26/12/09 – Derby County 0 Blackpool 2 – Utter drivel as Rams tank at Pride Park
“Oh, it’s crap… It’s bloody rubbish” – Brian Clough
Who was that man up front for Blackpool? Was it Zidane? No, it was Brett Ormerod.
I’m not sure how to start this post, which will, I assure you, be a comprehensively negative one. There’s so much that was wrong with Derby’s ‘performance’ against Blackpool that, like a malnourished tiger looking at a massive herd of drugged buffalo, I don’t know what to sink my teeth into first. Words cannot fully do justice to the incompetence of the eleven who took the field, in front of over 30,000 paying saps, to go down to what was an overwhelmingly deserved defeat.
The defenders, slow and uncertain, were constantly caught square by simple forward balls. The central midfield duo of Pearson and Savage did their best, but were let down by the ineffectual wingplay of Teale and Croft. Veteran forward Dickov got dragged deeper and deeper, trying to help out the midfield, or just get somewhere near the ball. ‘Number nine’ Porter cut a sad, lonely figure up front. Even hungrier than my malnourished tiger (see paragraph 1), but faced with armour-plated buffalo carrying anti-tank missiles, he never had a chance.
I was so blind with rage by the end of it that I stalked out of the ground, leaving my dad, stepmum and friends behind. For that, I feel terrible. But I just couldn’t stand there, in that stadium, queuing politely to shuffle out with all the other suckers, for a second longer.
I felt like I’d been lied to. Somewhere along the line, somebody had sold me a colossally large sack of gold-painted horseshit. None of these players looked anything like good enough. A mid-table Championship side had made us seem as pathetic as our Premier League ‘team’ of 2007-08.
All the players I like, the players I look forward to seeing, were out of the team. Addison - still injured, Leacock - still injured, Barker – injured, Green - flu, Davies - permanently injured, Barnes - released, due to permanent injury (and bound to make a Lazarus-like return, probably with Forest), Hulse - benched, Commons - left out completely, despite having said, in an interview on the club website in the week, that he was fully fit.
This could well be the precursor to Commons (and possibly Hulse) leaving the club. If a fit Commons isn’t named in a matchday 18 so devoid of creativity, then something is clearly going on behind the scenes. He is the one player in the squad with the flair to conjure something out of nothing and change a game. As my long-suffering mate Tommo always says, on form, he’s worth the ticket price. And let me assure you, we didn’t get a penny’s worth of value out the over-priced tickets for that spirit-crushingly wretched 90 minutes.
Has KC played his last game for Derby? I hope not, but fear so.
Forest fans will be crowing, of course, but any other neutral football fan looking in will, I hope, have some sympathy with our current plight. This is what can happen to a club who try to scale the vertiginous slopes of Mount Premier League, but can’t force their way into the new ‘yo-yo’ bracket, surviving on Sky money / parachute payment / Sky money / parachute payment and gradually, if nurtured right, building a squad too good for the Championship.
The managers handed our Sky money and parachute payments spent it on a motley bunch of useless shithouses. Shithouses without seats or working flushes, or bogroll. Or bogs, in fact. Foetid shithouses, where you actually just have to shit on the floor.
And this is why I don’t still completely blame Nigel Clough. Granted, five of the starting eleven were his signings, but in the main, he’s working with players left over from the previous two regimes. What I will say, however, is that if Teale and McEveley are handed contract extensions, a measure of my support will be withdrawn.
The much-maligned duo’s current deals, doled out by that Titan of the modern game Billy Davies, run out at the end of this season. Whispers in the wind suggest that they might be renewed. I think anybody who saw the twin debacles of Doncaster and Blackpool would say that, with the best will in the world, maybe it’s time to get them both off the wage bill and bring in new blood. A left-footed left winger, say, or a defender with pace and awareness, or the ability to organise and lift the men around him.
At least we know he's got the stomach for a long-haul job.... But have the fans?
Against Blackpool, the back four looked miserably confused and wholly porous. The visitors could and probably should have been 3-0 up within 12 minutes. Second minute, cut to bits, Blackpool hit the bar. Five minutes later, cut wide open again, Bywater makes a save. Five minutes later, simple ball over the top, Ormerod is given an eternity to beat Bywater without a defender in yodelling distance and stabs lamely wide with the goal at his mercy. It was an absolutely shocking miss, but not as shocking as Derby’s ‘defending’.
A wiser man than me once said that you can tell how the whole game will pan out from the first ten minutes. I realised there was validity to this argument on reviewing this season’s 4-2 home defeat against QPR, who looked at least a league better than us in the opening stages. Certainly, the theory is backed up by this result, because the Tangerines made us look like a bunch of clueless, dithering, dozy… what’s the word?
You get the impression.
So now we have to dealwith the increasingly probable scenario that sees our two best players leave next month and watch closely, with arms folded, to see how they are replaced. Because without an injection of quality (which will come in part IF some of the injured players can finally get themselves fit), this shower could quite conceivably get themselves relegated.
On the plus side, we have a game tomorrow, a chance to put things right straight away. Away at Newcastle.
Merry fucking Christmas!
