Our home form had been ever improving and Derby were yet to win on their travels and after the fantastic result against QPR on Monday which included an equalising goal by a certain Lloyd Doyley a neutral with little knowledge of the Championship may have had this one down as a dead cert home win. It was certainly a more winnable game than most but when I was asked at work late on Friday whether I thought we’d win I merely answered that Derby are no better than us, but no worse either. It’s typical of the Championship that form is (mostly) temporary and on their day any team will beat another especially if their opposition is having an off day. As it was the final match before Christmas, the tradition is now to meet up with my aunt and uncle for a meal in Watford after the match and my uncle comes along to the game whilst my step mum and aunt finish (I’ve not even started) Christmas shopping. We met in the Moon under Water and discussed the various talking points in the World of football before making our way to the ground. The ‘I was there when Lloyd scored’ T-shirts had already sold out and hopefully the novelty present will if ever so slightly have made some profit…especially if it encouraged people to buy something else. I had expected the atmosphere to be rocking following the events on Monday but I was completely wrong. The Derby fans seemed to be taking it all much more seriously than us, at the pub they’d been in good voice and the same was at the Vic. Maybe we just expected to turn up and watch our players put in another awe-inspiring performance, but I suppose in hindsight we should have realised better. It seems ultimately and unfortunately that our young side requires the occasional valuable lesson. It was clear quite early on that Derby had few skill players but had plenty of grit and that they would attempt to use that to bully us into making silly mistakes and as a result we couldn’t get a passing game started. Whilst we prefer a passing style we also like to pressure teams and although we also harried Derby’s players into making mistakes we fell in to Derby’s trap and rather than playing to our strengths resorted to long balls which their defence dealt with with ease. The pressure we put on Derby almost paid off when we forced the keeper into clearing the ball straight at Graham. With the goal open he shot from around 40 yards out, but from the kick the ball seemed to be heading wide, at the last minute it seemed to curl towards goal and everyone held their breathe wanting to cheer to urge the ball in. It didn’t and everyone took their seats. A goal at that stage would have almost certainly changed the match and as Derby were showing a lack of attacking intent we may well have gone on to win comfortably. Instead the match became dull and forgetable, our next real chance didn’t come until the stroke of half time when Helguson had our first shot on target however even this was ruled out as a miss because the referee gave a goal kick instead. At half time came my uncle got us some hot drinks and I suppose fortunately there was never any risk of us spilling them as the 2nd half began. The match dragged on and still we hadn’t got anywhere close to our usual style of play, and even more unbelievably we had more yellow cards than Derby despite them committing more fouls!! This was partly no doubt due to our frustration at Derby’s style of play but mainly because the referee didn’t seem to notice that Derby’s fouls were actually rather cynical. Half way through the second someone behind me noted that if Derby go a goal up they’ll make it even harder to break them down. With Demerit back in for Cathcart our defence was looking more solid but the longer the game stayed 0.0 there was always a chance that Derby would nick a goal. With about 15 minutes remaining, Mariappa appeared to match Derby with a cynical challenge of his own as Derby counter attacked. It was a free kick in a good position and I suddenly had an ominous feeling eventually the ball was whipped in and the Derby fans cheered as Mariappa was beaten. My heart sank, unbelievable. I had a mini rant about how disappointing we’d been and how we hadn’t created any real chances and with there was a bit of head tennis which eventually saw Eustace free in the box. He tried to lob the ball in from close range but missed and those events summed up our performance. We were finally showing some energy but it was too late, Eustace had one final effort as he tried to poke the ball in when sitting on the floor but again the ball went wide. With four minutes to go Derby were managing the game well and had the match in the bag. Ultimately Derby came to get a result and they got it. Hopefully our players will recover in time for Saturday when we travel to Peterborough. It’s another one of the more winnable games but whilst the Posh might be bottom it appears from reports that they have had some decent performances in recent weeks and that the new manager is starting to stamp his authority on the team. With our once promising away record starting to look pretty poor, the result against Derby was a reminder that we can’t just rely on our home record if we want to stay clear from trouble. We also need to learn how to win or at least draw the ugly matches As I post this the AGM is going on and for most the results of that will be more important than the match on Saturday…
Think i'll need to write a blog on the past few days, that was much more traumatic than I expected! (Stupidly following that guardian article the day before the AGM I thought that they had all decided to work together)
