A friend of mine (and you know who you are Philip) said after the Rams victory at the weekend: "I feel sorry for fans of the top teams: they'll never get the glorious mixture of emotions of a 1-0 victory against Bristol City after a string of defeats and disappointing seasons,"and Philip's absolutely right of course. Supporting Derby County is a continuous roller-coaster of emotions full of ups and downs, highs and lows, but predominantly through mine and Philip's lives more downs and lows.
Philip and I are fortunate enough to have lived through two Derby County league championships, a few seasons of European football, including a European Cup semi-final, four Wembley visits, although we are both far too young to have witnessed the Rams' F.A. Cup success.
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This season, however, I think will see Derby County falling between the two, never high enough to seriously challenge the playoff places but comfortably clear of being sucked into the relegation zone. Nigel Clough himself has said, and I'm paraphrasing: "We're not a top six team, and we're not a bottom six side either. We're somewhere in between and that's where I think we'll finish."
I'm not one to disagree with the gaffer so, yes, mid-table is probably round about where Derby County will finish. That, of course, means that as fans we are going to witness a frustrating season. Mid-table means we'll be inconsistent, we'll win some, we'll lose some, and we'll draw some. Of course it's the manager's job, with the help of his back-room staff, to make Derby County as competitive as possible and to get the players and team to improve throughout the season and, hopefully, win more games than they draw and draw more than they lose. It won't be easy though because the current squad is considerably smaller than last season and already it is being stretched to the limits with nine players unavailable through injury for the visit to Cardiff City's new stadium on Tuesday night.
There's also a lot of young players in the squad, a fair few who have never played at this level before, and they need to learn what the Championship is all about. That's why the experience of players like Robbie Savage, Rob Hulse, Lee Hendrie and loanees like Fredrik Stoor and Paul Dickov will be invaluable.
So back to that 1-0 home victory against Bristol City. On the face of it nothing special, a narrow home victory against a good Championship team, but in the context of Derby County's season so far, after four consecutive defeats, it was a massive result. Not just the result, but also the performance. Although Bristol City had two great opportunities, including a first minute point blank header which Stephen Bywater saved well, Derby County created far more chances throughout the game, and had more possession overall, even before the Robins were reduced to 10-men
By my reckoning, without the benefit of prozone stats, the Rams had 22 goal scoring opportunities (James Vaughan x4, Lee Croft x4, Rob Hulse x3, Gary Teale x3, Jake Livermore x3, Dean Moxey x2, Lee Hendrie x2, Paul Dickov x1), far more than Bristol City. The strikers alone had eight chances collectively and, this despite poor service from the wide players. Imagine what the scoreline might have been if Croft and Teale had crossed the ball better and if the players had been wearing their shooting boots?
Clearly there's plenty of potential for Clough, Gary Crosby, Andy Garner, Martin Taylor, Johnny Metgod and Nigel Ashley-Jones to work with. Against Bristol City, indeed in most games this season, there's no denying the work rate, effort and commitment from the Rams players, but the service to the front men hasn't been up to scratch and there's been too many individual errors. Cut out the errors, improve the quality of the crossing and final pass, add in more clinical finishing, and Derby County won't be too far away from a very good side at this level.
Derby County are 16th in the Coca-Cola Championship with 10 points from 9 games but I believe there have been plenty of positives in the season so far, emphasised by the Bristol City performance, to suggest that this Rams team can improve and get better as the season progresses. Four defeats on the bounce by a single goal margin, followed by a narrow 1-0 home victory, and I find myself in buoyant and positive mood. As Philip so rightly pointed out, that's a feeling that fans of Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal will never understand.
Stuart Hughes..