Sleep walking to relegation?

Guest blogger Elliot gives his take on Derby's recent form.

Derby have been absolutely abysmal for the past seven league games (bar the second half performance against Brentford). The creativity and the small amount of goals they were able to manifest have seemingly vanished. Somehow, The Rams have managed to revert back to a Phillip Cocu style of play with players messing around with the ball at the back. It doesn’t make much sense as to why this is happening as Derby’s more recent direct route of football had been gaining some good results.

The Rams now look totally devoid of ideas and it’s impossible to say where their next win will come from. They now sit only five points above the Bottom-3. But relegation rival Rotherham have a never ending amount of games in hand and are, more importantly, able to win games. The recent drop form really is a major concern considering that Derby were sitting towards the top of the form table not too long ago. It really begs the question what is going on? Has the Wayne Rooney effect worn off? Are the players still behind him? Or are the players simply happy that they will survive the drop?

There have clearly been a few ‘problematic’ players at Derby over the years and Rooney has played his part in getting rid of those characters. Rooney sold Duane Holmes who was openly vocal about wanting to leave for a while, along with openly critiquing Louie Sibley for not performing at his peak. More recently Rooney has dropped Martyn Waghorn from the squad and stated he does not try in training. Is Rooney just doing something that Derby fans have wanted to see for ages and clearing out players at the club who are way too comfortable, or is there a deeper player attitude problem within the club?

There are now eight games left of the season and Derby seriously need to up their performances if they are going to play in the championship again next year. With points being dropped more often than not and teams around the Rams picking up in form, there could be some major disappointment at the end of the season.