Another day, another disaster.
Derby County 1-2 Blackburn Rovers
Oakley (27); Santa Cruz (39), Bentley (42)
A rare spark of hope followed by yet more crushing inevitability; the Rams are going to be relegated, of that there can be little doubt but what concerns me now is the damage being done in terms of next season. These players look like they've quite simply had enough of the Premier League and can't wait to get out of it.
Giles Barnes is carrying himself like a man who clearly expects to be elsewhere in the coming days and even Captain Matt Oakley cut a forlorn figure for much of the second half as his team mates ambled around the pitch at less than full pace, their minds unable to free themselves from the defeatist cloud that has settled over Pride Park Stadium.
If there can be one moment which captures the current mental state of Paul Jewell's squad, it came in the second half as Benny McCarthy broke with the Rams up field; Tyrone Mears is the closest man to the Blackburn striker and he is JOGGING back to try and catch him! Another example? Well how about Craig Fagan chasing down a long ball and winning it only to find that his team mates are all stood on the halfway line, not even slightly interested in pushing forward.
Of course, to some extent it is hard to blame the players; after all they are human and people will often lose confidence at the first sign of misfortune but what has happened to these players goes beyond a simple lack of confidence. These players expect to get beat and I have never seen anything quite like it; they know their fate and appear to simply chosen to expect it; such a callous disregard for their own self-respect is galling and quite frankly I'm tired of it.
I have mentioned that this is Paul Jewell's squad when of course it actually isn't; Billy Davies made this team and whilst I have no desire to criticise the man who led us to promotion I am aware that hindsight is a wonderful thing; as New Year approaches people will often look back at the previous year and I am no different and I have chosen to look back at the signings that wee Billy made during 2007 and I think therein lies our problem.
When Billy Davies took over as manager of Derby County he made four key early signings; Steve Howard, Matt Oakley, Dean Leacock and Stephen Bywater. This group become the spine of our side and the foundation on which promotion was ultimately based. To our surprise we soon mosied on up to the top of the Championship table and when the January transfer window came the board decided to go for it and provided Billy with the cash to boost our promotion hopes.
In response Billy acted like a little boy in sweetshop, grabbing no less than seven players in a series of moves that ultimately unsettled the squad and cost us automatic promotion, although it was hard to see it at the time. The magnificent seven were Jay McEveley, Tyrone Mears, Stephen Pearson, David Jones, Jon Macken, Gary Teale and Craig Fagan.
Of those seven David Jones was already at the club on loan and had established himself as a key part of the squad but of the other six, only McEveley and Pearson can really say they have been worth the money.
Mears and Teale have had their moments but nothing like the consistency required whilst the signings of Macken and Fagan baffle me even now. That is where it went wrong for me although like many I didn't think so at the time; these signings created problems almost immediately with the whole bonuses scandal and if they were made with the Premier League in mind then as a group they were a failure.
Fast forward to the summer and again Billy's judgement comes in question; Rob Earnshaw has never played despite a club record fee which in itself is scandalous and Claude Davies has done nothing to suggest he was worth of his own lofty price. Griffin and Lewis look like average Championship players and I now remember being told when we took Billy Davies from Preston that he was a great manager, unless you gave him a lot of money to spend; it appears that opinion was correct.
All of this leaves Paul Jewell facing the prospect of going down with the worst Premiership team ever and then trying to pick the club up and get it promoted again; whilst I'm confident that Jewell is the man to complete that unenviable task I feel that this January is the key, we need an influx of quality and desire into this squad to make things bearable between now and the end of the season, we need players with Michael Johnson's desire coupled with talent so that we can fight on until our fate claims us and go into next season knowing that we can return.
The wheels are apparently in motion and it would appear that Stevie Howard is the first to go with Leicester in for him; I don't want to see Steve leave but if Paul Jewell has decided he needs the money that Howard will bring then so be it. It'll be interesting to see who Jewell brings in by my word please them have a bit more fight that some of our current players.
Anyway, on to the game and you'll have noticed I've actually done far less ‘reporting' this season that last and the reason for that is that nothing seems to happen in games at Pride Park these days aside from a simple pattern which goes as follows; opposition comes out quicker and dominates play, moment of madness gives them the first goal, Rams either flail about and the game peters into nothingness or a lot more goals are conceded.
The only real difference of late that is the whilst the opposition does still dominate through the Rams have actually been known to score first under Paul Jewell and that was the case today as a very good move involving Barnes, Mears and Oakley saw the former rifle the ball under Freidal and we were suddenly looking promising.
It looked to get even better ten minutes later as Miller's trickery did for Ryan Nelsen and the referee pointed to the spot; up stepped Steve Howard and down went Freidal to make the save; you could see heads go down immediately and it was no surprise to see Blackburn not only equaliser through Santa Cruz's tap in after Price's terrific save (again) but then score the winner through Bentley's crisp low shot just before the break.
To anyone in the stadium it was obvious it was all over and having watched the second half it was hard to resist having a breakdown in my seat. Even now, sat at home writing this with Gladiator on the TV can I get over how poor our second half showing was, as Paul Jewell says it just beggar's belief.
Full-Time: Derby 1-2 Blackburn
Rams: Price 6; Mears 4; Johnson 5 (Fagan 5); Davies 5; Leacock 6 (Feilhaber 6); McEveley 5; Oakley 5; Barnes 4; Lewis 4; Howard 5; Miller 5 (Macken 4).
Blackburn: Friedel; Nelsen; Warnock; Khizanishvili; Mokoena; Emerton; Bentley; Tugay (Dunn); Pedersen (Olsson); Santa Cruz; McCarthy (Derbyshire).
Referee: Peter Walton.
Attendance: 30,048.