In the midst of the club’s silence on who would follow Nigel Pearson as Rams manager, the pundits generally favoured the safe and obvious choice of promoting Chris Powell from assistant to full time boss.

In contrast, I was beginning to lean towards a choice that was less obvious, but still in keeping with recent Rams trends of silence and instability.

I thought the club might dress the manager - whoever it might be - in a Rammie suit, so he could patrol the technical area in complete anonymity.

The obvious attraction to the club is then they could, if necessary, sack the manager as often as they feel necessary and nobody would know; perhaps not even the players.

This would be quite unlike the current situation, where it only seems as though we sack a manager every week. But perhaps my idea was ahead of its time.

Instead the Rams went down a different path than the one I was contemplating, and appointed a former Rams player who already had Rams management experience.

No, not Chris Powell, but Steve flippin’ McClaren!

The same Steve McClaren who left the Rams a mere seventeen months ago, and committed professional hara-kiri by joining the obviously doomed Newcastle United.

The same Steve McClaren who came agonizingly close to taking the club up to the Premier League through a Wembley playoff final.

The same Steve McClaren who wanted away to Newcastle as we subsided to eighth place the next season.

The same Steve McClaren about whom I wrote in this column the following August; “Steve McClaren owed the Rams and the club’s supporters better than this.”

The self-same Steve friggin’ McClaren!

So is it now payback time? Will Steve McClaren give us the finished job he owes us?

Steve McClaren could actually turn out to be the best person for the job. As would any manager the Rams appointed, he faces the same problem that Nigel Pearson did; how to get performances and results out of a hugely talented but underachieving squad.

I pointed out here that Nigel Pearson’s success or failure at Derby would depend in large part on his ability to get value from the Rush/Clement Six: Bradley Johnson, Jacob Butterfield, Nick Blackman, Tom Ince, Andreas Weimann and Abdoul Camara; six expensive players signed to long contracts who have not performed for the Rams.

It will be just the same for McClaren. What is interesting here is that McClaren did not do much in the transfer market when he was here before; most of his permanent transfer activity was such desultory signings as Simon Dawkins, Lee Naylor, Ryan Shotton, Raul Albentosa and Stephen Warnock. The only permanent signings that remain from McClaren’s time are Cyrus Christie and George Thorne.

McClaren did bring in a parade of successful loan signings: Andre Wisdom, George Thorne, Patrick Bamford, Jordan Ibe, Tom Ince and Darren Bent among others. Of course, one of his most successful moves was to install the previously under-utilized John Eustace into a highly successful holding midfielder.

The new manager has plenty to work with at Derby. There is no lack of talent, just a mystifying inability to play effective football, score goals and win matches.

McClaren will know many of the players here, although Jeff Hendrick and Chris Martin are gone. His job will be to build the talent he has inherited into a team that knows what it is trying to do, and can get results. Everything he needs is here, especially if he can transform Bradley Johnson into a passable defensive midfielder, at least until George Thorne is fit.

It’s easy to be resentful of the way in which McClaren left the Rams, and many of us still are.

But Steve is the man in the job until the end of next season, and he is well capable of turning the current mess into a successful team. But what would we consider a success for the remainder of this season?

The Rams are twentieth, ten points away from the playoff places. That is a very large gap to bridge, and if it is to be done we need to start winning consistently, beginning with Leeds on Saturday.

Photo: Action Images

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