Defeat at Burnley was disappointing - but Derby County could look forward to the next home game against in-form Norwich City and the chance of making it 7 wins in a row at Pride Park Stadium.

The defeat at Turf Moor had not unduly damaged Derby’s 4th place standing in the Championship table, with teams above and below them failing to win - though Saturday’s opponents Norwich City will have been buoyed by their bristling 4-1 stuffing of local rivals, Roy Keane’s Ipswich Town.

The Canaries have stormed up to 5th spot, right on Derby’s shoulder in a tight pack of Championship contenders.

News filtering through in the early part of the week centred on injuries in the Derby camp. Chris Porter, a surprise inclusion in the squad at Burnley, was anticipating being able to put his hip injury into the past. That game showed he was still far from match fit but the Rams will expect much more from him in 2011.

Defender Russell Anderson is still suffering concurrent injuries, first a hamstring and now tendonitis. Jake Buxton, out of action for eight months, was recovering from his troublesome back injury and had resumed initial training.

Miles Addison is running and working in the gym after his routine foot operation to remove the fixings; Steve Davies was making steady progress and would soon join in full training again. Kris Commons had shaken off his stomach bug and was fit again but Spanish maestro Alfredo Bueno picked up knocks and strains at Burnley from heavy attention, before he was withdrawn early.

He would be missing from the squad to face Norwich City and it was apparent that he hadn’t experienced the severity of an English freeze-up before; he wasn’t best suited to the cold, aggressive scenario of a November encounter at Turf Moor but needs to acclimatise soon!

The Rams’ home game versus the furry Foxes of Leicester on Saturday, 12th February has been put back to 5.20 pm - a most wretched kick-off time for football fans that actually go to games - for the benefit of the armchair television audience. Fans first, I don’t think so - but we should grumble; Scunthorpe fans had to travel to Millwall on Saturday despite the treacherous weather, to watch their team play in the evening’s televised game.

Such ordinary news items domestically were totally overshadowed by events at FIFA HQ in Zurich; we learned last Thursday that there will be no World Cup in England for at least 20 years. 

After all the work, the hype and high-profile shuttle diplomacy, England’s 2018 World Cup bid came to nothing. In the final bid voting, the 2018 tournament was awarded to Russia; Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup. The outcome sent shock-waves through our nation.

Characteristically, the televised FIFA ‘event’ (or perhaps, Sepp’s Christmas panto) at which the future venues were announced on Thursday seemed interminable. Voting results were disclosed about 40 minutes late - and irritatingly, the BBC coverage had commentator Jonathan Pearce breaking over Blatter’s babblings and even before the fateful envelopes were delivered to his podium, Pearce prematurely revealed that England’s bid had foundered at the first stage.

With Britain in the icy grip of a paralysing Arctic winter, England truly found itself getting the ‘cold shoulder’, frozen out from the entire football world in a dramatic and barely believable manner given the strength of our 2018 World Cup bid. England uninvited, the world disunited.

There’s plenty of duplicity and deceit afoot in the contradictory circles of international football administration and its associated political stratification. Unofficial sources then said that the negative publicity of the English media’s FIFA corruption allegations had ‘killed’ England’s bid to host the 2018 tournament.

It’s now suggested that up to 8 of the voting officials intimated to the English bid party that they would get their vote - but those promises counted for nothing in the clandestine corridors of power when it came to the crunch.

Russia and Qatar scored bottom marks of the competing bids in terms of technical worth - but after the logistical and commercial success of the South African tournament, it is apparent that the FIFA voting committee upheld a philosophy of breaking new ground in awarding the event to fresh territories.

The climate of Qatar and the infrastructure of both chosen venues for 2018 and 2022 leave many issues and obstacles for the successful bid owners to overcome. The token dismissal of Australia’s equal claim to facilitate such a ground-breaking FIFA decision was lamentable. For the technical and commercial merits of the English bid to be so comprehensively defeated evoked nothing less than incredulity from many quarters.

I can’t help concluding that some of those well-placed characters took their chance (in the privacy of the voting rooms of Zurich) to kick England’s butt for cramming the newspaper headlines with all the sordid details about a number of disgraced officials. I somehow doubt that investigative journalism, British-style will leave those scandals alone given the outcome of the Zurich voting.

Inquests continue in our media about our bid failure but there’s no doubt that (quite apart from changes in the FIFA voting procedures) there must now be a reform of English football, with extensive investment of money, buildings and people in a comprehensive youth development strategy in order to produce more world-class talent at home.

If just a fraction of the intended investment on a 2018 tournament were put to building more Academies and raising coaching standards, real change could be initiated in England and we might have a team that achieves more than the traditional glorious failure.

A dramatic new football-led philosophy must be installed to facilitate the creation of a better England team, capable of matching the world’s best on the field. Let the cry be: if we can’t win the bid, let’s win the trophy - that’s surely what we must take from the devastating Zurich debacle? We have to turn that negative result into a fresh outlook and, when the inquests diminish, use the reversal as a springboard to completely overhaul the national game. I live in hope!

The cuttingly cold weather in England continued as the frosty rejection of our national bid resounded around the nation but the weather did not deplete Derby County’s ability to continue their Championship programme at home to Norwich City on Saturday.

Pre-match, Rams manager Nigel Clough even allowed himself to mention that the possibility of gathering 70 Championship points was feasible as a play-off target - though he also warned that a few games without a win would see the club slipping back down the pecking order.

The match was never under threat from the sub-zero weather after the sterling efforts of club and local authorities and the pitch, though slick and slippery as rain had replaced the frost, was kept fit by the undersoil heating. Nigel Clough dropped Stephen Pearson and Dean Moxey, with Kris Commons returning after injury and Gareth Roberts at left Back; Alfredo Bueno was out injured.

Centre-half Shaun Barker had also warned, in an interview the day before the game, that Derby mustn’t let their standards slip - but they certainly did just that, as bad defending meant that the Rams went behind early on and were never able to take charge of the game.

After the England freeze-out in the World Cup voting in Zurich, Derby were certainly caught just as cold by a confident and sharp Norwich side that stormed into a 2-0 lead at Pride Park Stadium within the first 12 minutes.

The Rams, slow out of the blocks and soon overrun, showed little of the verve and attacking panache that had launched the side on a run of six consecutive victories.

The ball fizzed around between Norwich players, the Canaries having made rapid strides since promotion from Division One last season to emerge already as Championship play-off contenders. There was no early Derby onslaught to submerge the opponents such as we’d seen in recent home games.

David Fox’s 11th-minute drive took a strong diversion from Shaun Barker to put leave Fielding groping and give the Canaries the lead. The Rams knew that had a battle on their hands when they had previously scrambled a goal-bound effort from Lansbury off the line, as they struggled to cope with Norwich’s early pressure.

The battle became harder only three minutes later when Derby’s defence stood like a row of mannequins as Lappin crossed for Chris Martin to head obligingly home to make it 2-0. It looked like a most difficult afternoon ahead and so it proved, even after Commons then skipped through to score after 17 minutes to reduce the arrears. Luke Moore had provided Commons with the one chance that Derby converted from several good ones created during the course of the game.

Paul Green could have claimed a hat-trick and another piece of wizardry from Commons deserved a goal - the Rams’ leading marksman was also denied a good shout for a penalty in the second half. It wasn’t to be Derby’s day and Norwich mainly coped with everything Derby threw at them for the remainder of the game, keeping control of midfield and stemming Derby’s enterprise.

The Canaries were also physically capable, collecting three bookings for fouls as well as a couple for time-wasting. Derby often looked somewhat lightweight and unconvincing in contrast to the swaggering attacking performances that they have treated the Pride Park Stadium faithful to during the last two months.

Some fans thought that Shefki Kuqi should have been used late on in the game when the Rams needed to make more impression on Norwich’s defence - he is a wholehearted, physical player and might have given out more ‘treatment’ to the solid Canaries’ central defence to help Derby to break through and rescue the game.

I didn’t share Clough’s enthusiasm about Moore’s contribution, because apart from freeing Commons with an astute pass to assist the Rams’ only goal, he won very little from a resolute Norwich defence. Though I know I’m not the manager, I cannot help thinking that Kuqi would have got in amongst ‘em a lot more. Neither did I think Clough’s odd comments querying why the match had been allowed to go ahead in the first place held any water whatsoever.

Clough however knows that Luke Moore is staying with Derby for longer than Kuqi and so perhaps wanted to keep him playing to bring him up to maximum fitness and integration in the Derby team. A crowd in excess of 26,000 at Pride Park Stadium was again the best in the Championship - but it was the large contingent of City fans that went home happiest.

As a result of their defeat and with Leeds and Coventry winning, Derby slipped to 7th place in the table. Of course it is still an excellent position and a refreshing change to previous seasons. There is however a feeling that strengthening is still required if Derby are to capitalise on this season’s opportunity - notwithstanding the return of Bueno, Addison, Davies and Porter before too long.

Whilst Bueno will be influential if fit (and especially at home, given reasonable weather), reliance on Porter and Davies to sustain the promotion push is a good stretch of the imagination for me and many other Derby fans, given their appearance record.

Though Addison has missed long periods out injured, to me he still represents the biggest hope as a returning player set to make an impact again in 2011 - but the Rams will need more forward power to go alongside Commons and Cywka (assuming Kris is eventually happy to accept new terms offered by Derby), especially if the defence continues to show its characteristic frailties. We can make chances and score goals but are also conceding two goals a game at the present rate.

President and chief executive Tom Glick intimated that there could be a big signing, if a new player could justify a big investment to be a major player over several years for the club.

However, TG didn’t thoroughly convince when pressed by Radio Derby to discuss whether Luke Varney really could be sold for a low fee in the way that chirpy ‘Olly’ Holloway has asserted from Varney’s loan home of Blackpool. One thing is sure - Derby does want to lose Varney’s very high wages!

Bristol City next Saturday might be an ideal recovery venue for Derby; they have not made the impact expected after a good 2009-10 and are not impervious at home. Derby will however need to show much more fibre and penetration than they managed at Millwall, Leicester and Burnley if they are to reinforce their top-six credentials.

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In RamsWeek 49 last season, we saw Derby ‘take it to the limit’ with a last-gasp draw with promotion contenders West Bromwich Albion.

Paul Dickov had slammed Derby into a first-half lead, which Cox had cancelled out with a goal that was aided by a clear Albion handball in the build-up.

It was not the first time that the frustrating antics of zombie referee Mr Deadman had caused angst among Derby fans, players and management - but the game finished as a 2-2 draw, even after Albion looked like snatching the game with a late, late goal from Dorrans for the Baggies to take a  2-1 lead as added time commenced.

Derby’s exhuberant display was not to be denied, however, and debutant loanee DJ Campbell converted a cross from Lee Hendrie with almost the last kick of the match to snatch a point.

It was an encouraging Derby performance that gave hopes of a long-awaited recovery to Rams fans, though the team was moored in 17th place in the table.

Rams’ stalwart kit man Gordon Guthrie was honoured by the club at a special lunch after 50 years service at Derby County. He’s still at the club, one of its greatest servants having worked under 19 Derby managers in various backroom roles over those five decades.

Utility player Rueben Zadkovich was in negotiation to have his contract settled by Derby County; we never saw much of Rueben, who was among Paul Jewell’s miscellany of young protégés. He’s been back in Oz latterly, with Sydney FC and currently with Newcastle Jets. 

Photo: Action Images

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