fixture – the Hayes and Hooper-led Scunthorpe Disaster - but after that, Clough’s men won four of their next six league games, a run of form which was key to keeping the club in the Championship.

30th January 2010 – Derby County 1 (Hulse) Nottingham Forest 0

Bywater; Hunt, Barker, Buxton, McEveley; Green, Savage, Johnson (Teale), Pearson; Commons (Anderson); Hulse (Porter)

“Unbeaten away / Unbeaten away…”

That was the repeatedly crowed and, as it turned out, somewhat premature boast of the Forest fans during the game. They had it quite literally rammed down their throat when the old one-two proved too good for them – Commons’ inswinging free kick from the right was headed into the net by Hulse and that was that.

The Rams were massive underdogs for this match, as Billy Davies’ Forest were busy mounting a promotion push on the back of that unbeaten away record, with Derby languishing miles behind them in the table and – after dreadful defeats against Doncaster, Blackpool, Scunthorpe and Plymouth – starting to look like relegation candidates.

On the day, it didn’t matter, because Shaun Barker won everything, Bywater made his saves, Hulse did what Hulse does best – and the ghost of Steve Bloomer was with us. In fact, I swear I saw him in the crowd as I left the stadium, turning to wink at me before he vanished into thin air.

25th September 2010 – Derby County 5 (Bueno, Commons, Bueno, Green, Kuqi) vs. Crystal Palace 0

The 2010/11 season couldn’t have started any better, as Clough’s men went to Elland Road with a new 4-2-3-1 formation that worked a treat. Leeds United’s direct, huff and puff football looked positively Victorian compared to the Rams’ passing game and the Yorkshire crowd wilted in the face of Derby’s superiority. The only time they roused themselves was when the Rams fans chanted ‘You’re not famous anymore’.

Unfortunately, the season failed to come to life after that false dawn. By the time George Burley’s Crystal Palace came to town, the Leeds game was a fading memory and Derby were back down amongst the dead men. After a sad defeat at Hull City, Johnny Metgod told BBC Radio Derby that you couldn’t expect very much from the current squad and with Rob Hulse sold, there seemed to be little hope for the future.

Palace, however, were poor and Derby passed them to death. With a doddering Edgar Davids playing as a full back, the Eagles were effectively down to ten men even before James Vaughan was sent off for a stupid two-footed lunge on John Brayford.

They were simply unable to cope and Bueno’s first goal goes down as one of my favourite Rams finishes. A pin-point, slick passing move down the pitch culminated in Alberto nailing a first-timer into the bottom corner with stunning accuracy. Moments of real quality like that have been too few and far between in the past decade.

The game turned into a sunny procession and the Rams fans were even treated to a marvellous Claude Davis howler. The clueless, diabolical ‘centre back’ offered some payback for his ruinously costly spell at Derby by prodding a brainless backpass straight to Shefki Kuqi, instead of his goalkeeper.

Cue the bellyflop.

All seemed so bright that day.

12th March 2011 – Derby County 2 (Williams og, S. Davies) Swansea City 1

Crisis point. Derby’s form had completely deserted them, with only one win in their previous 13 games. Clough was under serious pressure to get a result, lest we took a nosedive into Division Three for the first time since the early 1980s. Swansea, meanwhile, were eyeing promotion, playing the brand of patient possession football that has become the Swans’ pleasing trademark in recent years.

It was especially pleasing when Swansea’s Wales centre back Ashley Williams, so accustomed to knocking the ball back to Dutch goalkeeper Dorus de Vries, decided to ‘go home’ under terrier-like pressure from Derby’s forwards. Without looking, he nonchalantly played a backpass which caught de Vries totally flat-footed and rolled over the line before he could recover. It was an extraordinary stroke of luck for Derby.

Galvanised, the Rams dug in, riding their luck at times, but ultimately taking a decisive advantage when Steve Davies got up highest to head home a corner. The Swans pulled one back and fought hard to the end, but Clough’s men showed the necessary desire and determination to hold out for a priceless victory. It was a superb result and my Swans-supporting mate summed it up perfectly by texting me later: -

“You lot sure picked the wrong day to stop being sh**!”

There was plenty more sh** to come, with only one more win achieved in the last nine games of the season, but the three points we dug out that day went a long way to keeping Derby County in the Championship. And there was, at least, one more great night at Pride Park to come in 2010/11.

12th April 2011 – Derby County 2 (Ward, B. Davies) Leeds United 1

A traditional foe, played in an evening game under lights. You can’t beat it. And somehow, Clough dredged a brilliant performance out of a team who had suffered a seemingly endless series of miserable defeats throughout a terrible season.

Leeds were pushing for the play-offs, but looked second best throughout and it was a grotesque injustice when Max Gradel fired them into the lead just before the hour. Not to worry, because the Rams were level almost immediately. Stephen Pearson escaped down the left and drilled in a cross which Jamie Ward steered into the roof of the net. Euphoria.

Then Ben Davies, of all people, lashed in a screamer of a volley from the edge of the box minutes later, sending Pride Park into total rapture. From then on, the result was never in doubt and a never-ending series of hoofballs into the Rams box were soaked up, much as they had been soaked up at Elland Road on the first day of the season.

A magical evening.

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But magic of that sort has been in short supply for much of the current manager’s tenure. And I just hope that Nigel Clough and his side can give us more performances to be proud of next season. Because positives such as these great results have been comprehensively outnumbered by the negatives for way too long now.

Here’s hoping that the corner will finally, genuinely be turned in 2011/12.