Derby County had a full week in which to prepare for their visit to struggling Bristol City, and also announced its latest financial results.

Some welcome news was received with the selection of midfielder Jeff Hendrick - man of the match in the home win over Crystal Palace - for the Championship Team of the Week.

The Rams’ reserves had their lead at the top of their league cut to two points when Sheffield United won 1-0 at Belper’s Christchurch Meadow. Injury-prone ex-Ram Chris Porter, now a Blade, scored the only goal of the game. Callum Ball was carried off with an ankle injury which ruled him out of contention for the first-team game at Bristol City on Saturday.

Academy striker Mason Bennett and midfielder Will Hughes are on England Under-17s in Georgia, for the elite round of European Championship qualifying matches. Hughes started in Monday’s 1-0 win over Ukraine, with Bennett replacing him as a substitute in the second half.

The U-17s then played the hosts, Georgia (last Wednesday) before facing Spain on Saturday. The finals will be held in Slovenia in May. Hughes, who made his first-team debut as a substitute at Peterborough in November, started England's 1-0 victory over the Ukraine on Monday.

Bennett replaced Hughes after 66 minutes. They next faced Georgia and the Derby boys were both used as substitutes in a 1-0 defeat for the young Lions. Hughes played the full 90 minutes in England’s final game against Spain with Bennett again introduced as a substitute, though the Lions lost 4-0 to exit the competition.

Their colleague at the Derby Academy, Dylan Hayes (16) featured in the Republic of Ireland U-17 squad’s 2-1 defeat by Holland in the same competition.

Ex-Rams were in the news with caretaker Burton Albion manager Gary Rowett succeeding in ending the Brewer’s losing streak which cost Paul Peschisolido his job. Burton beat Gillingham 1-0 on Tuesday night to put more distance between themselves and the League Two basement clubs.

Burton next faced ambitious Crawley Town on Saturday, whose robust style contributed to a mass player brawl in their last game, which saw ex-Rams Pablo Mills and Claude ‘Clod’ Davis sent off; Rowett’s men earned a creditable 0-0 draw at the Pirelli Stadium. Come on you Brewers!

Chris Maguire, Nigel Clough’s outcast striker signing from Scotland last summertime, is enjoying his loan spell at relegation-threatened Portsmouth and cashing in on his first-team run at Fratton Park with ‘man-of-the-match’ performances and Championship goals. At around £500,000 transfer cost when joining Derby, he represents a ‘marquee’ striker signing in GSE’s terms and it is frustrating for Rams fans to see him make an impact elsewhere.

Just before the match at Ashton Gate, Derby’s financial results for the financial year ending 30th June 2011were made public. With the lack of relegation ‘parachute payments’ taking effect, Derby were £11m worse off regarding income; they made a loss of £7.7m and have a debt of £25.5m.

£25m sounds like a lot of debt for a club advertising its prudency and visibly economising on player investment but we are assured that the owners feel that their financial strategy is correct. Next year’s figures will show the results of paring down the squad further and losing wage-heavy players like Savage, Bywater, Leacock, Pearson and others.

GSE have been supporting Derby to the level of circa £7m per season for operational funds throughout their tenure, the terms of this support apparently being ‘open-ended’ and at zero interest. Whilst the club has avoided the vicissitudes that befell some rivals, it is not Premier-League bound. GSE’s original five-year plan was for the club to be in a position (at this 4-year stage) of regaining Premier League status and consolidating their top-flight berth next season.

You can read more about Derby County’s financial report at:

http://www.dcfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10270~2693205,00.html

Whilst the consortium has a diverse make-up with many other sporting concerns to invest in, taking the plunge to invest a significant chunk of dollars in a couple of ‘marquee’ signings that should transform and honest, hardworking Derby team into a more entertaining and successful outfit is not high on the agenda.

We will be in a position to compete and thrive, it is said, though it’s a bit grim to still be living beyond our means after such austerity and be nowhere near promotion.

Derby need a dollar just to tread water financially it seems, which makes you wonder - given GSE’s modest squad investment and savagely-cut wages bill - just what will be the impact on most clubs when the Financial Fair Play rules come into effect. Nigel Clough needs a dollar - or more correctly, a couple of million - to obtain a replacement for Shaun Barker, a centre-forward, some full-back cover, a midfield general...ohhh, now I’m just being silly!

Academy development, undeniably impressive under Darren Wassall, is expected to bring a rich harvest of quality graduates through to the first team, and the task of finding quality at rock-bottom prices or free transfers and wheeler-dealing lies squarely on the shoulders of Messrs Glick and Clough. Perhaps the club will cash in on a starlet and give the money to Clough?

Derby will only have the chance to capitalise on that possibility until the new ‘EPPP’ junior transfer compensation structure wipes out such golden opportunities. Clubs will then have to sell their best youngsters to voracious Premier League clubs on the cheap, so that top clubs can groom them by loaning them out - and buy more ready-made star continental players with the money they save.

“We wanna win”, said Tom Glick in an interview on Saturday. Win what? Win a few games, doing over Forest and Leeds again, and having two or three sell-outs per season? Or be in with a shout of something more meaningful than local bragging rights? Mr Glick says “we’re moving towards a balanced budget model”, but for next season there’s no new promise of a top-six place, as his learning curve of exercising greater caution is honed. Expectations have been attenuated.

There won’t now be a ‘technical director’ joining the club to beef up the football administration between the CEO and the manager, we have been told, as the club has abandoned its 11-month old plan to recruit such a character.

Clubs like Swansea and Norwich have carved out a short-cut to the lucrative Premier League with the right chemistry and sufficient judicious investment. Will Derby ever join them?

This season, Southampton, Reading and Brighton demonstrably possess more hunger, ambition and direction on and off the field than the Rams even if Leicester City and a couple of other clubs (some with the benefit of ‘parachute payments’) still indicate that generous funding does not guarantee success.

Ex-Rams’ midfielder Stephen Pearson, who joined Derby’s Saturday opponents Bristol City in January after his contract was cancelled, spoke a good game in the run-up to the weekend clash with his former club:

"I don't feel I have a point to prove to anyone there but it would be nice to play well and show the Derby fans what I am capable of.”

OK, Stephen...you never proved to us that you were capable of staying fit or could play well very often - but thanks again for that lucrative Wembley goal!

The Robins are fighting to stay out of the relegation places. Rams manager Nigel Clough gave a characteristically low-key pre-match interview, with his team half-a dozen points from a play-off position. He said that people may bemoan about Derby being mid-table without much to play for, but that “after previous seasons, that feels good”.

Yes, it feels better than last season, or the season before that, and the season before that one...but it is still dispiriting for the followers of a club the size of Derby to watch as bystanders when the season’s spoils are decided.

Nigel Clough named an unchanged team, and drafted England Youth international schoolboy striker Kwame Thomas (16) onto the substitute’s bench.

It all went to plan for Derby, who only shyly eye the possibility of the play-offs, as the Rams weathered City’s brisk start and took the lead with a crisp goal after 20 minutes. Splendid approach work by Jeff Hendrick enabled Craig Bryson to side-foot home, and the Rams assumed control.

City battled in their desperation to salvage something from the game to avoid the relegation zone, whilst Derby had the opportunity to strengthen their credentials for a top-ten finish.

The referee was a frustrating chump according to the match report from our redoubtable I.Saw, but maybe we can be grateful that he wasn’t the chump that astonishingly failed to send of David “Calamity” James in the same fixture in a previous season in a game that the Robins eventually won.

Despite playing good football and coping with the home side’s best efforts, Derby failed to cash in on their bright play and add to their lead. Bryson went close again, Robinson fluffed a sitter, Steve Davies hit a post and had a headed ‘goal’ ruled out for offside... but Derby paid the penalty with 15 minutes to go.

Brett Pitman marked his entrance onto the pitch as a substitute by rapping in a picturesque long-range drive, which was right on the money, to make it 1-1.

After the match, Nigel Clough bemoaned Derby’s ‘lack of quality in the final third’; again, the lack of a natural goalscorer the killer instinct prevented the Rams from claiming all three points.

The result left Derby in 13th place, 7 points from the play-off positions; the draw wasn’t enough to prevent City from dropping into the bottom three of the table.

The Rams are ploughing a stolidly mid-table furrow and it is not unreasonable to suggest that manager and club will be happy with that as an indicator of progress when seta against the poorer returns from recent seasons.

The Easter programme now beckons as the season moves into its final month. Paul Jewell’s Tractor boys visit Derby next weekend and the Rams go to troubled DirtyLeeds on Easter Monday.

Finally, a sad note, so soon after the Fabrice Muamba heart-failure incident, as Chris Ralph, 47, collapsed while playing for Chagford Veterans against Topsham Town during the first-half of the Devon Veterans' County Cup final at Newton Abbot this weekend; he died shortly after of his heart attack. RamZone send sincere condolences to the family and friends of Chris Ralph and his club.

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RamsWeek 14 last season saw Derby County with the ‘same old blues’ as Cardiff City’s promotion-chasing Bluebirds beat the Rams 4-1.

Derby conceded early goals in both halves to make their task even more difficult against a play-off side, and Robbie Savage’s late penalty strike was only a consolation goal. Paul Green was stretchered off and Gareth Roberts also suffered an injury.

Forest forward Nathan Tyson was mentioned as a possible summer transfer target for Derby, as the table-topping reserves topped the Forest stiffs 7-1, including a Tomasz Cywka hat-trick.

Nigel Clough’s contract situation got an airing and Tom Glick said in a televised interview that Derby County expected to finish in the top six of the Championship in 2011-12.

Photo: Action Images

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