A report from the Daily Telegraph states that Paul Jewell has quit as the Rams manager after another poor display at home to Ipswich which saw fans chant for his dismissal on the final whistle.

The 44 year old from Liverpool won just seven league games during his tenure, all of them coming in this campaign, which has seen the Rams slip to 18th in the Championship table.

A recent run which has seen just one win in nine games looks to be the final nail in the coffin of what has been an extraordinarily difficult job for Jewell right from day one; putting up with the embarrassment of the Premier League was difficult but the indignity of slipping into the lower reaches of the Championship was never going to be tolerated and you have to feel that Paul has decided to leave with a modicum of respect intact instead of waiting for the frankly inevitable sacking.

It’s a shame but not a surprise; I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a manager to succeed as much as Jewell, a man who took so much and kept coming back; the winless Premier League run, staggering home defeats against Aston Villa, Arsenal and Reading, an awful start to this season, the Roy Carroll and Tyrone Mears debacles... the list goes on.

That’s not to say he didn’t create his own problems; his signings proved, for the most part, not to be up to standard and his failure to do away with the long ball plague that has seemingly infested the squad has been a key negative but the chance was always there to achieve something at this club and that’s something I believe Jewell honestly relished and I am sorry it hasn’t worked out.

People will look at this and say that Jewell can’t handle the so-called big club atmosphere (whatever that is) as this failure will draw comparisons to the troublesome time Jewell endured at Sheffield Wednesday but I think that would be an unfair criticism; Paul will likely go somewhere else and do very well, probably taking a team out of nowhere again and propelling them up the league. I wish it could have been us.

So where does that leave us? Well knee deep to honest; we have a club saturated by a group of overpaid wasters who are performing at a standard far below what was advertised, we are 19th in a truly awful league and appear to have little money to spend in January without clearing out the mountains of deadwood. We have an ownership group just as shady as the amigos and nobody really knows (again) what state the club is in off the pitch... so basically we’re right back to where we were the last time we got relegated.

Not the best proposition for an incoming manager although the usual lures (Pride Park, Moor Farm and the fan base) should give us a chance at somebody decent.

Who though?

Would Alan Curbishley come here?

Sorry but I just can’t think of anybody else so please give me your suggestions.

And thank you Paul for your efforts.

Photo: Action Images

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