In the days immediately following the Rams’ abysmal first leg playoff defeat against Hull at the iPro, the name ‘Pancho Villa’ kept popping into my head.
Villa was a Mexican revolutionary who died in 1923, uttering the immortal last words; "Don’t let it end like this..., tell them I said something.”
The sense of helpless futility imparted by Villa’s words seemed an appropriate way to sum up the Rams season, which started with great optimism.
Under a well-regarded new coach and with a great deal of money spent on the playing staff; the team passed through very good and very bad spells and yet now seems to have ended on a note of despair.
Sometimes you get a premonition that things are not going to go your way, and for me that happened on Saturday when I looked at the Rams line-up and saw that Chris Baird was on the bench. That selection brought home that we were at the end of a long season, and the Rams were scraping the barrel.
That same feeling was reinforced late in the game when, with the Rams chasing the game, we brought on Nick Blackman as our ace in the hole. Who else could you bring on that was less likely to provide inspiration for a dying cause?
Tuesday, of course, gave us all hope that things can be better in the near future, but the damage was done. Big decisions now await the club this summer, and the club has to come up with the right answers.
The first point of business is to appoint a permanent manager or ‘head coach’ to replace the departed Paul Clement. The person chosen must be someone who is both an astute transfer market operator and also able to get the most out of the players he already has. The second then has to be to decide how to build a serious promotion challenge using the players in the squad.
If the Rams are to mount an effective challenge next season, then the club has to learn how to tell a good player from a bad one in the transfer market; more precisely, how to judge a player who will fit into the Rams team and make a contribution, rather than one who looks promising playing for another club.
The Rams must be able to pick a Chris Martin rather than a Nick Blackman, a Richard Keogh rather than a Raul Albentosa and a Craig Bryson rather than a Bradley Johnson.
This is a skill the club has not possessed since Nigel Clough left in September, 2013. Clough did not always get it right — his worst mistake, Conor Sammon, is finally out of contract this summer but to be fair, Clough was right more often than not.
I did a quick head count and found that the Rams have signed twenty players since Clough left and it was astonishing to discover that of the eleven who started at Hull, six of the team; Keogh, Bryson, Hendrick, Hughes, Russell and Martin, are Clough holdovers.
In essence, the Rams have signed twenty players to fill the other five positions. Some of these players are already long gone and almost forgotten. Simon Dawkins, anyone? Lee Naylor? Raul Albentosa?
How many players that the Rams have signed since Clough departed can really be said to have been good signings? Cyrus Christie and Scott Carson, are certainly that. Jason Shackell and George Thorne probably are, though injuries have so far prevented Thorne from being the influence he should have been.
If the Rams are to dabble in the transfer market, they have to learn how to do it properly, and quickly.
But I have already said a few weeks ago in this column that I do not think the Rams will be overly active in the transfer market this summer. Only two "first team” players are out of contract; Stephen Warnock and Conor Sammon. There are many others we may wish to see gone but most are on long contracts and will not be especially keen to leave and take a substantial pay cut to join another club.
The club already has too many players on its books to start taking on many more. The best we may be able to hope for is that several will be going out on loan, as happened to a few players this season; this would free the club up to make a few signings. But on the whole, I expect next season’s Rams team to look a lot like this season’s team.
That is why I say that the new manager must be someone with the ability to get the best out of the players he inherits. Say what we will about him, this was one of the qualities that Steve McClaren had in spades in his time at Derby.
I am not for a moment advocating McClaren’s reinstatement; but someone with his coaching ability mixed with Nigel Clough’s instincts in the transfer market, is about what the Rams need.
The Rams cannot afford another managerial mistake - and another season like this one - if they are to maintain the momentum they have built up over the last 3 seasons.
Big decisions await DCFC and I sincerely hope that we have the right personnel to make these decisions and implement them properly.