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RamsWeek 12 - Home Is Where The Heart Is
RamsWeek 12 - Home Is Where The Heart Is
Sunday, 22nd Mar 2009 20:57 by Paul Mortimer

Derby County’s defensive frailties had undone them at Sheffield United last week and despite a good performance, there was further work to do to ensure that the Rams could avoid the relegation zone.

Manager Nigel Clough had a full week to prepare for the vital home game with Barnsley on Saturday. He wasn’t expecting much in the way of injury recovery from such as Porter and Commons, so the depleted squad regrouped from the Bramall Lane defeat for the ‘six-pointer’ against the relegation-haunted Tykes.

Kris Commons has however been selected for Scotland along with flying winger Gary Teale, whose surprise rehabilitation has been one of the features of the second half of the season. Commons isn’t fit yet but has a week and a half away with his international squad and could get in on the action.

One Rams player off on other travels is £1m striker Luke Varney, who has joined Sheffield Wednesday for a month on loan. Nigel Clough isn’t ruling out Varney from a place in Derby’s plans however, and the match action should benefit him.

With Liam Dickinson finally at Leeds United and Varney going to Hillsborough, We’ve now hived off £2m-worth of attacking ‘talent’ whilst we’re desperate for enough defensive cover. Cheers, Mr Jewell.

Two of Jewell’s backroom staff departed permanently, too; chief scout Bill Green and domestic scout David Hamilton left the club. Nigel Clough is revising his scouting network and it seems that the salary outlay is being trimmed. Jewell had 21 scouts in place so he collected them like he collected players!

Fugitive fullback Tyrone Mears (who?) hit the headlines for notching an extra-time winner for Marseille against Ajax, which put the French club into the UEFA Cup quarterfinals.

Having hardly featured since he sloped out of a Moor Farm window several months ago after his ‘misunderstanding’ with Paul Jewell, Mears has made his mark; hopefully, we can offload the club-hopping misfit to Marseille for a fee, so that we can buy some proper fullbacks ready for next season!

Manager Nigel Clough announced that the Rams will be staying at home for their 2009-10 pre-season preparations, which commence on July 1st. Derby will warm up against the ‘usual’ local Midlands clubs as well as taking a trip to the West Country to play Yeovil, Torquay, and Exeter in late July, before the as-yet-unannounced Pride Park Stadium pre-season curtain-raiser friendly match.

I remember that GSE initially declared that the squad would go to America during the summertime, soon after they took over last year. That was a strategy that Paul Jewell overturned for more modest European travel plans. Now, Clough has wisely decided that ‘home is where the heart is’, saying that Derby have one of the best training complexes in the game and hence we should utilise it fully.

It’s good that Mr Glick et all have let the managers decide their own itinerary and schedule, rather than impinge on the preferred football preparations for largely commercial reasons. This should give Clough’s backroom and his 2009-10 squad the best springboard from which to launch a promotion bid - which must be the short-term target of a club of our size.

The Rams Reserves beat Grimsby Town 3-1 at Alfreton Town’s Impact Arena with Ellington, Villa and O’Keefe scoring, to put the stiffs though into something called the totesportcasino.com League Cup Final. The Rams will face Accrington Stanley or Sunderland in the final.

Derby County’s owners, GSE, announced that Canadian entrepreneur Jeff Mallett has joined their board. He’s not on the Rams’ board but has an impressive CV (or should that be, resume?). He helped build Internet giants Yahoo! from zero to a $1bn revenue performance as their chief, and is an owner and director of the San Francisco Giants baseball team.

Mallett has played and followed football for many years; he’s a key figure in the women’s game in the USA. With and the addition of his investment and business pedigree from such involvement, GSE’s team - and Derby County - have gained a high-calibre partner who can assist the Rams to fulfil their potential.

Several off-field failures from Derby County’s recent past continued their trial at Northampton Crown Court, as their case progressed into the second week. McKenzie, Mackay, Keith, Lowe & Waters made further appearances in front of the prosecution and ex-Chairman Sleightholme and a former Co-op Bank executive were also questioned. The trial continues, dot dot dot…

So to the Barnsley home game, with fans and club all hoping that a victory would send us off for the international break on the threshold of Championship safety. Clough was able to add Stephen Pearson to the substitute’s bench after injury and the diminutive Villa loanee, Barry Bannan, was also in the 16 but the manager kept the starting line-up from the Bramall Lane defeat.

Barnsley fielded three ex-Rams: brick outhouse Darren Moore, fullback Rob Kozluk and errm, striker Jon Macken. The Osmaston (Ossie) End clock from the Baseball Ground has been re-sited at the back of the East Stand and it was unveiled with ex-Rams stars before the game.

Many of the supporters spent the next 95 minutes wishing that the hands would tick round to full time, such was the dearth of entertainment in the main spectacle that followed.

Despite a full week’s rest, Saturday was a day when home wasn’t where the heart is at all for Derby, as the Tykes matched or bettered the Rams throughout the entire game. Derby never got started and it was Barnsley that looked more compact, accurate and sharp all over the pitch - except in goal, where Stephen Bywater was outstanding for Derby. Hardly anyone else played up to form; we were simply dreadful.

We never got to see if Barnsley keeper Muller was any good as he was hardly ever extended. After such a prolific few weeks, the Derby midfield and attack was well out of sorts and created hardly anything. Bywater saved Derby on several occasions, including a point-blank save from Macken.

The introduction of Bannan at half time gave Derby a little more spark but Darren Moore and chums held firm and very little got through the defences to unsettle Muller. We were overdue a 0-0 scoreline, this being Derby’s first for some 48 games, and the Rams failed to break down Barnsley’s resolute back line.

Nigel Clough admitted that he was ‘delighted’ to have taken a point from a truly forgettable game and so the Rams must wait a fortnight before making any further progress towards their target of 50+ points for Championship consolidation, with the club in 17th place and 47 points on the board.

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RamsWeek 12 last year saw Derby County 17 points adrift of Premier League safety, with a mins-50 goal difference and were desperate for a morale-boosting win from anywhere.

So “one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor” was the theme as manager Paul Jewell looked to break the awful winless run, after an encouraging performance against Manchester United. They had to win 6 points from remaining games to avoid recording the lowest-ever Premier League tally.

They faced Middlesbrough at the Riverside, with the Teeside club aiming to strengthen their survival claim and that’s what they did. Derby succumbed to a Tuncay goal scored in the first half and their assaults on the Boro goal were few and far between.

The Rams had turned out another perfunctory, valueless performance, of which Rams’ legend and Radio Derby summariser Dean Sturridge called, “appalling, a disgrace” and he wondered how that Rams team had even mustered ten points.

Manager Jewell re-ran his standard: ‘we should have got more out of the game’ post-match spiels and it had been obvious that the game meant more to Middlesbrough, who took on the Rams with purpose and conviction, than it did to Derby’s players.

They faced second-bottom club Fulham for the next fixture and judging by what Cottagers’ boss Roy Hodgson achieved last season and in the current one, Derby were (and remain) light years away from matching their fellow 2008 strugglers.

Photo: Action Images



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