Dickov defies critics, Father Time, logic, proves shrewd signing
Dickov shoots....
When Paul Dickov signed for Derby County, I commented on this website that it was possibly the least inspiring signing I could imagine. The arrival of the now 37 year-old striker, who was completely out of the picture at Leicester City, did not exactly have Rams fans jumping out of their seats. Foxes fans sneered that he was past it and the air of despond deepened as the venerable Scot, a former team-mate of Nigel Clough at Manchester City, was named amongst the substitutes for four consecutive defeats.
So it has come as a very welcome surprise to find that since injuries to, erm, everybody else, allowed him to start, Dickov has excelled. In the 2-1 win against Reading, he was my man of the match and there is now a general feeling amongst supporters, shared by me, that we would do well to keep him for the season. He was named as the fans’ man of the match in the 2-2 home draw with West Brom, having once again displayed his intelligence, tenacity and ability, linking up play tidily and scoring the opening goal.
For these reasons, I would like to offer my apologies to The Wasp, who will doubtless stay in the team for the visit to Preston North End on Tuesday.
Dickov scores!
I’ll be down at Deepdale for a lovely, freezing cold December evening kick off and I can’t wait. Our away form is so bad, that objectively, there is no reason to be looking forward to it, but I have a feeling that if we can get our first away win, it will kick-start a good second half of the season. Much as the point and performance against West Brom has cheered everybody up massively, one good away result should give us the momentum to start climbing the table, especially once the injury list finally clears up. For sure, Preston will be tough opponents – they always are at this level – but the way we played against West Brom was extremely heartening and shows that if we play the way we can, we’re a match for anybody in this division.
Oh and if Nigel Clough, in his wisdom, did decide to sign Uwe Rösler, you wouldn’t hear a peep of complaint from me…
"Hi, Uwe? Nigel Clough at Derby County, here... Are you fit? I've got a point to prove to an idiot blogger..."
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At the Reading match, a bloke sat behind me and my dad, constantly slagging off Rob Hulse. “Hulse is sh*t”, “Hulse can f*ck off”, “get Hulse off’, “Hulse is w*nk”, on and on and on and on until the 75th minute, when Hulse scored the winning goal.
There's no pleasing some people, Rob!
It also reminded me of one of my first memories of watching the Rams, at the Baseball Ground back in something like 1992. I don’t remember who we were playing, just a portly, gruff fella sitting behind me and my dad moaning endlessly about Marco Gabbiadini, our stocky centre forward. “Gabbiadini is useless”, “get Gabbiadini off”, “bloody Gabbiadini” and on and on and on. Late in the game, who do you think scored the winning goal? After the celebrations had died down, our portly friend broke his silence to say, ‘Marco for England’.
Unfortunately, our friend at Pride Park couldn’t exhibit a similar sense of humour – but at least he was forced to stop slating Derby’s big number nine.
England never did come calling for dear old "Gabbiadonkey", who scored 68 goals in 200 games for the Rams
