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More of the same Mr Clough

21st February 2009

So today was another cracking win for Derby County, even sweeter as it was over our local rivals Nottingham Forest, managed by our old manager (who left in a bit of a huff) Billy Davies – you couldn’t write this stuff!

I just thought I’d write a little about how the ‘Nigel Clough reign’ is going. Firstly I must say there has definitely been a change in Derby since Nigel Clough took charge just 10 games ago. The attitude of the players is completely different, they seem more motivated, they are working for and with each other. Players such as Savage and Teale (to name just 2) look completely rejuvenated. I’m not saying everything is perfect yet but there are some major steps in the right direction. The biggest difference is the confidence the players now seem to have and simply, on the pitch this translates to goals, wins and points.

I decided to take a quick look at some numbers to see how Derby are actually performing under Nigel compared to Paul Jewell’s reign. I know it’s early days but it just gives us an idea.

I’m going to just look at this season and forget about the disaster of last season (which is generous to Jewell). So Jewell’s figures this season don’t look too bad at first glance (but not good by any stretch of the imagination). 31 games: 12 Wins, 11 Loses, 8 Draws, but it was the league form that was the problem, 5 of those wins were in the cup so if I take those out the equation that makes the league form 26 games: 7 Wins, 11 Loses, 8 Draws – that’s 29 points by my calculations (just over an average of 1 point a game – 1.12 to be precise!).

Now let’s look at Nigel Clough’s figures for the first 10 games, they are 5 Wins, 4 Loses, 1 Draw, but 2 of the loses were to Manchester United in the cup, a little harsh to included considering how generous I was to Mr Jewell by ignoring last season! Nigel’s league form is 6 games: 4 Wins, 2 Loses, 0 Draws, that’s 12 points (an average of over 2 points a game!). More importantly 4 league wins in a row and 12 goals in those games.

If you think of that in terms of end of season you’re looking at 46 games so 52 points in Jewell form and 92 in current Clough form, now that’s a difference kind of season! I know there are a lot of figure to take in but I hope you can see the difference we are looking at, it’s huge! I’m not getting over exciting, there is still a long way to go and a lot of work to go, but after a dismal year and a bit being a Derby fan, it’s hard not to get a little excited with the current results. It’s nice not to look at final score to see how many we lost by! All there is left to say is well done to Nigel Clough and all the players so far, keep it up!