Part 34 of our Great Teams series sees us welcome Jonathan Rodgers, a long time fan of Derby County. Here, he recalls one of the great Baseball Ground campaigns – always a fiendishly difficult place to visit as an away fan and a place that simply oozed character, history and tradition. Jonathan can be followed on Twitter at @popsider It’s started already. Ten months of undoubted, solid progress for Derby County has only recently finished (12th place and a number of talented Academy youngsters coming through) but Rams fans are already speculating about next season. Can we have a tilt at the…
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The Monday Profile: Claude Davis
The furore surrounding Lyon’s astounding 7-1 win in Zagreb last week puts one in mind of the perhaps the most anomalous sequence of results in this season’s Football League. In September, warmly tipped Crawley Town followed up a 6-0 hiding at Morecambe with a 3-0 home battering by Swindon. Having begun existence in the League well, these results were far from expectedand everything that has happened since makes them seem still more unusual.For the Sussex club have etched up 14 subsequent matches without defeat in Cup and League, ascending to top place after their impressive 3-0 win over Burton Albion…
The Monday Profile – Paul Thirlwell
File him under journeyman if you will; Paul Thirlwell’s career hasn’t exactly hit stellar heights anywhere. Decent spells at his hometown club Sunderland, Sheffield United and Derby were flecked by seemingly the only consistency of his career – injury. Ask any fan of his current club Carlisle to define Thirlwell in a single word and the wags will chorus on cue – ‘injured’. This is unquestionably fair – no player attracts a three month long calf strain hoodoo like the North East born schemer. A friend of this blog and of the club underlined the problem in a recent conversation….
Path Dependence at Derby County
In comparison to the club’s 1970s heyday, the past twenty years have been tough on Derby County – the club experiencing a slow backsliding into quarters of the lower leagues largely uncharted by the mainstream press. But, where success has been achieved, it has often been at the least expected moments.The wallet waving of the Lionel Pickering years proved to be barren ones for the club and it was only once the expensive Craig Short, Mark Pembridge, Paul Kitson, Gary Charles and Tommy Johnson were offloaded that Jim Smith was left to fashion a new team – one that was to time…
Kicking the ball out of play: a defence
The reaction of Nottingham Forest fans to last weekend’s frankly apocalyptic defeat at the hands of Derby County has for the most part been extraordinarily fair minded. The game possessed controversy of course – but the absence of those twin firebrands Savage and Davies calmed the mood and the City Ground faithful have turned inward in an attempt to explain the defeat.Despite a spirited midweek performance against Newcastle United, Steve McLaren is walking on eggshells. The spirit seems to be sapping from the Tricky Trees and there is the kind of open advocation of regime change that would make even Steve Kean…
James: Are the wealthy middle classes really the ones to back a football team...
Lanterne Rouge: Garath McCleary on signing for Reading today:
"It's amazing to be a...
Lloyd: On the Oxford / Reading thing, Lanterne, you write that "there is no c...
Ben: Yes, it does loom a bit, doesn't it? Moxey's comments on the ground re...
