Fan favourite Tito Villa is set to end his spell with the Rams, departing for Mexican outfit Cruz Azul who have announced today that a deal is in the works.

To be honest I was never that enamoured with Tito; his work rate was excellent but what you want most from a striker is goals and despite a lot of promise, he never quite managed to deliver it. A decent start in amongst the horrific Premier League season led to some expectation for success in the second tier but like most of the squad, Tito came up short.

Despite that Tito was a crowd favourite because of his all action style and willingness to run himself into the ground in search of success, for which he deserves credit but he will not be missed, especially since his playing time dwindled into nothing under our Nigel, who then went on to list his strike force for next season with Tito conspicuously absent.

What does grate on the nerves is that whilst some fee may be drawn from Cruz Azul to allow Tito to return to Mexico, where he previously spent a successful spell with Tecos, it’s unlikely to be anything close to the £2 million shelled out by Paul Jewell to bring the diminutive striker to Pride Park. To be fair to Jewell he said it was a risk at the time but given that Villa came in to effectively replace Steve Howard, the decision looks almost moronic with the benefit of hindsight, much like other decisions made by Jewell and wee Billy over the course of our time in the top flight.

This move, coupled with the expected departure of truant-in-chief Mears, means that the required contraction of the squad is starting to pick up pace at last although the sooner it happens the better since Nigel is being forced to wait to bring in further reinforcements whilst he looks to con someone into taking the likes of Claude Davis off our hands; another deal that will surely fall short of what we paid to bring the player in.

Still, that is all in the past and the future still looks promising; hopefully Tito can go and re-establish himself in North America because he deserves it and will remembered fondly for his time at Pride Park, short and pretty unsuccessful though it turned out to be.

Good luck Tito!

Photo: Action Images

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