After seven league defeats in a row and a cup exit at Leyton Orient, Derby have called time on Paul Warne and pulled off a surprising raid on Blackburn for John Eustace – Ollie Wright @DerbyCountyBlog assesses the new man’s chances of keeping the Rams up.

How’s the season gone for Derby?

Beating QPR at home on October 5 has turned out to be the high water mark, put it that way.

Derby in the league so far…
Blackburn 4-2 Derby Dolan 19, Weimann 72, Szmodics 76, Ohashi 84 – Nelson 67, Wilson 88
Derby 1-0 Middlesbrough Jackson 14
Watford 2-1 Derby Bayo 31, Sissoko 76 – Adams 2
Derby 3-0 Bristol City Goudmijn 28, Jackson 60, Ozoh 89
Derby 1-0 Cardiff Goudmijn 28
Sheff Utd 1-0 Derby Hamer 53
Derby 2-3 Norwich Forsyth 60, Blackett-Taylor 90 – Sainz 45, 65, 87
Sunderland 2-0 Derby Bellingham 40, Isidor 55
Derby 2-0 QPR Nelson 54, Harness 55
Millwall 1-1 Derby Ivanovic 85 – yates 78
Oxford 1-1 Derby Scarlett 12 – Mendez-Laing 55
Derby 1-1 Hull Brown 66 – Simons 57
Stoke 2-1 Derby Cannon pen 9, Gibson 81 – Johansson og 68
Coventry 1-2 Derby Sakamoto 77 – Yates 11, Thomas og 73
Derby 1-1 Plymouth Yates 8 – Randell 41
Preston 1-1 Derby Greenwood 23 – Yates 29
Derby 1-2 Swansea Mendez-Laing 65 – Vipotnik 2, Ronald 14
Derby 1-2 Sheff Wed Adams 9 – Bannan 64, Lowe 90
Leeds 2-0 Derby Rodon 39, Wober 44
Burnley 0-0 Derby
Derby 4-0 Portsmouth Wilson 8, Cashin 23, Adams 29, Pack og 65
Luton 2-1 Derby Holmes 89, Morris 90 – Jackson 58
Derby 2-1 West Brom Yates 28, Holgate og 68 – Diangana 81
Derby 0-1 Leeds Aaronson 79
Sheff Wed 4-2 Derby Bannan 8, Windass 61, Gassama 63, Musaba 74 – Yates 68, Adams 90
Bristol City 1-0 Derby McNally 19
Derby 0-2 Watford Louza 4, Kayembe 66
Derby 0-1 Sunderland Mayenda 28
Cardiff 2-1 Derby Robinson 62, El Ghazi 64 – Salvesen 70
Derby 0-1 Sheff Utd Brereton 49
Norwich 1-1 Derby Sargent 68 – Yates pen 90
Derby 0-0 Oxford

Paul Warne, what do you make of that sacking? Strange timing, new man arrives with the window closed…

Exactly and it’s not the only thing about this season which has been strange.

Warne was very much David Clowes’ chosen hire and it seems the owner felt strongly connected to him. Perhaps that stayed his hand when it was blatantly obvious weeks ago that the trigger needed to be pulled. By the time Warne went, it was basically a mercy killing.

Now John Eustace has no opportunity to reshape the squad, beyond possibly adding a free agent or two. Other clubs at the bottom of the table were much quicker to change their manager and Oxford United, in particular, have reaped the benefits of that proactive approach.

The alternative to sacking Warne was to back him with new signings, but that didn’t really happen either. At the end of the winter transfer window, my take was that the club was ‘meekly accepting relegation’. After that, another home defeat to Sheffield United (1-0, the goal happening minutes after Warne had moved midfielder Ebou Adams to right centre back) sucked the life out of Pride Park and finally, belatedly, the club stirred themselves into action.

How much is Warne to blame? I mean losing Cashin and Nelson who were outstanding in the first game (against QPR) is a tough blow…

Cashin suffered a hamstring injury in a 4-0 home win against Portsmouth in December and after that form which had already been significantly wobbling truly hit the skids.

A huge part of the issue was that much of the summer recruitment was really bad. Derby went into the season with a bunch of players hanging over from the League One squad and while they were complemented by some decent new foreigners, the domestic recruits were, in the main, dreadful. To have a proper crack at it, the club needed to make really good use of its loan quota, but failed to do that.

Then came January and only the Norwegian target man Lars-Jørgen Salvesen was signed before the very last days of the window, when Cashin was sold to Brighton for £9m, with Nelson having ruptured his ACL. That prompted a trolley dash for two new centre backs, but other than that, the only other signing was Harrison Armstrong, an 18 year-old midfielder on loan from Everton. The club later rolled out its excuses via the hierarchy’s favoured reporter, John Percy, claiming that three deals had collapsed right at the end of the window, but whatever. The business done over the two windows was miles short of what was needed.

In short, Warne has grounds to feel hard done by. He fulfilled his first mission, promotion, but was not subsequently backed with any firepower in the transfer market. However, the case for the prosecution must note that his dabs were all over two of the worst signings of the summer - Jerry ‘The Invisible Man’ Yates, who he knew from Rotherham, and Kayden Jackson, a winger he had been trying to sign for years and erroneously believed could do a job at this level, and ended up repurposing as a right wing back, once his brain was completely scrambled.

Any manager would have struggled on the budget that was provided, but other managers might have been able to get more value out of it. Warne’s staff did manage to organise the defence reasonably well, but the football has been diabolical in the main - away fans made him aware of this even during the promotion season. By the time of his departure, it was a relief to see him go. I suspect that he was probably relieved too, in all honesty.

Warne is a great manager for League One and will have no problems getting back in at that level, but has failed to take this opportunity to prove that he can cut it at a higher level. The only way he’ll get another chance in the Championship is by earning another promotion.

Who next?

Derby have profited from the fact that Blackburn Rovers is a binfire and taken Eustace, who we know and love from a successful playing stint here at the tail end of his career. Compensation was payable - reportedly £500,000 - £750,000, depending on who you believe - and Venky’s clearly like what they would see as free money more than they like football.

Eustace’s track record at Birmingham and Blackburn is, on paper, perfect for what we need right now. On both occasions, he stabilised a club that was hurtling towards the abyss, kept them up, then had them in the play-offs by the time he left. The Derby job, given the mess he inherits on the field, will be a massive test of his acumen but if he can get it right, he knows he has a much better long-term ‘project’ on his hands than he did at Ewood.

We didn’t like your summer recruitment much as you know, particularly up front, how was January? What was left undone?

You were dead on in your assessment. Clowes told us that we went into the season with a ‘competitive’ budget, but the harsh truth is that his claim was naive. Derby weren’t able to pay the cash required to sign proper strikers and ended up with Yates; James Collins, an old warhorse who was pensioned off to Lincoln City in January, and Dajaune Brown, a talented but raw teenager from the academy, who should have spent this season out on loan.

Early home wins against Middlesbrough, Bristol City, Cardiff and you lot papered over what were not so much cracks as a fissure between the reality of what was required to compete and what we managed to get.

Summer Ins: >>> Jacob Widell Zetterstrom, 26, GK, Djurgarden, £1.5m >>> Ebou Adams, 28, CM, Cardiff, £1m >>> Kenzo Goodmijn, 22, CM, Alkmaar, £800k >>> Ben Osborn, 29, CM, Sheff Utd, Free >>> Corey Blackett-Taylor, 26, RW, Charlton, Free >>> Kayden Jackson, 30, CF, Ipswich, Free >>> Jerry Yates, 27, CF, Swansea, Loan >>> David Ozoh, 19, DM, Palace, Loan >>> Rohan Luthra, 22, GK, Cardiff, Free >>> Nat Phillips 27, CB, Liverpool, Loan >>> Marcus Harness, 28, LW, Ipswich, Loan >>> David Ozoh, 19, DM, Palace, Loan >>> Tawanda Chirewa, 20, AM, Wolves, Loan

Winter Outs >>> Eiran Cashin, 23, CB, Brighton, £10m >>> James Collins, 34, CF, Lincoln, Free >>> Sonny Bradley, 33, CB, Wycombe, Loan

Where is the team strong?

In defence. That has never been the issue. Cashin and Nelson formed a fine partnership at the back, which to their credit, the club’s hierarchy promptly replaced when necessary in January, signing the experienced Matt Clarke from Middlesbrough for a small fee and the much flashier Sondre Langas, a Norway international from Viking, for £4m.

Based on his first two performances for the Rams, Langas is so much better than everyone else in the team that it’s almost farcical. He has pace, strength and even a bit of swagger about his play, which is sorely lacking elsewhere.

Where is it weak?

The attack. Derby did add Salvesen in January and he is a major upgrade on Yates, but there is still only one true centre forward in the squad, which is an absolute shambles. Meanwhile, in wide areas, the 32-year-old Nathaniel Mendez-Laing, who was signed as a star player for League One after being released by Sheffield Wednesday in 2022, is the pick of the bunch. That tells you all you need to know. In the early part of the season, a strong streak of goals from free kicks and corners (including that fabulous Nelson header against QPR) kept the show on the road, but even that has now dried up. Derby have scored two goals in the last seven league games.

It’s a bit of a joke that we are in this situation and while Langas was clearly a good signing, it annoys me that we lashed out such a big fee on a luxury defender, when the bulk of that money could and should have been spent on adding some quality at the other end of the pitch. There’s a very real possibility that Langas ends up being sold in the summer to fund another League One promotion push, because there’s zero chance a player of his calibre stays if we drop.

How do you see this ending? Staying up or not?

Signing Eustace for a fresh approach in the dugout, plus Salvesen and Langas to improve the team, has given us a prayer, but it’s still going to be extremely difficult. Derby have won one away game all season and haven’t won at home since Boxing Day, so the rot had fully set in by the time Warne finally left.

I’m not a gambler, but if I was, hand on heart I wouldn’t be able to put any cash on us staying up, at this stage.

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