After a battling 2-2 draw at Birmingham City last week, Derby County had two home games in a week in which to put their home form back on track.

The Rams announced that the latest fruits of Academy manager Darren Wassall’s harvest had been offered professional contracts this week. Five boys were signed up: 16-year old midfielder Will Hughes, who is already a first team debutant and England Under-17 international; Norwegian centre-back and youth team captain Stefan Galinski (18); defender Josh Lelan (17); forward Kane Richards (17) and goalkeeper Mats Morch (18).

Mats has unfortunately just suffered a dislocated shoulder that will sideline him for several months, whilst Will Hughes has been called up to the England Under-17 squad that will participate in the ‘Elite Qualifying Round’ games taking place in Georgia, ahead of the Euro 2012 Finals, in May.

With the club’s avowed reliance on ‘growing its own’ and bringing youngsters through from junior to first-team ranks, much will be expected of the lads if they commit themselves to Derby County.

Derby’s first team scouts are reportedly checking on Scottish players with a view to summer squad reinforcements, with Dundee United players targeted in defence and attack. That news item would have brought a grimace to a few faces among Rams fans hoping for an injection of real quality.

Nigel Clough’s comments convey the club’s motivations for shopping across the border: “The one thing you get up in Scotland is good honest players and the wages are more realistic than some of the English players”. Let’s hope we sign a Bryson, and not a Maguire...speaking of whom, he’s fallen out of the DCFC pecking order completely and is now out on loan to Pompey!

Mr Clough stated that Maguire still has a part to play at Derby but needs games. The latter is true enough but there have been times (especially with Tyson, Robinson and Steve Davies all injured at the same time) when the manager did not utilise Maguire, or even put him on the bench, and selected teenagers, schoolboys or the hapless American Conor Doyle instead.

A vast quality gap exists between the SPL and the Championship - let alone the English Premier League. Not many players handle the transition to meet the demands of English football. The Derby squad is still crying out for two or three players of proven quality in key positions to build on what may be only marginal progress in 2011-12. The Rams must also retain their best players and top starlets to attract talent and breed stability and confidence.

Fans are sceptical about achieving great progress by recruiting in Scotland. Ohh for an Idiakez, a Rasiak, a Willems, a van der Laan! Those European players were often snaffled on contract-end or loophole negotiation, without spending fortunes; previous Derby County managers - Cox, Smith, Burley - all successfully plundered the overseas’ markets for bargain players that won promotion from the 2nd tier with Derby and they became local heroes.

When DCFC reiterates the need for fiscal caution (as it seems to every week), that should not become a convenient, cautious explanation for a myopic and inward-looking club, devoid of the resourcefulness or willingness to be more enterprising in the market.

Rams fans aren’t daft regarding football finances and don’t want a Leicester City-type scenario where a £5m defender can’t even get into their team - but we remain disappointed at being short-changed on the promises of “6 Championship-quality signings” and a top-six finish in 2011-12.

The strength of a club’s first-team squad reflects the quality and depth of its scouting effort as well as any budgetary considerations. George Burley’s foreign captures, for instance - during some of the most difficult and dark days for the club financially - lay testimony to superior enterprise and market coverage in comparison to modern-day squad compliment and ability.

At the moment, Derby County has spent 9 months endeavouring to fill their ‘technical director’ role in order to beef up the ‘football department’. Derby’s current regime simply cannot hold a candle to the successful ‘cosmopolitan’ recruitment of the Cox, Smith and Burley eras and it is not only on the pitch where the Rams are lightweight.

With top six side Blackpool visiting Pride Park Stadium on Tuesday night and Watford there on Saturday, the Rams had the chance to complete two League ‘doubles’ over their opposition.

Derby had won 1-0 at both Bloomfield Road and Vicarage Road earlier in the season to set up the ‘doubles’ but the Rams had lost their previous two home games by the same score, to Reading and Leicester City respectively. Blackpool had won their last three away games.

Nigel Clough had injury worries to contend with on Tuesday night; Jamie Ward missed out through injury, never-fit Nathan Tyson was nursing his latest knock, Jason Shackell was carrying a hamstring strain as was Gareth Roberts. Derby needs their rather thin squad available for the busiest month of the Championship season but the injury situation is already testing resources.

Shackell and Roberts were passed fit to play against the Tangerine but Tyson was not risked and went to the substitute’s bench. Supporters probably weren’t unhappy that Ben Davies took his place in the team. Bailey and Ball were omitted from the matchday 16.

Pre-match, Nigel Clough talked up Blackpool’s squad strength and their attacking qualities. Tangerine boss Ian Holloway has also trialled ex-England and Liverpool star Robbie Fowler, now 36, but will not add Fowler to his ranks. ‘Parachute payments’ have enabled Blackpool to employ a squad that consolidated after relegation and then advanced to the top six of the table.

There’s ample quality in the Blackpool squad to boost their bid to ‘bounce back’ to the Premier League at the first attempt. Rams’ boss Nigel Clough described the Bloomfield Road side as one of the most dangerous attacking teams on the division.

Nevertheless, as soon as the match kicked off on Tuesday, Derby’s defence ignored those warnings. Once more - for a side allegedly built on defence - the Rams were sloppy and negligent as Blackpool caught Derby cold. As with the match against Birmingham City, Derby couldn’t get started; they again began slowly and soon had a mountain to climb.

The Tangerine quickly seized the initiative and scored through Tom Ince after only two minutes. Derby’s defending was lamentable; allowing the cross from Crainey and then Roberts’ half-clearance invited Ince, standing twelve yards out, to pick his spot and score.

It took the Rams a while to gain a foothold in the game and trouble Tangerine ‘keeper Gilks but the visitors did not capitalise fully on their early breakthrough as Derby came back into the game. At least things did not look as forlorn as in previous home defeats, when the Rams couldn’t threaten the opposition - so a comeback against the Tangerine seemed on the cards at the break.

The Rams learned their lesson from the first half and it was they who came out of the traps quickly after the break, forcing the pace; Steve Davies rapped a shot at Gilks within seconds of the restart and he levelled the scores after 51 minutes, striking home a fine 20-yard free kick.

Derby were doing much better in the second half and showed more attacking intent than in recent home defeats. They took the lead with 15 minutes to go when the Davies-Davies combination struck again; as at St Andrews last Saturday, Ben Davies placed a cross onto the head of Steve Davies and the in-form forward nodded home to put the Rams in sight of three points at last.

With some resolute defending plus an alert Frank Fielding in goal on a couple of occasions, Derby eased home 2-1 despite some late Blackpool pressure, to claim their first win in eight matches. Man-of-the-match Steve Davies has certainly come back with a bang after such a serious injury and happily, it seems that Rams fans will finally have a goalscoring hero to cheer this season.

Apart from his remarkable comeback from a life-threatening injury, Steve has notched 8 goals for Derby in 12 starts; at that rate, he’d score 30 goals in a full season! Jeff Hendrick had a fine game and is re-asserting himself in midfield and Theo Robinson got into good positions, though he could not always make the best of them. Keep working, Theo...Steve Davies is caching you up!

The 26,300 crowd went home happy (excepting 750 souls of Tangerine shading) as Derby moved up to 14th place in the Championship table. The game attracted almost 3,000 more than table-topping Southampton’s clash with Ipswich and 8,000 more than relegation-threatened Nothingham Forest, 14 miles up the A52.

It was a tonic for home fans to see the team reversing the recent slide and the Derby players had the chance to build on it with a good performance against Watford on Saturday - and then will come The Big One vs. The Trees next Tuesday!

It is 40 years since Derby secured their first League Championship under Brian Clough and it seems almost as long since Elton John was the celebrity benefactor who funded Watford’s rise to the top division, managed by Graham Taylor. Players like John Barnes, Nigel Callaghan and Neil Redfern were central to that success.

Barnes went on to star for Liverpool and England and Callaghan has some good times at Derby. Nigel was a guest of honour at the game on Saturday and has been making progress in his battle against bowel cancer, with recent tests after his treatment giving encouraging results.

In these latter days, the Derby County links with Watford are a failed attempt to sign the Hornets’ captain John Eustace and their erstwhile director of football. Steve Davies secured a 1-0 away win at Vicarage Road last August and Saturdays’ return game presented Derby with a chance to record two League ‘doubles’ in the space of four days.

With Gareth Roberts taken ill and no experienced full back cover, Mr Clough elected to move Jason Shackell to left-back and draft in Jake Buxton to partner Shaun Barker in central defence.

Unfortunately, another sluggish start saw the Rams immediately squander the chance of that second ‘double’. When the opposition start briskly and prevent Derby getting into their quick passing rhythm, matches become difficult. Brum, Blackpool and Watford all succeeded with this initial strategy and because the Rams keep failing to put in effective 90-minute performances, they will always have to claw uphill to retrieve something from a game.

Derby succeeded against the Blues and the Tangerine but they set themselves too big a task against the Hornets. The slow start allied to individual errors saw the Rams go 2-0 behind before 15 minutes had elapsed in a dreadful opening period.

Sluggish defending on the left flank led to the first goal after only 8 minutes; Alex Kacaniklic, Watford’s Swedish loanee from Fulham, made rapid progress to penetrate Derby’s back line and gave Murray an invitation to shoot home, which he accepted without fuss.

Shaun Barker had a mixed day and was regularly susceptible to the pace and quicker thinking of the opposition. Kacaniklic caught out the Rams’ captain after 15 minutes to create danger that the captain’s teammates then failed to deal with, before Troy Deeney was fed the ball. He whipped in a deflected shot from 20 yards to make it 2-0 to Watford.

It had been a decidedly poor start from the Rams - instead of another League ‘double’ being on the cards, for the third game in 8 days that they started badly and had handed the initiative to their opponents. It was the sixth successive game that Derby had conceded the first goal.

Derby toiled to get back into the game and after a half-hour, started their recovery. Ben Davies drove in a free kick and with Steve Davies trying to get a flick on the ball, it sailed past Hornets’ keeper Tomasz Kuszczak and into the net to make it 1-2.

It was not a convincing comeback as Derby struggled to create clear-cut chances and Watford had most of the best openings in the first half and indeed throughout the game. This time, Derby couldn’t climb the mountain that they had built for themselves in handing Watford a two-goal start.

Once the Hornets had secured their comfortable lead it was a familiar story; an organised and muscular side was able to stifle the Rams and marshall the game. The second half, with run-around half-fit Tyson taking over from the ineffectual Tom Carroll, was better for Derby as they upped the pace to match Watford’s combative effort.

Good chances were few and far between though; a complete recovery looked unlikely and I don’t agree with post-match comments from Rams’ players and management that Derby ‘completely dominated’ the game after the break.

Kuszczak, when not delaying goal kicks to waste time, was only called into serious action in the Hornets’ goal after 84 minutes to parry a sweetly-struck Bryson volley; the Scot fluffed another chance and substitute James Bailey, introduced to slightly ironic cheers from the Derby faithful, forced another save from the keeper - but it was too little, too late. Manager Clough said that his team didn’t deserve anything from the game after a poor start.

Derby’s huff and puff wasn’t enough to overcome Watford, with a pedestrian lack of creativity and weak finishing again on display. The thrusting runs of Jamie Ward were missed; the injury disruptions and squad depletion resulted in a disjointed Rams’ performance which will not live long in the memory.

Shackell was adequate at full-back and Buxton put in a typically honest performance in central defence but the team could not retrieve the situation after such a poor start.

The win allowed Watford to climb above Derby in the Championship table. The Rams, now in 15th place, face arch-rivals Nothingham Forest next Tuesday five places above the Trent-siders and 11 points ahead of them.

The Rams’ challenge has tailed off during 2012 whilst the Trees have recovered their form recently to ease themselves out of the relegation zone.

Unless Derby can resolve their inability to start with sufficient energy and then concentrate and battle for 90 minutes, they cannot expect to complete a long-awaited ‘double’ over their local foes.

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RamsWeek 11 last year saw Nigel Clough shuffling goalkeepers; Stephen Bywater was shipped out on loan to Cardiff City and with Blackburn’s Frank Fielding coming to the end of his loan spell, Hull veteran Matt Duke joined Derby on loan. He never played for the Rams due to a swift recall.

Rams’ CEO and President Tom Glick, interviewed on TV, defended under-pressure manager Nigel Clough and said that Derby would be competitive at the top end of the Championship in 2011-12. Well, it was season-ticket renewal time, y’know!

Derby went to Middlesbrough urgently needing survival points; the Rams took the lead through a Jamie Ward penalty but a second-half recovery by Boro saw them secure all the points in a 2-1 victory. The Rams were 19th in the Championship table.

Better was to come later that week as the Rams defeated promotion-bound Swansea City 2-1 in a tight game. An own goal from Ashley Williams and a header from Steve Davies put the Rams in charge and though the Swans pulled a goal back, Derby held on to claim a vital win.

Photo: Action Images

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