When former Newcastle United and Rangers striker Peter Lovenkrands handed Henrik Meister his debut in 2022, the former Danish international saw a spark of something special in the tall, lanky youngster he had just placed his faith in.

“He has fantastic speed and size, reminiscent of Erling Haaland’s. They are the same particular type of footballer, and there are not many of them,” said Lovenkrands. “Henrik was and is of course not at the level of Haaland, but they possess some of the same qualities, and that makes Henrik very difficult to handle if he is played in the right way.”

That physical profile is what prompted Ligue 1 side Rennes to pay £6.8 million for him in 2024, and Pisa to pay £4.2 million for him a year later and, if things go well, Derby to pay around £7 million for his services to be permanent if he impresses on a loan - which is also costing the club £1.2 million.

His physical profile is what sets him apart. A senior data analyst at one of the UK’s top agencies identified him as a “pressing monster” and outlining that Derby are almost certainly relying on making the most out of his physical traits given his profile.

Subscribe now

Meister is, by modern football standards, a late bloomer. At a time when the best and brightest of world football are, in some cases, already making their first team debuts, he was stacking shelves in a supermarket.

Aged 16, the Dane was dedicating himself to football after leaving school and using the supermarket job as a part time money earner to pay for travel and training equipment.

A year later, having been rejected by some of the top academies in Denmark, he was scaling back him ambitions and turning out for fifth tier Boldklubben 1903. The club was part of the Denmark Series league, which is split into four groups of ten and the top team from each group is promoted into the third tier of Danish football.

It was there, after securing promotion, that Meister was spotted by Frederiksberg Alliancen (FA) 2000’s Sporting Director Steffen Dam during a trainign session.

“He scored two goals and an assist, and we lost 3-0. It was quite clear that he was much better than everyone else on the pitch,” Dam told Bold in 2024.

Intrigued, Dam contacted Boldklubben to find out more about the rangy teenager: “He told me that Henrik was only 17 years old. I couldn’t understand that at all. ‘What is a kid like him doing here,’ I thought. B 1903’s coach explained that Henrik had run a bit dead in football, after many of the biggest clubs had found him not good enough in various trials.

“But he was far too good for Serie 2. He was huge - 1.90 meters tall and well built.”

Share

Although FA 2000 discovered Meister, their work with him sadly didn’t yield a single penny in transfer fees. While FA 2000 tried to get him under contract, Meister had found an agent to facilitate a move to Fremad Amager.

“We gave him a contract proposal, but when we did, he had already got an agent. So he chose to say no to our contract proposal and instead went to Fremad Amager,” said Dam. “We could easily see that there was a raw potential, which was interesting, but he did not start in all games for us. He also had some shortcomings.”

Those shortcomings were exposed in full force during his Serie A season with Pisa. Meister lost his place in the side in January 2026 after a run of just two Serie A goals all season as Pisa floundered in Italy’s top division after being promoted the year before.

“I don’t think he [Meister] was good enough to feature in this league [Serie A],” an Italian scout for a top Premier League side told The Eleven Points. “But you can only be harsh on him to the extent that he was playing in one of the worst teams to ever feature in Serie A. Ever.

“I’d say he is basically a target man. He played as a nine in a 3-5-2 or a 3-4-2-1 either alongside or just ahead of Stefano Moreo. They were a very direct and physical team - that was the whole gimmick and how they got promoted from Serie B.”

Pisa lost just eight games in 2024/25 as they were promoted as runners up to Serie A. Meister joined in January 2025 but, having spent so long out of the team with Rennes, Pisa had to carefully manage his minutes to get him back to full fitness.

Rennes had signed under Sporting Director Frederic Massara. Massara signed 15 players in his one and only summer with the Ligue 1 side, with many of them being labelled failures and duds - Meister was categorised as one of those and, like many of his fellow players who came in during that summer, was quickly moved on.

It seemed as though he had found a happy home in Pisa, with the tower almost as tall as him, but the six month spell in Serie B gave way to bleaker times as Pisa won just two games and collected 18 points last campaign on their way to relegation. The club scored just 26 goals and failed to provide a consistent threat on the opposition box.

The scout continued: “He wasn’t getting service in the box. I think he only had 20 shots all season. None of Pisa’s forwards were able to make an impact and that was why they ultimately went down. Because defensively, they were pretty solid - if you look at a lot of the games under [Alberto] Gilardino, they lost so many games by just one goal.

“Meister had a couple of bad misses that impacted his confidence. He works hard defensively. His role was simple last season. They pressed man to man so he had the centre back as a reference, but even in a mid-block or low-block he worked hard.

“At least off the ball - he will put in a shift. My issues with him are on the ball. How quick is he at getting shots off? How quick is he in getting separation inside the box? Because he was pretty slow and sluggish in that last season? And how can his teammates find him in the box? Ideally with crosses.”

Given that John Eustace is currently trying to mould his Derby side around direct wing play and getting crosses into the box, Meister could be a perfect fit for what the former Blackburn Rovers head coach is looking to do.

The Rams have been largely blunt to start the season, the early nadir coming ina 3-0 home hammering to Swansea in which they failed to register a single shot on target and had an open play xG of 0.16.

Meister may be raw, but the pressure will be on him from the jump to change those fortunes in front of goal, especially with Carlton Morris now out for several weeks with a “soft tissue” injury and Patrick Agyemang still recovering from a torn Achilles suffered towards the end of last season.

Eustace needs some real firepower, and on the surface of it Meister looks an odd choice to supply it. But given how late into his young life he developed an aptitude for finding the back of the net - perhaps it’s only a matter of time.

When did you get that sinking feeling again? Was it when Ben Brereton Diaz opted to move to Sheffield United on loan instead of Derby County, despite the club letting him rehab at Moor Farm following knee surgery - that they facilitated? Was it Leigh Curtis’ report that the Hamza Choudhury link was wide of the mark?

Was it one minute and 30 seconds into Derby’s game against Swansea when, after the Rams threatened to go ahead only for an offside flag to be a complete Karen and rule it out, Swansea then sped up the other end and scored a highly avoidable goal from the Derby side of things?

I bet it was actually when Eom Ji-Sung pounced on a loose ball a single yard out from goal, and somehow managed to find acres of space between two Derby defenders and the three feet between he and the goal to almost embarrassingly tap in for 2-0.

By the time it was made 3-0 by Stephen Eustaquio, Bobby Clark was half heartedly walking after losing out on a 50/50 which handed the goal scorer the ball and Derby fans had seen enough, stomachs sufficiently sunken.

New signing Henrik Meister watched from the stands and must have worried if the best service he will get around Pride Park will be from that of the hospitality wait staff.

Derby had to wait until 33 minutes to treat their fans to their first shot of the game - an effort lashed wide by Max Johnston. The Rams were still waiting to test Lawrence Vigouroux in the Swansea goal well after the hour mark - though by that point they had at least started to kick the ball towards the goal with eight (all off target) shots.

Saturday’s 3-0 home humbling to Swansea leaves John Eustace’s men completely winless on the season, and staring down the barrel of a terrible start to the 2026/27 campaign both on and off the pitch.

The need for reinforcements is obvious. For a team that is predicated on direct wing play, the club don’t have the wingers - outside of perhaps Corey Blackett-Taylor - to make the difference. Brereton Diaz declining to return to Pride Park means the club are still missing a marquee wide man. And now Carlton Morris is injured. Granted, Meister’s arrival will help mitigate that - but that is now two of Derby’s top three goal scorers from last season downed and the other one not coming back.

Eustace’s side registered an open play xG of just 0.16 against Swansea, didn’t have a single shot on target and only had 11 touches in the opposition box. So think about how utterly dreadful their defending must have been to assume that is the glaring weak point in the side.

Perhaps the greatest need at the moment is a centre back. Matt Clarke’s three-month injury lay off coupled with Sondre Langås’ poor start to the season means the team could do with a new central defender, at least in the short term.

Derby have conceded two goals in each of their first three league games, and four games total if you count the Carabao Cup defeat to Lincoln City. And yet the goals they concede are entirely avoidable, largely of their own making, and so so inevitable.

In the 2-1 defeat to Charlton Athletic, Tyreece Campbell identified the scurrying of Derby defenders to protect their six yard box, so he and his Addicks teammates simply…stopped running. When the ball fell to him he had to do a slight bit of jinking and feinting, but eventually he rifled his shot past Jacob Widell Zetterström.

That pattern was familiar again on Saturday. Johnston, Langås, Charlie Taylor, Dion Sanderson and Travis all desperately sprinting back towards their own goal after surrendering possession, but none of them communicating where their counterparts were, or were running to and before the throng of white shirts could swivel their heads to realise uh oh why did nobody mark him?! Joseph Opoku had put the visitors 1-0 up and things got worse from there.

The mood felt lighter after David Clowes addressed the fans ahead of the 2-2 home draw with Cardiff to reassure the black and white faithful that the club will back Eustace in the remaining days of the transfer market in the aftermath of the collapsed takeover.

But a week is a long time in football. And if alarm bells aren’t ringing in the corridors of Moor Farm and Pride Park, key personnel may be a bit more tetchy when the weekly fire alarm check happens.

Alex Mowatt’s arrival offers Derby some deep midfield control but his defensive work, alongside that of captain Lewis Travis, against Swansea was well below par, offering Swansea attackers to camp at the edge of the Derby box knowing they’d be largely unbothered and unruffled if the ball fell to them.

Even when the Rams did muster a bit of a fightback in the second half, it very much felt like Swansea were playing with their food and three could have easily been four or five if they really wanted it. And perhaps that is the biggest insult, it felt very much like they pitied Derby.

Clowes and Stephen Pearce now have just 72 hours and some change to make meaningful upgrades to a squad whose depth started paper thin and has eroded from that point.

Leicester City manager Russell Martin has confirmed that midfielder Hamza Choudhury is getting closer to leaving The Foxes. The comments to BBC commentator Owynn Palmer-Atkin came after Leicester lost in the Carabao Cup Second Round 3-1 to Ipswich Town.

Earlier in the week, The Telegraph’s Mike McGrath reported that Derby County had made a move to sign the Bangladesh midfielder.

John Eustace has already added to his midfield with the signing of Alex Mowatt from West Bromwich Albion for a fee of £600,000. It seems Choudhury could be the next player through the door as Derby look to bring in several players ahead of the September 1st Deadline day.

Choudhury had featured in all of Leicester’s three games to open the campaign, playing a total of 78 minutes across two League One games and a Carabao Cup tie, but was left out of the squad for the midweek cup defeat.

The 28-year-old also offers Eustace positional flexibility, capable of playing at right back as well as at the base of midfield. The Rams currently have Joe Ward and Ryan Nyambe in those positions, but with Ward’s ability to play further forward it is plausible that he could be seen as a solution to Derby’s winger shortage.

Subscribe now

Choudhury played 32 times for The Foxes last term, even captaining the side throughout and scored one goal. A move to Derby would end a 21-year association with Leicester City as the former England Under-21 international came through their academy starting at age 7.

He will leave the club with 166 first team appearances for Leicester and winning three trophies including the 2021 FA Cup, in which he came off the bench late as Brenden Rodgers’ side beat Chelsea 1-0.

Eustace had been keen to bring back Crystal Palace midfielder David Ozoh in some regard, however with Hull City, FC Cologne and Marseille all keen on the 21-year-old, it seems Derby’s move for Choudhury has indicated a move for Ozoh is now not going to materialise.

The Rams remain keen to add players this window, with the club looking to add wingers ahead of the deadline in September. Eustace has spoken of his admiration for Southampton’s Ben Brereton Diaz, with the Chile international returning to his parent club but speculation surrounding his long-term future.

Earlier in the year Eustace said of Brereton Diaz: “Obviously, he'll be on a lot of other clubs' radars, I'm sure, as well, going into the next season, but I think we've made him feel very at home, and we've given him a fantastic opportunity.

“I think he wants to be part of the club and fingers crossed we can get that done.”

Football Insider has reported that Derby have made a fresh inquiry for Brereton Diaz, but stumbling blocks are arising as Southampton are seeking a deal worth £3.5 million for his signature while Derby are more keen on a second loan deal.

After Southampton’s 4-1 defeat against West Ham United in the Carabao Cup Second Round, Saints manager Tonda Eckert told the Daily Echo: "There are some conversations and negotiations taking place at the moment, and I would expect there to be some news."

He did not travel with Southampton for the game against the Hammers.

Upon speaking with the media after Derby completed the signing of Ryan Hedges on a one-year contract, Head Coach John Eustace said that “if we can bring in any more, that would be brilliant” referencing Derby’s transfer business.

The club’s timing has been rocked this summer with the proposed takeover by Zuffa Boxing co-founder Turki Alalshikh collapsing in the final stages, with Alalshikh pulling out at the last minute. Since then, the club signed Hedges and owner David Clowes issued a statement to fans before the 2-2 home draw against Cardiff City.

The Eleven Points confirmed at the weekend that the club are actively looking to add at least two wingers to their ranks before the window slams shut on September 1st, and that those positions are seen as Eustace’s top priority.

Looking at the underlying data, it’s clear why the former Blackburn Rovers manager is so set on adding wide attacking options to his squad.

Using Opta’s data, we can see through two games the sort of team Eustace is trying to build is one that is direct out wide and services Carlton Morris with crosses. It also indicates that the team’s primary central attacker, Bobby Clark, needs that support out wide to do more damage in the centre of the park.

Through the first two games of the season, Derby rank 17th per 90 minutes in possession with 45.3% of the ball, they also rank 16th in passes per 90 with 368.0. Those baseline numbers on their own paint a picture of Derby being a team that don’t dominate the ball, but what they do when they get possession of it showcases where they look to direct their play.

The Rams are eighth in passes into the final third per 90, with 131.5 and seventh in crosses per 90 with 18. Partner that with the 4.5 per 90 average of 10-plus pass sequences (17th in the Championship) and three direct attacks per 90 - second in the division, and the picture becomes clearer.

The reason for Eustace prioritising wingers before the window shuts is that is where most of the team’s attacking output is likely to come from. Joe Ward leads the squad in crosses into the box with eight, closely followed by Clark with seven and winger Corey Blackett-Taylor six.

Subscribe now

However, Ward has completed just one of his crosses, Blackett-Taylor two. And for all the excellence of Clark, the Rams need his skills in more central areas to make the team more three dimensional. The former Red Bull Salzburg man is joint-second in the entire Championship with six chances created from open play so far in this short season. If an increased wing presence can keep Clark more central, suddenly Derby have a player close to Carlton Morris who can thread balls through to him - vital as so far Derby have executed just one designated through ball this season.

Ward and Blackett-Taylor’s ineffectiveness in dangerous areas is not a problem exclusive to them either, however. While Derby are one of the better teams in the league so far at passes into the final third, their 63.9% accuracy rate on such passes per 90 has them 15th in the division.

All of that serves as exhibit A as to why Eustace needs wingers added to the squad - to give Clark the freedom to operate more centrally, while also delivering better quality balls into the final third for Morris and company to attack.

Part B is all about having progressive ball carriers and outlets.

Although he has only played 72 minutes of this young season, Blackett-Taylor leads the squad with 14 progressive ball carries for a total distance of 256.1 meters - the next best player in terms of meters covered progressively with the ball is Lewis Travis at 142.1 meters, and Clark has the second most progressive carries on the team with 12.

If direct attacks and crosses are to be the bedrock of this Eustace Derby side, then its wide players must be the ones bringing the fight to the opposition, and so far Blackett-Taylor is being presented as a viable option in the wide areas.

Share The Eleven Points

Allied with that is Derby’s number of backwards passes. Derby are joint third in the league with 16.6% of their passes going backwards - just 0.2% behind the leaders in that metric, Charlton Athletic.

But stick with me.

Derby also lead the league in high turnovers forced per match with 9.5, but of those 9.5 per match, just 1.5 of those turnovers ends in a shot - a 15.79% mark that leaves them 15th in the division. If Derby are forcing high turnovers but don’t have the outlets to make teams pay - then the only way to go to retain the ball is backwards. And by that time the opposition has regained its shape and rendered Derby’s good pressing structures null and void.

If Eustace can get wingers into the squad that stay high at all times, it should, in theory, mean that any high turnover results in a ball carrier being greeted with wingers, Derby’s most advanced midfielder of Sammie Szmodics or Clark, and Morris. Suddenly, the options and outlets give the Rams a chance of capitalising on catching their opponents cold.

Additional wingers will also give Derby an edge when looking to spring counters. Want to know how many fast breaks the Rams have had through two games? One. That ranks joint second to last with six other teams.

Some of those teams, like Middlesborough, are dominating so much in the middle of the pitch and passing their opponents to death that it doesn’t make or break their attacking output or structure. But for a team like Derby, who look to be trying to cultivate direct attacks primarily through the wings, not being able to manufacture fast breaks is a direct consequence of not having the wingers to stretch the pitch, carry the ball at speed, and get quality deliveries into Morris.

The Rams have had an injury-hit start to the season meaning holes have started to pop up across the squad. But if Eustace is to tie together his attacking vision, it’s clear why adding multiple bodies out wide is the main priority for the rest of the summer.

In the couple of weeks since the proposed Turki Alalshikh takeover of Derby County Football Club collapsed, fans have been asking questions as to the state of the club’s finances.

Those fears and frustrations were fuelled by a lack of movement in the transfer market and, when news came of long term layoffs to Matt Clarke and Derry Murkin, the club signed Ryan Hedges on a one-year contract. Hedges was a free agent training with Derby since his release from Blackburn Rovers.

However, fears of the club not having any financial muscle have been greatly exaggerated. By the time David Clowes issued a statement ahead of Saturday’s 2-2 home draw against Cardiff, things felt lighter.

The club are actively looking to add a pair of new wingers to the squad The Eleven Points understands. With Clowes’ statement officially drawing a line under the takeover failure and the summer window rapidly closing, the club are pushing ahead to sign wide players as their main priority.

Given all of that, The Eleven Points spoke to Kieran Maguire from The Price of Football to better ascertain the current state of play on Derby’s finances.

Q: Stephen Pearce reported at June’s Supporters’ Board meeting that the club are operating within the Squad Cost Ratio what does the former actually mean?

A: “If we start off by saying for every £100 that Derby generate through ticket sales, TV deals, sponsorship, merchandise sales, they can spend £85 of that on player costs such as wages and so on. When you see the wage figures in the accounts, we can’t draw too accurate conclusions from it. I usually work on the assumption that three quarters of the wages go to the talent and then the final quarter goes to the support network.

“Plus, amortisation. That word again. What they’re going to do is replace amortisation with the cash payments of transfers this season. So they’re moving to a cash basis.”

Q: Pearce had also said that the club have headroom within the SCR. How different is that to having actual cash to spend?

A: “It means you get a bit of flexibility. It’s a bit like having a credit card with a £20,000 limit and you’ve spent £8,000. So in theory, you can spend more - but only if you have to spend more.

“On top of that, the owners can put extra money into the pot. It’s up to £15 million in one year, £33 million over three years.”

Q: How powerful a mechanism is that? What does that do for Derby?

A: “It sort of goes towards making Derby competitive in a different part of the Championship. If David said he isn’t putting another penny in, you’re effectively going down the Portsmouth route. They’ve got a really good fan base, good crowds - but it doesn’t move the dial.

“David Clowes has put money into the club. The good thing is the money going in has to go in the form of shares as opposed to a loan - which is repayable. The vast majority of owner loans are like loans from the bank of mum and dad. You know, realistically, that you’re not seeing that money again.

“Taking a look at Derby’s accounts, their wages as a percentage of revenue have been really good. In 2024/25 it was 99% of revenue. Therefore what you’re doing is you’re allowing Derby to pay wages that are on par with the average wage in the Championship.

“Based on my calculations, the average wage is £14,000 a week- Derby were paying £15,000 a week last season, on average.

“If David was to put an extra £15 million in, the squad should be good enough for playoffs.”

Q: How much of a risk is that to David?

A: “David is a very smart guy. Everybody I speak to say he’s authentic and smart. Those are huge from a character perspective - those are two green lights that signal this is a well run football club. It’s a risk that he wouldn’t get the money back, the only way he’d get it back if he were to sell the club. But he didn’t buy the club to make money. So in that sense, it’s not really a risk because he’s not in at the club to try and generate a huge return on investment.

“But that doesn’t mean the club’s value would increase by £15 million. It’s simply to cover the club’s losses - he won’t recoup that.”

Q: Is it reductive to suggest if a takeover happens, Derby can spend boatloads of money?

A: “Yes, it is [reductive to suggest]. That’s incorrect. If the club is sold for, say, £50 million, that money goes to David Clowes, not Derby County Football Club - therefore it isn’t money the club has made and can therefore spend. New owners then come in with a budget of their own. How does that budget differ to David’s? David put in £16.25 million in 2025, he put in just under £12 million in 2024. Both of those seasons - you saw the output on the pitch. It was promotion, and then they survived and ended up with a solid season in the Championship.

“I don’t think it will give them a budget that will be a stand out budget (if they get taken over). Whatever finances were being put into the club wouldn’t be readily available. There are Kuwaiti owners at Ebbsfleet United, for example, who have been told they can’t play their first three games of the season because they’ve not paid the back bill, there were Middle Eastern owners at Wigan Athletic - we know that’s turned into a disaster.

“I think it’s an oversimplification that everybody in the Middles East is filthy rich. Lets look at Sheffield United who are in a lot of trouble right now - their owner is Prince Abdullah bin Musaed Al Saud. Now he sold the club because he ran out of funds to run Sheffield United, that is why he accepted instalments on the deal and things have got complicated there.”

Q: Fans are concerned the club don’t have the finances, but this feels more like its their MO - get one big player (Clark) then supplement with loans and frees - is that correct in terms of how they spend?

A: “Yes, [it’s a smart strategy]. In summer 2025 and January 2026, there is a net spend of over £10 million. By Championship standards that’s very competitive. People’s definition of skint is different and fans have short memories. If you don’t spend money in one window, take a look at two or three windows. Derby spent £10.9 million in the summer of 2025. You sign players on instalments - most likely. If you sign a player for £10 million in 2025, then you’re likely paying for that in instalments.

“Suddenly you have to account for that money in the next budget - so if you’re paying a £10 million transfer over three summers, each summer you have to dedicate £3.33 million that is effectively already spent.

“Circling back to the SCR rules - your player costs, its the cash part of the transfer fees. So they’re replacing amortisation with the cash instalments. So If Derby have spent £6 million on Clark and half a million on Mowatt, they’re also still paying instalments for other players and that has to be factored in.”

In short, Derby are a very well run club with a settled way of conducting their transfer business. It is also safe to assume that Clowes had not been lying when he declared that Derby’s targets had remained the same - given that had the club been sold, no huge immediate cash injection would have been forthcoming and any potential new owner would have to set out a new budget, which takes time.

Derby County have endured another summer of a failed takeover - the more things change the more they stay the same.

Going from the promise of Saudi-back millions, billions maybe, to signing recently released Blackburn Rovers man Ryan Hedges to a one-year contract is sure to induce some sort of whiplash effect.

That the club have not come out to address what went wrong with the takeover, after all parties inside Pride Park were reportedly shocked when Zuffa Boxing co-founder Turki Alalshikh pulled out of the deal at the last minute, has only served to fuel even more frustration.

It’s a story that feels eerily familiar, and Derby fans will be forgiven for having PTSD of seeing a failed takeover followed by a short-term signing on a free transfer. That said, the club have spent, and they’ve largely used the same strategy as previous windows.

Bobby Clark made his loan move from Red Bull Salzburg permanent for a reported fee of £6 million and Alex Mowatt joined for £600,000 from West Bromwich Albion. Last summer, the club invested heavily in Patrick Agyemang for £5 million, with the deal worth a potential £7.3 million according to reports. On top of that, Max Johnston was purchased for £3.5 million from Sturm Graz, and Derry Murkin joined for a reported £1 million.

In the last two summers, the club has spent around £17 million, while the only significant fee to be received is the £500,000 from Ebou Adams’ move to Portsmouth in January 2026.

Allied with that spending however, the club has also supplemented its squad with a series of free transfers and loan deals.

Last summer, while Agyemang and Johnston were the big hitters - and Carlton Morris, the club also recruited Danny Batth, Rhian Brewster and Andreas Weimann on free transfers. Further additions in the loan market - Ben Brereton Diaz, Dion Sanderson, David Ozoh, Owen Beck, Jaydon Banel and Clark - bulked out the squad to the tune of 13 total summer arrivals.

So far, just five new faces have walked through the door. And the injuries are mounting.

It all leads to the question of can Derby compete?

That depends on compete for what? Automatic promotion? Hardly. A playoff place? Right now, it’s hard to imagine. A top half finish? Well now that is where it starts to sound realistic.

That is not to dismiss the fears that the club could be dragged into a relegation battle. If the squad were to be hit with just two or three more medium-to-long term injuries, then serious worries would set in regarding the top-to-bottom strength of the squad. And if the goals dry up from Morris, can Szmodics, Brewster and Lars-Jorgen Salvesen make up for any dry spells? They’re legitimate questions.

That said, Derby’s squad can compete. Despite a rotten performance and loss against Lincoln City in the Carabao Cup and a frustrating loss to Charlton Athletic, after going 1-0 up, to open the league season - it’s not a squad short on quality.

Jacob Widell Zetterstrom, himself subject of transfer speculation after Derby knocked back a £2.1 million bid from Serie A side Monza, is one of the better goalkeepers in the division. Clark is a bright creative spark, and the addition of Mowatt gives Derby some control and creative chops from deep. Even in 36 minutes against Charlton, Mowatt registered three chances created - one from open play - per Opta. Per 90 minutes, his open play chances created is 2.5 per game, a respectable number.

Szmodics opened the his campaign with a goal of the season contender against Lincoln, then got his league goal tally up with a neat finish against Charlton, showing him to be over the injury problems he’d sustained in parts of last campaign. And up front Derby still boast Morris, a proven goal-getter, Brewster, superb on his day but with fitness concerns to answer for, and Salvesen, a handy player to throw on when defenders need beating up a bit.

It’s unlikely Derby see Agyemang until the new year given he tore his Achilles in April.

Those key cogs are enough to see Derby be competitive. The squad does not lack quality. It lacks depth. With the news Matt Clarke is set to miss three months of action with a calf injury and Derry Murkin is to miss four months of action with a hamstring problem, the squad is paper thin - especially at the back.

The signing of Hedges will stem the bleeding, but it won’t paper over the larger cracks.

Derby were tantalisingly close to a playoff spot last campaign. Those dreams seem more blurry now. A season looking to perhaps stabilise both on the pitch and on the balance sheet could be looming - but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

A decade is a long time. Long enough for memories to blur at the edges, for emotions to soften, for the sharpness of grief to dull. And yet, as her birthday is here, the day my mum would have celebrated another year of life, I find myself grappling with the same truth I’ve struggled with for years: she was a complicated woman, and we had a complicated relationship.

Mum would have been over 50 now. But instead, she remains frozen in time, forever in her early 40s, never ageing beyond the years she left behind. And while time moves on, my memories of her remain fractured - some bright and beautiful, others dark and painful.

The truth is, I loved my mum. I still love my mum. Despite everything. And there were good times, moments when she was warm, funny, and full of life. But when I try to recall those moments, I find myself grasping at the same handful of memories, as if my mind has subconsciously edited out the rest.

Our trip to Barbados served as a pilgrimage for us both. For different reasons. We’re of Bajan heritage, and for my mum, going back there was a way of reconnecting with her roots. It was the first time I met some of our family still living on the island, it was the first time I visited the Gittens family home and land where more than half a dozen children were raised, and for a brief moment, I felt deeply connected to where the other half of my heritage came from. It also awakened something in mum. Her energy was different. She was alive in a way I didn’t always get to see. She was free in a way her mind rarely allowed for in the monotony of day-to-day living.

She also really enjoyed football, and one of my best memories is sitting with her watching the 2004 FA Cup Final. Millwall trying to conquer Manchester United. The BBC rolling out that old Only Fools and Horses soundbite - “your dad always said that one day DelBoy would reach the top. Then again he always used to say that one day Millwall would win the cup.”

One of my most treasured memories, and still one of the best presents I've ever received, she bought me a special edition Pokémon-themed N64 with Pokémon Snap for my birthday. Twenty years later, when New Pokémon Snap was released for the Switch, I bought it immediately. Every time I boot it up, I think of her. I wish I could tell you I still have it. But sadly it got cleared out with a bunch of other stuff in her house when she passed.

Those are the memories which spring to mind instantly. The go-tos when people ask me to recount a memory to illustrate what kind of person mum was.

And although they are wonderful memories, I feel short changed. I know there must have been other good times, other moments where she was simply my mum, but they feel buried beneath everything else. Maybe they’re there, hidden deep within my mind, unwilling to surface because they come with caveats. Because for every good memory, there are countless others that tell a different story.

My mum was, in many ways, a terrible mother. That’s a harsh sentence to write, but it’s the truth. This is not meant to be an airing out of dirty laundry. I've thought about writing this piece for a long time. I've held on to a vision of my mum that doesn't exist - has never existed - for too long. And this exercise is for me more than it is for anybody else. Day in, day out parenting wasn't mum’s strength. Which is a problem as a parent.

All of the qualities required to help nurture a balanced child, they were in short supply. She would call me fat, regularly and with venom. I hated trying on clothes because of it. Still hate it. Makes me feel uncomfortable. She'd buy clothes deliberately too small for me in the hopes it would incentivise me to lose some weight. It never did.

She would tell me I had no common sense, that I was slow, that I lacked basic intelligence. She would often be left baffled by how bright I could be at school but how thick I could be at home. She’d ask if I was like this at nan and grandad's or at school or a friend’s house - I knew she was gauging how embarrassed of me to be.

She would shout at me until I cried, then berate me for crying: “stop crying before I give you something to cry about”. Would be the party line. You didn't cry unless you were hit. Never worked for me. Has never worked for me. I'm a soft soul really. I change the channel on TV when the RSPCA adverts come on because I just wish I could rescue them all.

Mum would often give me the silent treatment when she was angry, withdrawing her love as a form of punishment. It would be on me to broach the tension. She’d be sat in the dark with nothing but the glow of the television illuminating her. Biting her thumb nail. Forcefully bouncing her leg up and down. A coiled spring just waiting to pop.

And then there were the beatings. Mum hit me more than once, but there’s one occasion I’ll never forget, and at this stage I invite you to whizz along if you wish because this next bit is a touch graphic. I was 12 years old. We came back from town and she was stood against the wall in the kitchen. As I went to zip past and sling my things upstairs, she grabbed me by my coat hood and dragged me back. Without relinquishing her grip, she pinballed me around the kitchen, telling me off for kissing my teeth as she did so (that was my crime - I was tired of shoe shopping! I wanted to go home and watch cartoons!). It was so severe that I wet myself. I was humiliated. As I tried to scuttle away she uncorked a mighty right hand and caught me on the back of my legs. I managed to escape. But she wasn't satisfied with her work. She marched upstairs, I hid under my covers - I knew what was coming - and she grabbed me by the ankle and gave me one last thwack across my legs. I'm not sure when I stopped crying. I just remember it was dark and I hadn't had dinner.

Her words and actions left deep scars. Even now, I struggle to shake them. I still think I’m fat. I still think I’m stupid. It doesn’t matter what anyone else says, how many times I’m told otherwise - those beliefs are carved into me, part of my foundation. I spent so much of my childhood being made to feel unworthy, and that doesn’t just disappear when you grow up.

But my mum was a woman in pain too.

In 2000, her fiancé was shot in Moss Side and killed. That kind of loss isn’t something you move past - it’s something that settles into your bones. She never really got over it. I was just a child at the time, too young to fully grasp what it meant, but looking back, I can see how much it changed her. The weight she carried. The anger that simmered beneath the surface. The way her grief hardened into something sharp, something that cut the people around her.

But her pain didn’t start there. She grew up in hardship, too. Her own childhood wasn’t easy, and in many ways, she was repeating patterns she had learned. The way she lashed out, the way she withdrew love as a weapon, the way she could be so cruel - it wasn’t just her. It was something passed down, something she didn’t know how to escape. And I do believe she wanted to escape it. She just didn’t know how.

Why am I writing all of this now?

Because for years, I’ve been telling a lie.

Every time I’ve posted about my mum on social media, I’ve left out the bad parts. I’ve painted her as a saint, a mother to be mourned without complication. I’ve done it because I wanted to remember her that way. I wanted others to see her in that light. I wanted to avoid the inevitable judgement of admitting that I loved someone who hurt me so deeply.

But as the years have passed, that lie has become heavier. It’s weighed on me in ways I didn’t expect. I realise now that I don’t need to sanitise her memory. I don’t need to rewrite history to make it more palatable.

My mum was deeply flawed. She was abusive, volatile, and often cruel. But she was also a woman who had her own struggles. She was someone who, despite everything, I loved fiercely. And in her own way - albeit a deeply dysfunctional one - she loved me too.

I was proud of her when she finally passed her driving test on her seventh attempt. I was proud of her when she started her own business. I was proud of her when she won Employee of the Year at work, just days before she died.

I miss her dearly.

I am at peace with the fact that she was not a good mother.

I am also at peace with the fact that I loved her anyway.

And maybe that’s the most honest truth I can offer.

If you or someone you know is experiencing or has experienced child abuse, support is available. You are not alone, and help is out there.

NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) – Provides confidential support for children and adults concerned about child abuse. Call 0808 800 5000 or visit www.nspcc.org.uk.

Childline – A free, confidential helpline for children and young people. Call 0800 1111 or visit www.childline.org.uk.

NAPAC (National Association for People Abused in Childhood) – Support for adult survivors of childhood abuse. Call 0808 801 0331 or visit www.napac.org.uk.

The beef between Gary Anderson and Gerwyn Price is a story of similarities and differences. Anderson often let his silk-woven throwing action do most of his talking. Meanwhile, the bombastic Price was emotional and bursting with intensity - a stick of dynamite chucked down a plughole.

All it needed was a spark.

While the tension between the pair started to simmer in the late part of 2017 and the early stages of 2018, it wasn’t until the 2018 Grand Slam of Darts final that the touchpaper was truly lit.

Anderson was still riding his peak, a back-to-back World Champion in 2015 and 2016 - and a losing finalist in 2017. He was the heavy favourite going into the final, a mere dress rehearsal for what would surely be another deep run at the World Championships a month later.

Price was still a pretender - all grey trousers, shouting and flexing, a former rugby player attempting to cut it in the big leagues of the PDC. The November showpiece represented just the second time Price had reached a major final, his career until that point had been littered with early-round defeats.

By the end of one of the most talked about finals in darts history, Price reeled off the final three legs of an exhausting final to snatch the title 16-13. The tournament Anderson has often said is his favourite, the one major tournament that still eludes him in his decorated career, slipped through his fingers. In an act of schadenfreude which only the sporting Gods could find humour in, it’s also the one tournament Price has dominated since 2018 - winning it three times.

The 2018 final could have 1,000 words all to itself. A match that dripped with tension from the first dart, the pair frequently squabbling before it all bubbled over in the 28th leg when Price let out a trademark “C’MON!!!!” after hitting a big score. Anderson was eager to get on with it and stepped up to the oche, Price leaned in, smiling the moment and getting under his opponent’s skin, and Anderson in his impatience gave the Welshman a gentle shove.

In the annals of sport, the contest and result formed a flashpoint in the careers of both men. Anderson started to tail off while Price ascended to the throne - but not without its challenges.

While more crowds give the Iceman the respect he has undoubtedly earned, more often than not he is relentlessly booed. It is something which still irks the Welshman. He has called the crowd “pathetic” at times after a frustrating night on the oche. His heel antics went a step further during the 2023 World Championship when he donned ear defenders against Gabriel Clements and taunted the crowd to jeer him more now that he couldn’t hear them.

In the years since, the Welshman has racked up title after title, while 2018 represents the last year Anderson won a notable singles title (he was crowned as a World Cup of Darts champion in 2019 alongside Peter Wright).

Throughout the Welshman’s climb to the top of the darting galaxy, he would often run into his foe and each meeting served as an exclamation point as to the direction both were heading in. Price won his first major at the expense of Anderson, and in 2021 his first (and currently only) world title came from knocking off the Scot. That victory also served as the moment the former rugby player was officially crowned world number one - a position Anderson has never held and is now never likely to hold. How sweet it must have been.

Perhaps Price did not dislike Anderson personally. Perhaps he disliked what Anderson represented: an old guard keeping him down, a player who rejected Price’s overtly overflowing emotional style of play. Adrian Lewis, a friend of Anderson’s, once took a shot at Price after their 2016 World Matchplay class, outright calling the Welshman “a nobody”. Price always had to fight for respect, people focused more on his antics rather than his game - perhaps so much so that nobody truly took him seriously until it was too late, and he was a darting grim reaper sending naysayers packing.

Perhaps Anderson’s dislike of Price was also not as personal as it seemed. Anderson has always tried to be understated, to say he’ll let his darts do the talking and the rest is the rest. In reality, he is a feisty competitor who had to banish his own doubters when coming to the PDC in 2009. Not even a Premier League win in 2011 could stop the questions of whether he was truly world champion material: he didn’t have the temperament, his doubling wasn’t good enough, he was a bottle-job. Perhaps Price reminded him of himself, and on that November night in 2018, it brought out the more fiery side.

The pair enjoy a pleasant respect nowadays. After Johnny Clayton and Price dismantled Anderson and Peter Wright in the World Cup of Darts final, the duo could be seen joking amid the trophy presentations. Water under the bridge.

Price is now clearly one of the dominant forces in world darts. Anderson is not as good as he once was, but is as good once as he ever was. Back on the practice board, the Flying Scotsman has been one of the form players of 2023 and fortified that position with a victory over Price - fittingly at the Grand Slam of Darts. There was no shouting on that occasion, no playing to the crowd, no frills.

Instead, the rivalry has reached a point of mutual respect. Price has racked up eight majors since 2018, Anderson is searching for his first since then and is seeking to prove a point. With a twinkle in his eye after sending Price packing on Wednesday night Anderson quipped: “Tell the boys I’m finished”.

Mark Goldbridge opens up a clipped-for-X video with a defence of Marcus Rashford. He’s backed Rashford. Rashford is one of his favourite players, he continues. Those statements form the table setting for a five-minute monologue laced with anger towards the Manchester United striker.

Goldbridge accuses Rashford of trying to win social media points, he highlights other media figures who have ridiculed Rashford, a defence of the original video which drew the Manchester United player’s irritation in which The United Stand had a video accompanied with the caption “Rashford’s future in doubt?”. Rashford responded on X with “Please STOP spreading malicious rumours”.

Interspersed with all the whataboutery is a list of insults Goldbridge could have levelled at Rashford - don’t be out partying, score a goal, all the classics - but instead he chose the high road. He’s the real victim here, as are thousands of other disgruntled Manchester United supporters.

It’s been a strange week for Rashford discourse on the former bird app, on YouTube, in newspapers, on television and on the radio.

The Manchester United man has been in the bad books of many since celebrating his 26th birthday at Manchester’s Chinawhite nightclub following the humbling home defeat to Manchester City.

Important reporting: Rashford left the club before the 3 a.m. closing time, and reported to training the following day on time.

Not as important factually, but perhaps just as important on a human level: It was his birthday and he is entitled to celebrate it on his own time, so long as no club codes were violated, regardless of his team’s performance and result.

Manchester United are in a bit of a shame spiral. Even the victory at Fulham, a welcome tonic, only soothed for a moment before the reality set in that Erik ten Hag’s side didn’t perform well.

United are drowning under familiar waters yet again. And in times like these, there is only one thing that can change course: a show of strength from the manager and painting somebody to be a villain.

Ten Hag deemed Rashford’s actions unacceptable but confirmed he apologised for them and the matter was going to be handled internally. Rashford was also in the squad for the 3-0 hammering against Newcastle in the Carabao Cup, and ten Hag insisted the striker would have started against Fulham had he been fit (Rashford pulled out late with an injury) - although that only served to fuel conspiracy theorists.

Ten Hag being so vocal in his press conference ahead of the Fulham game laid the groundwork for avenues to try and attack Rashford’s character. A question was thrown the Dutchman’s way about Rashford’s late timekeeping last season which earned him a slap on the wrist and asked if these two separate incidents nearly a year apart were some kind of deep character defect that must be culled.

A debate raged on Soccer Saturday about whether Rashford crossed a line, or if he was entitled to live his life regardless of work circumstances. The size of Manchester United was brought into the discussion. His wages, depressingly but naturally, have also been levelled at him as evidence he is not upholding his professionalism to the standards demanded.

It brings about the great double standards that so often society plays with footballers. They are all equal until they aren’t. Their mental health is as important as anybody else’s, just because they are footballers it doesn't exclude them - we all shout. Footballers deserve to enjoy their free time doing whatever they want, we all say in our woke-mindedness.

All of that until your completely dysfunctional club, with dysfunctional ownership, begins to act dysfunctionally once more and it’s time to put it all under a microscope. We’d all be at the training ground belting in 1,000 shots until the cleaner turned out the lights we tell ourselves. If we were on six-figure wages, we’d be pulling our bloody socks up! We are the real hard workers here! Who is this pampered prince?

Rashford has bad days, bad weeks, bad months - like we all do. He might step on an upturned plug, strong winds might send his bin down the street scattering litter forcing him to chase after it in his sliders. His workplace might be unserious and suffer setback after setback. And of course, he may have some private matters - like literally every other person on the planet does.

That is not to say Rashford’s play has not contributed to United’s poor form. It has. The England frontman has not reached the same heights he did last season, that is for certain.

But to level an entire organisational failure at his feet is a disproportionate serving of the blame. Rashford is human. Perhaps an evening around friends and family to celebrate his birthday was the respite he required after a testing few months at Manchester United - his workplace, ultimately.

Yet Marcus Rashford forgot the one basic rule of football: you can only have fun in your own life when you’re winning.

The original Hot Wheels Unleashed was a fun-sized, barnstorming, brilliant arcade racer which packed an incredible punch. Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged follows on from its predecessor while adding a few nice wrinkles to enhance the experience, but it is hard to escape the feeling you’ve played this game before.

Don’t get me wrong, sitting on the starting grid at the wheel of a suped-up Dinocar preparing to speed around a back garden, a mini-golf course or a construction site is a total blast. But it all looks very similar to the previous game. And yet I’m not mad at that.

Being part of a handful of miniature racers skittling their way around the orange plastic tracks, hitting various powerups and avoiding pitfalls such as web-spitting spiders along the way, is still a complete joy.

It brings me back to my childhood when I would construct my own Hot Wheels tracks using whatever I could as obstacles; a washing basket, pots and pans, sending cars down the staircase bannister. All chaos, all of the time. There is so much excess from the vibrant colour palette to the obstacles which if clipped at speed send you flying off the track and somersaulting into the void.

The range of cars available to collect, the roster has been expanded to over 130 iconic vehicles, hits like a wave of nostalgia. Even the way the cars are presented, in their Hot Wheels packaging which rips off when you select which car you’d like to unlock next. It's easy to spend minutes rotating and zooming into your latest addition to behold the glorious details.

The cars are split into six classes: Rocket, Balanced, Swift, Drifter, Off-Road, and Heavy Duty, which helps them all stand out and mix up your play style. It’s not perfect however, some cars which, in theory, fit certain tracks, don’t feel fit for purpose in reality and sometimes I had much more success just picking whichever car I felt like.

The collection aspect held my attention much more than the story did. Racing games are always handcuffed in their storytelling as they must always revolve around a problem that can be fixed with racing. Creature Rampage - the title of the new campaign - is a story told through animated cutscenes which seem to be aimed at small children.

The narrative follows the Hot Wheels Racing Team, comprised of racers Robert and Darla, Professor Tanabe, and their robot assistant XR046, who brings extra quirkiness to proceedings.

Tanabe creates a device that can grow and shrink any person or object, and he tests it on five creature track pieces. However, the device malfunctions and the enlarged creatures manage to escape Tanabe's control. So, the team set out to recapture them by temporarily shrinking both the creatures and themselves to toy size, allowing them to fight without causing mass damage.

The characters are pretty shallow and the jokes don’t quite land. And I’m always thankful when the cutscene is over and I can get back to whirring around the track in my monster truck at an ungodly speed.

Boss fights are also pretty one-dimensional, but again this is an overall problem with a lot of racers. Everything has to take place on the track. You hit targets dotted around a course to deplete the boss's lives. The bosses have a fury meter that steadily increases as the ‘fight’ continues but resets when a target is hit. The goal is to deplete all the boss's lives without letting the fury meter reach its maximum.

I’ve been enjoying my time with the game on the Nintendo Switch, and one of the first things to note is that Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 is quite an achievement in terms of performance. The game manages to maintain a steady 30fps frame rate while showcasing visually stunning tracks and detailed car models.

However, there is a trade-off when compared to more powerful platforms of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, the graphics on the Switch do take a hit. The tracks lack a certain texture from bumps on the side to scratches on the ground. Those small details add to the idea that these cars and tracks have been used for racing for years, each ding and knock a story of a chaotic race from the past, and it’s a shame the Switch loses some of this. This is a limitation of the hardware rather than a flaw of the game itself, and it doesn’t remove from the overall fast-paced fun of the game.

The controls feel intuitive and smooth. Drifting around a corner in my Aristo Rat™ feels akin to being flung around in a waltzer car. If you were in the cockpit you can easily imagine your face being flung to one side such with the G force. Sometimes the controls can be a bit too light and entire time trial runs can be ruined with an overly eager turn or being flung from a plant of wood you’ve so far delicately navigated. It’s a frustration, but it’s also a teachable moment to change up your play style or car - maybe both. It’s almost inviting you to use the massive roster of cars to find the best solution.

Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 brings a robust online multiplayer experience to the Nintendo Switch. Players can compete against others from around the world in various game modes, including classic races and time trials. The matchmaking system works well, ensuring that players of similar skill levels are pitted against each other for a fair competition.

Additionally, the game supports cross-play, allowing Switch players to race against those on other platforms. This feature greatly extends the game's longevity and ensures that you'll always find opponents to race against, even if you don't have friends with the same console.

The track editor returns from the first game, allowing players to create their own insane racetracks. I’m glad this feature was kept in. A huge part of the Hot Wheels experience is creating the most insane, off-the-wall tracks imaginable.

Overall, Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged delivers a highly enjoyable and thrilling racing experience.

While the graphical fidelity on the Nintendo Switch may not match its counterparts on more powerful consoles, the game's performance is solid and offers a great racing experience on the go.

There could have been more variety to the tracks, and the story completely misses the mark for me in terms of interest and feeling like the target audience for it. But those issues fall away when I am at the wheel of an El Superfasto™, leaping through a dinosaur’s gaping mouth in a museum, nailing the landing, drifting around a tight corner before speeding through a loop de loop and blazing through the finishing line. Nothing else seems to matter in comparison to that.

Every gamer has a different origin story. For some of us, it was choosing between Charmander, Squirtle and Bulbasaur and going on a sprawling adventure, for others, it was rescuing a princess from a barrel-throwing monkey.

There is a whole new generation of gamers who are discovering their own origin stories right now. And with 2023 being arguably the best year for games ever, the timing has never been better.

My own origin story was incomplete - literally. I’ve booted up hundreds of games across 15 different consoles and finished a fair few of them. But my very first video game experience was marked by a jaunty, if repetitive soundtrack, a vibrant 8-bit world and a lot of childish grunts of frustration.

In the quiet of my great grandmother’s council house kitchen, attached to a small colour television that had no remote control - you had to press the bottom button to get to the AV channel - Alex Kidd in Miracle World taught a seven-year-old Ryan several harsh lessons that every gamer must come to learn at one time or another.

I’d sit on the floor of the kitchen for hours. My family would mill in and out to ask if I was okay because they’d heard an anguished moan and thought something was wrong - THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG, THIS STUPID WATER SECTION KEEPS KILLING ME!

For those who haven’t played it, Alex Kidd in Miracle World is a 2D platformer released in 1986 for the original Master System console which launched in Japan in 1985.

The game follows the adventures of Alex Kidd, a young martial artist tasked with saving the kingdom of Radaxian from Janken the Great, along with rescuing Prince Egle, and Egle's fiancée Princess Lora. Along the way, we navigate various levels, defeat enemies, and use special abilities - most of them being given to us without any explanation at all - all in the name of saving our kingdom. The boss fights take the shape of rock-paper-scissors mini-games with very little drama at all - until later stages when their heads pop off in a second-stage evolution and you’re forced to deal with that.

Subscribe now

I never got past the third boss. The rock-paper-scissors boss fights were easy enough, the gameplay between the boss fights is what I think inspired Dark Souls. It’s tough. And playing it over the weekend as a 31-year-old man, I’m genuinely impressed that 7-year-old me got as far as he did. I needed to ‘git gud’.

Even now I have two decades of experience, Alex Kidd in Miracle World was still an exercise in patience for parts of it - even though I rolled credits on it within two to three hours of playing. I played it over the weekend on my Nintendo Switch. Not the remaster which came out in 2021, the e-shop has the ported original for £1.49 and I dived straight in.

The heavy, stiff controls, iffy hitboxes, unexplained power-ups, which I’m sure would have been explained with a manual or Google, but that felt like too much work, and rather underwhelming boss fights were on full display.

Easily the worst part of the game is the water sections. The game has several of them. If you take your finger off the directional controls while submerged, the game automatically brings you to the surface. So trying to thread the eye of a needle when up against horrendous water physics - the controls get *even heavier* underwater and enemies that one-shot you brought with it teeth-grinding, hand-tightening irritation. I’m surprised the child version of me never dashed a controller across the vinyl kitchen floor in anger.

It was in the more frustrating moments that I wondered what my younger self thought of this. Was it just the upbeat soundtrack, vibrant colours and the motorcycling sections that held my attention? Probably - because those bits were all fun.

In today’s gaming landscape when the art of video game storytelling has never been richer, the modern mechanics have never been as refined, and multiple strands of gameplay loops can exist in one game, Alex the Kidd in Miracle World is a reminder of gaming’s evolution and refinement.

When you boot up Alex the Kidd there is no tutorial, you’re just there at the top of a cliff opposite a yellow box with a star on it, which houses a bag of money inside, and the rest you’re left to figure out on your own. A game aimed at children nowadays wouldn’t go the first 10 minutes without several movement and mechanic tutorials.

I thought about Alex Kidd in Miracle World often - weird as that sounds. I thought about how it was the start of a lifelong passion, and yet somehow I’d never actually made it longer than maybe an hour into its run time - if you were an average player. How could I be the same person to complete hundreds of games, crank up difficulty curves, think I was good enough to take down a Dark Souls game, and yet never finish a 2D platformer whose boss fights are boiled down to schoolyard pastimes?

Well no longer. I won all the rock-paper-scissors battles, I completed the final puzzle and retrieved the crown to become Radaxian’s new ruler. A feat which felt satisfying in a different way. I can now think of the game differently when it populates my thoughts. The spectre which has haunted me since I was seven years old can now be put to rest. I am finally complete. I can add Alex Kidd in Miracle World to my list of games I’ve rolled credits on, and done in a nice succinct playtime of 23 years and 2 hours.

Derby County is slowly turning Paul Warne heel. Or rather, Paul Warne’s iteration of Derby County is turning him heel.

The Rams manager sounded, for the first time, defeated after his side slumped to a 3-1 away defeat to Stevenage on Saturday.

“The fans who came aren’t happy. They’re not happy with me, they’re not happy with the football, they’re not happy with everything and I understand that. They are not in this league to come to Stevenage and lose or underperform,” he told BBC Radio Derby after the game. “I’ve never had to manage a group where your own fans give it to you […] What is fundamental and what is obvious to anybody who knows anything about football is that we’ve just got a soft underbelly.

“I don’t know, apart from going around with my boxing gloves before sending them out, I don’t know how I can get them to be more aggressive.”

The post-match interview with Dom Dietrich turned slightly tense after that. Warne batted back a question about how long “honest conversations” can keep continuing without action…well…honestly, but uncomfortably (it was a good and legitimate question).

The manager was then more spikey when Dietrich probed further when a remark on anybody knowing football could “see what we are missing”.

“It’s your job to ask me very awkward questions, I’m not going to slaughter the dressing room.” Warne snapped back when Dietrich responded, rightly, that it isn’t his job to assess what the squad needs. Dietrich’s job is to ask tough questions. Warne’s is to win football matches - and currently, he is not doing so at an acceptable clip.

Subscribe now

The league table reads thusly, Derby are ninth. With two games in hand and five points off the playoff spots. It’s not the sort of disaster which has engulfed the club previously. No - this is a much more normal one. The things purely being assessed at this point are the on-field product relative to expectations. Currently, the former does not match the latter, and the latter may soon have to be tempered if the former continues its malaise.

It has been a year of extremes for the club. Warne being at the helm of a 15-game unbeaten league streak and shooting up the table feels like a lifetime ago. In reality, it has only been eight months since that run was put to an end at the hands of Wycombe Wanderers.

In the time since then, Derby have won 12 of their 32 league matches played. It’s been a form good enough to see them dramatically plunge from playoff contention on the final day of the season and begin the first third of the current campaign limping along in mid-table, weighed down by the expectations of dominating the division, or at least being one of the stronger sides in it.

Instead, nothing about the club feels remotely happy or connected. Warne’s post-match comments attest to that. So, too, does captain Conor Hourihane confronting the away end after a 1-0 defeat to Shrewsbury last weekend. The Irishman insisted he and his teammates are trying. The convincing 2-0 win over a below-par Exeter side provided a welcome tonic, but it’s all part of the meltdown: beat a team going through it to provide a touch of breathing room before sinking further still in the next game. The desperate mad flurry before falling flat once more.

None of this is helped by the man Warne replaced, Liam Rosenior, flying with Hull City in the Championship. Rosenior is up for Manager of the Month for October, Hull recently schooled Wayne Rooney’s Birmingham City 2-0, and occupy the final playoff spot in the second tier. It’s never an apples-to-apples comparison, but in the game show that is football, seeing the curtain flung back and looking at what you could’ve won is especially cruel.

Perhaps this is what the revolt might have looked like if fans were allowed in to see the start of Phillip Cocu’s second tenure, the revolt that season was being heard online consistently. Things never got so grim on the field when the club was swimming desperately against the tide under Wayne Rooney. Nor was it as toxic in the brief spell under Rosenior. That is all to say, the club was unmistakably together united in its circumstances then (or not allowed in due to Covid restrictions).

This is all fresh. And, in a sick way, that’s refreshing, isn’t it? No? Sorry, but at least it’s just the on-field expectations that are causing the anger and not the thought the club may go out of existence.

The fans are making their voices heard in the stadium, under the club’s official X account, on the radio, in the pubs and streets, wherever they huddle. There is a fundamental rejection of Paul Warne as Derby County manager while things remain the same - something which he understands.

The football Gods have looked at the fixture list and there are two narratives to be painted: beat a lacklustre Northampton side at home and progress through to the second round of the FA Cup at the expense of Crewe Alexandra, and Warne can breathe. Lose again at home, and get bounced from the cup, Warne may be sporting a different branded bobble hat this Christmas.

First things first: SPOILER WARNING!! I will be discussing parts of Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix’s plot. So if you’re yet to watch it or reach its conclusion, stop reading here.

Captain Laserhawk is barely two minutes old when a state-approved late-night talk show intro tees up the next scene. That the voiceover is so effusive and the jazzy soundtrack underneath is so jaunty almost masks the lead: the show is state-run. It’s propaganda.

Then Rayman jovially jumps onscreen. My face lights up with nostalgia for a moment, then I remember: he’s anchoring a propaganda late-night talk show. It’s the first indication Rayman is not going to be everything we’ve come to know and love him as. He’s the mouthpiece for a fascist dystopia. And he is lauded so much that he has neon signs of his face atop the tallest of buildings in Eden, the country formerly known as the USA.

Reimagining Rayman as this chat show host designed to push state propaganda is perfect. His character up to this point dripped with personality and charisma even if he seldom said a word. He was all big cheesy grins, perfectly-parted blond hair like a golden volcano, and bombastic hand movements. That larger-than-life personality while being relatively mute was part of his charm throughout the Rayman video game series. So dialling that up to 11, fleshing out his character with proper dialogue and running with it - chef’s kiss.

None of it was meaningless, either. In an interview with Polygon, creator Adi Shankar said using Rayman in this way was a commentary on Saturday cartoons that are more akin to 30-minute adverts for the latest toys.

“It’s a commentary on that kind of culture, one that normalises that, ultimately,” Shankar told Polygon “Which is why you have a cartoon character being a spokesperson for [Eden’s] political agenda.”

Subscribe now

It’s a shock Ubisoft allowed Shankar to be so wildly creative with its IP, but as he said in a recent interview with IGN, one of the Ubisoft owners would sit in on every meeting to offer support and confirm that Ubisoft was going to allow Shankar to twist its characters in ways we’ve never seen before.

How Shankar and his team build Rayman’s character is shocking, deep, twisted and something that has stayed with me since I finished the series. Shankar told IGN: “I would say maybe I had 7 to 10 images flash into my brain immediately as to what the project is, right? One of them was Rayman with two Tommy guns.”

How we go from late-night talk show host to Rayman with two Tommy guns is a wild ride. Across the six episodes, we witness the downfall of Eden’s mouthpiece and it has stuck with me every day since I finished watching the season.

Halfway through the first season, Rayman is fired from his job for calling a red superhero a “fucking red prick” after the superhero in question calls main protagonist Dolph Laserhawk “interdimensional alien scum”, something which triggers Rayman as he outlines he is a refugee from Dimension X. Even with all the relentless violence and cursing up to that point, hearing Rayman curse, drop the F-bomb, threaten somebody so explicitly, is unnerving.

The next we see of Rayman he’s in his high-rise apartment, wearing nothing but his underwear and a red robe unfastened, swigging from a bottle of whisky. The scene is tense and desperate. There are discarded takeaway containers and empty alcohol bottles strewn across his apartment. The sofa is dirty and the room is lowly lit, an item of clothing is hanging over the lamp. Rayman is clashing with a member of the Board of Directors: “You can’t fire me! I’m the voice of Eden!” he barks at the television before his rage leads him to smash his whisky bottle into the television and break it.

It all feels so sad, like for the first time Rayman is painfully aware that he is an expendable commodity in a world which prizes loyalty to the cause above all else, and those from Dimension X are welcome so long as they tow the fascist, company line. The next we see of Rayman is, in fact back on the television. But before the audience can come up with a theory as to how he made his way back, what deal he did with the Board of Directors to earn their forgiveness, how he sold his soul even more to remain “the voice of Eden”, the audience is shown footage of the original Rayman, *our* Rayman, eating sushi of a half-naked cow lady, with what looks to be a suspicious white powder around his nose - and he is gobsmacked.

The scene is one of the most memorable from the first season - in fact, most of the Rayman scenes are memorable - and it draws us in further to his anger, his life of excess, and his unhinged behaviour.

We’re left to wonder what this all means for Rayman. What depths he will sink to next, now that he has seen he has been replaced by a clone? What is important to stress about this is how none of Rayman’s character feels forced. Which is a surprise. The guy who used his hair as a helicopter and freed millions of Teensies across a plethora of worlds, whose most violent moments came from comically winding up his fist to punch an evil teensy onto the moon, has been transformed into something else entirely - and it fits like a glove.

And perhaps that is because so much of Rayman’s actual character is without context in the video games. His persona is told more through facial expressions and simple actions than anything else, much like other mascots of the 1990s, Crash Badicoot’s suggestive eyebrows before leaping on a hog or Sonic the Hedgehog’s annoying finger wag like he’s been watching Dikembe Mutombo, video game Rayman was just a guy with a big grin, some big hair, and big thumbs up. The rest was yet to be coloured in.

Subscribe now

The final two episodes of Captain Laserhawk drive the next chapter of Rayman’s fascinating character arc - but not before he plunges rock bottom. Episode five greets us with the most memorable scene. Rayman snorting coke. If you want to truly make it clear that a once beloved character is now fully off the rails, have them snort coke, first thing in the morning, slumped in front of the television, in their underwear. It’s bleak. Rayman’s fall has been so rapid.

But it spelt the end of his first act as a character in the series and leaves us as the audience excited to see how he develops in season two. What happened on Dimension X that meant he had to flee? How did he become the mouthpiece for Eden’s propaganda? How did the drug problem start?

Rayman marching into the Board of Directors’ office like John Wick, a pair of Tommy guns in hand, and demanding the live execution of Bullfrog be stopped is badass. His final action reminded me of Heath Ledger’s The Joker quote “Gravity is a lot like madness, all it takes is a little push.”

A member of the board asks Rayman if he’s happy now. It’s met with a deranged cackle before Rayman slaughters the entire room. He finally broke. That question was the final push and Rayman descends fully into his madness. He chooses to pursue his own kind of justice. Don’t bet on him saving a Teensy anytime soon.

Hello there everybody,

I hope you’re well.

For those of you who have already purchased my book, Pride Before The Fall, thank you so much. It means the world to me.

After having a couple of weeks post-book release to reflect on what has been 12 months of intense writing, mainly about Derby County, I’ve come to a decision: We’re taking this substack into brave new places.

I never really got the chance to commit to this Substack the way I wanted to. I started it, got off to a hot start, and then a month later I was commissioned to write a book. Alongside planning a wedding and a full-time job, I had no time to truly jump into this. I had big plans! Sorry about that.

One of the lessons I’ve taken from writing Pride Before The Fall is that you should indulge your passions. Always. Another lesson I learned was writing a book is exhausting, and the level of detail you’re required to be in can make it all a bit of a grind. A grind I’m thankful I got to the finishing line of, but a grind nonetheless. You can’t half-arse it. And that level of commitment means you put other things on the back burner.

One of the biggest fears I had about writing the book was “Please don’t be shit”. I never wrote the book for anything other than to write it. Derby County is my passion. And I figured there was a book ready to be written. The anxiety that people would read it and be disappointed would sometimes consume me. It would sometimes make the experience less enjoyable. I wasn’t motivated by the thought it would sell 1,000,000 copies. I just wanted fans of the football club I adore the most and have now spent a half-decade covering (has it already been five years since I started covering the club?!) to say “Nice job, Ryan”. Probably something to discuss in therapy!

I took great pride in covering Derby, and I took great pride in writing this book. So I wanted Derby fans to think it was worth their time. And if some of you feel that way, then the book has been worth my time writing.

But I have other passions, too. And I wish to write about them whenever I want and find my style again. Writing 80,000 words very seriously requires discipline. The words will be printed forever, it’s not like you can amend an error like in digital. So you change your style a touch. So this will now become as much a discovery platform as it is a story-telling one.

There will still be the odd Derby County bit here and there - how could there not be? For those who have purely subscribed to read about Derby County from me and nothing else - I understand if you’ll be waving goodbye to Conway Conversations. Thank you for being a part of the journey up to this point. But as the title says, it’s time for a change.

I’ve got the itch to write about something other than Derby County full-time, and I’m hoping not writing about them so extensively allows me to just go back to watching them, enjoying them, and suffering with you all without having to ask what it all means - I guess I just want to be a fan now.

So, what will I be writing about then? Well, my other big passions: Derby County, just in smaller doses, sports that don’t involve the single greatest football club on planet Earth Derby County, video games, television (I have thoughts about Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix), and just anything that takes my interest.

Loads of Substack pieces advise you should pick a niche and stick to it - fuck that. I just want to write about the things I like, love, hate, am interested in, am confused by.

I thought about a jazzy new title - then I thought, this will still be a conversation from a Conway. Just a different kind of one.

Taking my writing style and subject matter in a new direction is scary. What if I fail? What if you all leave? What if Derby County was the only thing I ever had a valid opinion on? I’ll have those fears for a while. But what helped me with them in the here and now was I reread an article on Vice recently about gamers who regularly stream to single-digit audiences. It filled me with dread that my words would be going into a void unread and alone. Then I thought it was quite liberating. Scream into the void and see who screams back - that’s the artist formerly known as Twitter in a nutshell. Why not apply it here?

So in short, now I’ve finally finished writing a book, I’m going to write some more. But just on different things. And some of the same things. But some things nonetheless. The more things change the more they stay the same, I guess.

Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter, and thank you for reading my work. If you're getting off at this stop - thanks for being part of the ride. God bless you. If you’re staying along to see where this goes, thank you, too. Let’s see what happens.

Shortly after Derby County released their official retained list, Curtis Davies released a small statement of his own to thank the club, fans, all the backroom and behind the scenes staff and was emotive in his goodbye. Davies addressed the daunting goodbye at the top of his farewell, and the paragraphs that followed befitted the character of the man who has so often embodied all the battling qualities Derby County have needed on the field and humility, perspective and genuine thoughtfulness they’ve needed off it to come out of the other side of their toughest period in recent history.

Derby also released defenders James Chester - who was limited to just seven games due to injury - and Richard Stearman, who became a cult hero during his brief time at Pride Park. But the flowers were saved for Davies. Derby’s social media team went out of their way to grab some of the best photos of the defender, personally thank him for everything, “memories that will last a lifetime” the caption read, while also released a YouTube video for their captain with Owen Bradley proclaiming on the voice over (which was commentary from when Davies came on in the 3-3 draw against Sheffield Wednesday) “If you want heart, if you want character, if you want commitment, if you want a leader, this is your man.” - no lies were told.

Whether or not you’re of the belief that Davies deserved one more year at the club, nobody can doubt his tenure has been stellar. One more contract may have been in the offing - but Davies finished 90 minutes just 12 times in the league last season and it was clear that the club was moving in a different, more long-term direction that, sadly, meant Davies had to get off at the next stop.

It’s hard to begin to sum up what Davies has been to Derby. If nothing else (and he has been a lot else we’ll get to), he’s been a survivor. On two different occasions previous manager Phillip Cocu tried to phase Davies out, first by making him train with the second team in pre-season and making him the 19th man for long away games - which the father in Davies did not appreciate - and then in the summer of 2020 by signing Mike te Weirik, an experiment which lasted less than 10 games before Davies was once again called upon. Not once did Davies publicly complain however, he instead chose to address the matter openly with Cocu in a bid to find a solution. He has never admitted it, but how sweet it must have been to have the Dutchman come crawling back twice for his services when plan A did not work out.

And then Davies survived further still by earning a new contract before the start of the 2022/23 season when he was technically a free agent, but was in no rush to sign and was going to give Derby first refusal to sign him to a deal as the club got its ducks in a row following the David Clowes takeover. Davies has survived, just like Derby County have.

Subscribe now

Bradley’s words during the final minutes of the 2020/21 season are as true as ever - if you wanted leadership and heart, Davies was unquestionably the man. The former Hull City defender had signed a medical waiver before that game to make himself available to help his club should they need him. Davies had torn his achilles in mid-December against Brentford and faced the rest of the season out. It was a bitter blow for a player who had been a fixture of the first team until that point and figured to make the task of staying in the Championship even harder. However and intense rehab programme meant the door was not completely shut on a spectacular return - and the club worked hard to keep his naming in the squad under wraps so to not potentially tip off Sheffield Wednesday.

Wayne Rooney turned to him with eight minutes remaining to kick and head every ball he could, to throw himself in front of every shot, cross and pass, to kill the clock, to disrupt and help keep cool heads - and in the end it was enough to help keep Derby in the Championship. That there was the possibility of reaggravating the injury to the point where it could have potentially ended Davies’ career, and he took that risk for Derby County, told it’s own story. Many players say they are willing to give everything for their club, Davies showed it.

And although it was not necessarily his job to find the back of the net, Davies would find some big goals throughout his Derby career - especially the latter half of it. And especially in the 2021/22 season when the club was swimming against what felt like an inevitable tide of going into League One with administration looming, and then confirmed in late September of 2021. Davies netted goals which got points against Huddersfield Town and Stoke, and not to mention his last gasp headed leveller against Reading - a game in which the Rams were 2-0 down before staging a brave fightback to a 2-2 draw. Davies near ripped the shirt off his back clutching the badge and pumping it towards to Derby end with passion coursing through his body.

Davies was not just all lionheart and guts, however. He is a thoughtful and sensitive leader who was called upon during difficult times to act almost as the players’ face of things. Shortly after the drink driving incident involving Tom Lawrence, Mason Bennett and Richard Keogh, Davies was alongside then owner Mel Morris helping provide damage limitation PR, apologise to fans and assure the players in question would be dealt with and that the club were going in the right direction.

That Morris elected for Davies to be the players’ face of things while he went on the charm offensive spoke volumes as to how he was viewed by ownership and the sort of leadership qualities he had. That Davies would captain the side until January - when Wayne Rooney took over the armband - was also no coincidence and more a political play from Morris to get the ‘right’ leaders in the playing squad in position to make a positive impact.

Davies was also an understanding and sympathetic figure. When Covid-19 hit and the club was trying to agree wage deferrals, the former Aston Villa man was cooperative, understood the difficulty the club had been placed in - that all clubs had been placed in because nobody had navigated a global pandemic before. He also understood some players bristling at the idea of giving up significant portions of their wages - after all, players live within their means too, and their finances and lives would have also been impacted.

That calmness and levelheadedness allowed the negotiations to be as smooth as possible - even if the club would sometimes alter the terms at the 11th hour. But Davies also wanted clarity for the kitchen staff, the people who sweep the corridors, the people working in the Megastore - what of them? He would ask. And ask it again when the club went into administration. Davies wanted to know that everybody connected with the club was going to be looked after.

And although his final act for the club was an unhappy one - giving away a penalty and being sent off against Sheffield Wednesday as Derby’s playoff hopes were finally, cruelly extinguished on the final day of the League One season - it certainly' won’t be Davies’ defining act in a Derby County shirt.

Davies was a rugged, thoughtful, insightful part of Derby County, a take-no-prisoners general on the field and the nicest take-a-picture-with-your-kids person off it. He shall be missed around Pride Park, but the memories will last a lifetime.

Dear Derby County,

I’d like to thank you. Thank you for reinvigorating my football experience with genuine belief. From the moment David Clowes came and saved the club, day-by-day I let myself believe again. I let myself believe that the fight was not just to stay in the division, or to stay alive altogether, but to be something more once again. And that is not to say I ever stopped believing in you - far from it. I just stopped believing the people who claimed to be looking out for the club. But that is all over now. Better days are ahead.

We went through the pain together, like we’ve been riding the highs together. And it brings me great joy to see you smile again. To see the tens of thousands of footsteps marching towards you in adulation and wonder of what might possibly be, rather than in defiance of what might be snatched away from us.

The traditions can now continue for many years to come being passed down from grandparents, to parents to children and beyond. The idea that millions of potential Derby fans of the future would be lost due to recklessness was the most horrific thought of them all. That the great Brian Clough and Peter Taylor can watch stoically on, clutching our last league title with the hope that maybe, in decades to come, we may one day recreate it. I know, you chuckle now - but I’m just glad we can daydream so preposterously again.

What they say is true: it takes a village. And sometimes members of that village have to leave it and find their own path. But we won’t forget them. Thank you Liam Rosenior for staying loyal when it would have been easier to turn and run, for banging the Derby drum and assembling a team from the ground up. Thank you for puffing out your chest, throwing a whistle around your neck, clutching a stopwatch in your hand and being the next manager of Derby County at a time when many saw us as an entity bruised, scarred and requiring too much time to repair. It didn’t work out. And that’s okay - usually in football things end in tears of sadness rather than joy. But I’m happy you’ve landed on your feet. You deserve it.

Our new leader Paul Warne picked up from where you left off and ran with it. In my brief time of falling in love with you, I have never seen anything like it - a relentless unbeaten streak that propelled us not only up the League One table, but our spirits up so high we could pole vault the Wembley arch - alas, our heels just clipped it. But that makes us believe more, not less, because we came so close with some square pegs in some round holes. Progress is not linear.

But no matter. We ran the seven-time European champions to a 0-0 in their own, extremely noisy, back yard - and sure we fell their too. But what a rush. What a story for years to come when we points to the photo of Anfield dotted in black and white, just visible through the red-smoke-filled-sky and say' ‘I was there’. And that was amid us playing some of the most beautiful football we’ve seen in a while. A hattrick of hattricks for our marksman David McGoldrick in that time. You know we are special when a seasoned professional with so many accomplishments already under his belt can pull on our famous black and white and produce the best football of his career. An army of kids in playgrounds will now be flexing on their classmates - all because of you, Derby County.

You’ve always looked after the youngsters too. Seeing our lambs graduate to full rams makes millions of us feel like proud parents to each and every one. Watching gleefully as Max Bird spreads his wings and flies in the middle of the park, gritting our teeth with determination as Eiran Cashin flings himself in front of another cross, shot, pass and showing no signs of naivety I know I showed as a 21-year-old. An inspiration to us all.

Sure, we had to find our feet again and the change in scenery and personnel meant it took a while to stabalise, but we got there in the end. Because we’re Derby County, and we fight until the end.

We always had that fight. The fight to survive, the fight to resist what felt like certainties sucking us into a black hole, the fight to get up off the canvas and throw another haymaker. Sometimes we missed. But when we landed - oh boy!

And we’ll get off the canvas again. Tell Curtis Davies its okay and we love him. Falling short at the last hurdle is not on our ambassador, our leader, our captain. Mistakes happen, but we’ll go again and this will not define him. He has thrown his body in front of shot after shot for the cause, he had scored vital goals and embodied the passion every single one of us feels for our great club. He is down now - but we shall all pick him back up, because he is our leader and we need him.

And the emotions of it all may still be raw right now. That’s fine, these things take time. But I don’t want you to beat yourself up. You have nothing to be sorry for, nothing to feel bad about. I’m proud, I’m happy. I’m already looking forward to what the future brings, and would happily take the last nine months all over again - because even though you still took us all for a wild ride, it was the best kind.

It’s time to relax now. Because for all the fun this has been, it’s also been exhausting. And we can turn our backs for a second now with the full knowledge that you’re in the care of people who truly love you like the rest of us do.

Thank you, Derby County.

Subscribe now

At the start of the season, with Derby County in such a fragile place, we did not really know what the 46 games ahead of us meant. Now, the task is simple - win, and you’re in.

In another sense however, the task will be far from simple. Because Derby will have to go to Hillsborough and defeat a Sheffield Wednesday side which have only lost once at home all season. How are your nerves?

Paul Warne has orchestrated a splendid first season (mostly) in charge all things considered - and a playoff appearance, or lack of one should that happen, should not define the totality of the season as a success or a failure. Unlike Derby’s colours, things are not always so black and white.

Subscribe now

A poor March which saw the side win just one game threw the door wide open for the chasing pack - including three 3-0 defeats on the spin - but a run of six unbeaten ahead of the final day of the season has seen Derby have their fate placed into their own hands. And with a game to go, that’s all you can really ask for in football.

There are, of course, concerns. Derby’s profligacy in front of goal in recent weeks has been a cause for concern and they’ll need to be more ruthless in front of goal if they are to punch their ticket past the Owls and into the mini-tournament for Wembley. It would be handy if previous stars of the season such as Nathaniel Mendez-Laing and James Collins - who scored a terrific goal to grab a well-deserved point at home against Portsmouth - could find their form once again to lessen the load on the ever-outstanding David McGoldrick.

It would also be handy if a once water-tight defence could regain that stinginess which was an early characteristic of Warne’s side. Since the turn of the year the Rams have kept just five clean sheets, and with the goals becoming harder to come by it has hardly been an ideal time to become a leaky ship. The signs during the six-game run are promising however - two clean sheets and in the other games they have conceded just a single goal. And as long as a single goal is the deficit they will always stand a chance. Conversely, as long as they only ever lead by a goal they will forever leave the door ajar for the opposition. They must learn to slam it shut.

Of course, a win is not the only way Derby can punch their ticket to the playoffs. Peterborough’s 0-0 stalemate with Bristol Rovers ensured that they must win to give themselves any chance of making the top six. A draw for them would not be enough and would see Derby squeak into the final playoff place.

It feels like final third of the season

has been a slog. Probably because in many ways, it has been. The once magnificent run of 15, 16, 17, 18 games unbeaten had nearly everybody believing two things: one, the team was for real, and two, they could go up automatically. The automatic push faded as the year went on as the squad ran out of steam - perhaps naturally as the January imports have not had the desired impact on the squad and a tiring of legs, plus the restraints placed on them from the EFL - which Derby agreed to - were always going to make major additions tough to come by. But the squad found an extra gear and dug deep to dig themselves out of a hole they threatened to make deeper with every passing game.

The season should not be determined a failure if Derby fall just short. A mere 15 months ago, thousands and thousands of you marched to Pride Park before the Birmingham game in a bid to be heard, but also fearing it may have been the last time you saw your beloved Derby County Football Club play a competitive game of football in their current guise. Now, they are four wins away from being back in the Championship. If they drop off at any point during those four games, it shouldn’t matter to us really. That the club was able to hand us such optimism, such hope, such a wonderful journey again should be the thing to be remembered.

But that sentiment is for us. Paul Warne and his side will see it as a matter of business. David McGoldrick may cap his best ever season with a performance from the Gods to fire Derby forward, Joe Wildsmith has gone from lukewarm reception to “hey - he’s alright actually” to one of the best players at the club and showcased his value as one of the beat goalkeepers in the EFL. Eiran Cashin has marked his first full season as a first team regular like a true pro. The job is right in front of Derby to be finished. So, I’ll ask the question once against: How are your nerves?

Subscribe now

Tis the season to get those team of the year votes in, assess who has performed well over the course of the full campaign and then affix our own imaginary honours to said players for content - slow news week. Also the fact that the EFL Awards shortlist was announced and not a single Derby player made it on there means this piece is the only one fighting the good fight and giving out the flowers that are deserved at Pride Park.

Derby have only used 22 players this season at the time of writing so the selection to choose from will be limited, but there are a number of true contenders who can lay claim to the Ryan Conway Player of the Year.

It’s been a good season all things considered for the Rams - especially when taken into account how fragile the club were just a month out from the season. The late potential playoff collapse has dampened spirits - but it’s nice that its just the football which is frustrating and not anything off the field, and they still might make it into the tp six yet!

So without further ado let’s take a look over the contenders and crown our winner.

Player Of The Year Contenders

Joe Wildsmith

Firstly an apology - I was wrong about Joe Wildsmith. Not that I was ever remotely critical of his ability. Just that I assumed he would have been a back up rather that Derby’s first choice goalkeeper. Well 20 clean sheets in all competitions later (16 in the league) and it’s safe to say that Wildsmith is Derby’s number one and their most consistent goalkeeper since Scott Carson.

Wildsmith has been ever-present for the Rams this campaign and on numerous occasions preserved what are turning out to be vital points as Paul Warne’s side try to reignite their playoff charge with five games to spare. Derby rank 7th in goals against per 90 (1.02) and Wildsmith ranks 7th for his save percentage of just over 72% from 134 shots on target faced this league season - a relatively low number of shots league-wide (5th lowest).

Wildsmith has often been the backbone of what at one point in time was one of the stingiest defences in League One. His timing when coming out to meet opposing attackers, his confidence at set pieces - which has grown - to not be bashed about and some of his fantastic reflex saves and penalty heroics make him firmly one of Derby’s best players this season.

Eiran Cashin

Is it too much of a stretch to say Cashin is already the best centre-back in League One? The fact that this is a dialogue which needs to be taken seriously at the very least speaks to the meteoric rise of the hard-nosed Irishman.

Cashin is a throwback in all of the best possible ways - the tucked in shirt, the plain black boots, the throwing himself in front of any moving object because he is hard-wired to stop goals going into the back of his net. He’s old school to his bones. But that is not to say he doesn’t host elements of more modern defending in his routine. Cashin can anticipate with the best of them in the division, he can smell danger and snuff it out without having to get his kit muddy and he has the strength to be able to hold off full grown men - it’s easy to forget he is still only 21-years-old.

It is becoming more and more of a surprise when his name is not included in the squad list for the Republic of Ireland, but it surely won’t be long now until he makes his senior bow at international level.

It would have been easy to pencil in Curtis Davies and Richard Stearman in as the two starting centre-backs such was their experience, but Cashin has made one of those spots his own playing in all but three games this season - and finishing 90 minutes in all but one of the games he has featured in - he’s cemented his place already as a key cog for the Rams.

Nathaniel Mendez-Laing

His performances have dropped off in the last seven games or so, but for two thirds of the season Mendez-Laing was proving the sort of dynamism out wide which Derby fans thought they were going to get with Kamil Jozwiak and Florin Jozefzoon before him - I’m still mad at Jozwiak for making me look a fool.

A side-winding, oil-hipped, fleet-footed winger has been a pain for full-backs all campaign and has provided constant ammunition for David McGoldrick and James Collins.

There are times when the former Cardiff City wide man takes a touch too many, or hesitates before tossing a cross in when it should go in first time - but for the majority of the campaign he has been exactly what Derby have needed - particularly as an outlet to lead counter attacks or to inject life into a low-tempo performance.

His 18 goal involvement - eight goals, 10 assists - in all competitions, with both seven goals and assists in the league, have been a major reason why Derby have remained a force at the top end of the table going into the final five games. If he can rediscover his form of mid-season, it may just take Derby to Wembley.

Winner: David McGoldrick

At the ripe age of 35, McGoldrick is having a career year. The 21 goals he has nabbed in all competitions is the most he has ever scored in his two-decade career and the 18 league goals is also a personal best which tops the 16 goal mark he reached, also in League One, for Coventry City a full decade earlier. Can you say David McGoaldrick? I’ll see myself out.

Anyway - McGoldrick’s 0.7 goals per 90 and his 0.53 xG per 90 both rank in the 99th percentile of League One this season, and his combined goals and assists total ranks him in the 98th percentile. McGoldrick is fourth in the League One top scorer standings - given that he has played five and seven games fewer than the three players above him it is reasonable to to believe that gap could have been closer if he’d have featured in a handful more games.

Not only that, but he has also bagged a remarkable three hattricks this term - having never hit a treble throughout his career. McGoldrick is just one league hattrick away from Erling Haaland in domestic football this season - so watch out.

McGoldrick has been an all round player at the sharp end of the pitch for Warne’s team. Comfortable playing both as a number nine and as a 10 - some may say he’s developed into the nine and a half role which bridges both goal scoring duties and creative responsibilities - the 35-year-old has become the focal point of nearly everything good Derby do going forwards.

The former Sheffield United front man has scored in 12 different games this season and has assisted in five different matches this season - in those matches where he has directly contributed Derby have dropped just 10 points. Quite simply, David McGoldrick is playing the best football of his career right now in a Derby County shirt.

Subscribe now

It’s been a long season - again. And Derby County now only have 15 more points to play for in the 2022/23 campaign. Back in August it was uncertain what those 15 points on offer would mean. Stability, a fight to stay up, a promotion tilt or, just maybe, a mad dash to the title.

As we rounded the corner into the final third of the season, it felt like Paul Warne’s side could make a run at perhaps not the title, but automatic promotion. Derby had been unbeaten in 15 home games - going an entire third of the season unbeaten is some feat - and were hunting down the top two - even if the gap was still sizeable, there was a belief they could be caught.

It’s always good to dream, it’s good to want things and to have a goal - but that has been set alight and the ashes have blown all over League One. In the here and now it very much feels like the Rams have forgotten how to swim and are instead wildly flailing their limbs trying to fight a tide which threatens to drown out their very hopes and leave them in the battering seas on League One for more than just a season. The 15 points now on offer are huge - and that six of those are being held by Portsmouth and Sheffield Wednesday makes the task of grabbing them akin to snatching gold from a snarling dragon.

The manner in which Derby have stumbled in the final third of the season has been particularly concerning. A humbling 4-1 defeat to Barnsley was a bitter pill to swallow, it was compounded 10 days later when Derby threw away a two-goal lead at home to Shrewsbury Town - though a 2-0 victory against Charlton sandwiched between those results eased the pain. The Rams suffered a brutal March, recording just one win and a host of disappointing losses. Derby took an early lead against Plymouth Argyle only to end the day empty handed and further looking over their shoulders as their stranglehold on their playoff spot was growing increasingly weak.

But a playoff spot was still there to be grasped - until it wasn’t. Or at least until it became a mountain to climb to grab one. Losing three games 2-0 is not the sort of form that will earn you playoff football, and if you do manage to somehow sneak into the rough and tumble mini tournament culminating at Wembley, it will hardly put the fear into your fellow contenders. At this stage, it is becoming increasingly difficult to believe, if they made the playoffs, that Derby could knock off two of Ipswich, Barnsley or Peterbrough - that is assuming Bolton are the side to miss out in favour of the Rams.

If we take those three teams and take a look at Derby’s record against them, Derby have taken six points from those six clashes against their fellow playoff hopefuls. However, worryingly, both of those victories came at the start of the season when Liam Rosenior was still in charge. All the teams involved now are very different to the sides that were playing in August and September. That is not to say Rosenior should still have the job mind - merely an observation. Warne has done exceptionally well in his tenure thus far to coax a playoff calibre push out of a team which was thrown together in earnest in the summer under a different manager with many different ideals about how the team should play. But there can be no escaping the struggles of the squad currently.

The latest blow to their credentials, a 1-1 stalemate at Pride Park against an MK Dons side which have been resurrected lately, underscored a great wastefulness with which Derby operate. Of the 28 shots they took, only seven hit the target - and of course they only came away with one goal. A stark difference to MK Dons’ annoying effectiveness in scoring one goal from just two shots on target.

Yet the problem is not exclusive to their latest game. Outside of their 2-0 victory over Forest Green Rovers - in which Derby had half of their shots hit the target - they have had a remarkable profligacy. Their 2-0 defeat to Peterborough saw them only log five shots on target, against Ipswich they only took five shots in total - at home no less - and against Fleetwood they only managed to have two of their 15 attempts work the goalkeeper.

Perhaps all of this - the wastefulness, the ease with which they are being cut through at the moment, the losses, the dropped points - perhaps it is all indicative of a club which threw a squad together hastily over the summer, under strict parameters and a different manager, found it tough to freshen up the squad in January due to to those parameters - Harvey White and Tony Sprigett haven’t added the spark perhaps Warne was hoping, especially Sprigett who has found it tough to make a telling impact from the wing and has had to settle for a bit part role in which he looks ill-suited to currently.

Warne was bold in his assertion ahead of Derby’s clash with Forest Green Rovers, assessing that they needed 12 points from their next five games to stand a chance at the playoffs. They have managed four. Which, in reality, is no disaster. But there should be concerns about how Derby approach their final five games. If Derby are to get those 12 points, they must win at least two of their next three against bottom half opposition - Bristol Rovers, Exeter City and Burton Albion. None of that will be easy, and ending with a savage pair of games against a Portsmouth side who still have an outside shot of the playoffs and and a Sheffield Wednesday side fighting for the title could put all of Derby’s hopes of playoff football on thin ice.

Subscribe now

Finally, on the pitch matters of Derby County can be discussed without the backdrop of some ugly off the field matter. This is nice. I think we could all get used to this.

This new Era of Derby County is four competitive games old and, so far, it’s been largely positive stuff. Could they be more clinical in front of goal? Sure. Does the tempo drop from time to time? Yeah, but not often. And is there some sloppiness still in the team? Of course. But, as a member of Derby’s coaching staff told Conway Conversations after the opening day victory over Oxford United “we’ll only get better, we’re still not quite there physically yet.” So the sloppiness will dissipate with sharpness.

But, with three wins out of four in all competitions, there is not much to grumble about - again, this is nice.

So let’s get some early impressions on the team shall we?

Eiran Cashin is *very good*

So this is not the hot take of the season. Anybody with two working eyes can see that Cashin is a very promising young player. But the maturity he plays with is well beyond his years. Even his look is a total throwback - shirt tucked in and all black boots. He is undoubtedly about that action.

The young Irish defender showed plenty of promise when thrown into the fire last season and he continues to excel to far this term - one could argue he has been the Rams’ best player through four games. His ability to carry out emergency defending without a mistake is wonderful to watch. The timing of the interventions, blocks, tackles is something which young defenders may struggle with - not this one.

That the team have only registered one clean sheet this season will be something Rosenior and his coaching staff are keen to amend, but they would have conceded more than the three goals they have this season had it not been for his defending. He has certainly impressed the senior defenders at the club with all of them remarking at his “excellent” start to the season.

That he gets to have at least one more season around the likes of Curtis Davies, Craig Forsyth and Richard Stearman can only be a boost for him - we could very well be watching a future Derby captain. Though Max Bird will rightly toss his name into that conversation, too.

The attacking players look dangerous….if a little wasteful

It is a sight that will probably have most of you shaking your head and looking at this group of attacking players with the same fear as the last three seasons. It has been said too may times about Derby attacks of late - all sizzle, very little steak.

While five goals through four games does not make for a prequel of a team about to batter their opposition off the park - there are plenty of encouraging signs.

Nathaniel Mendez-Laing is a tricky and exciting wide man. His final delivery in the first couple of games was very reminiscent of Florian Jozefzoon and Kamil Jozwiak - you know what I mean, beat a man, get in a good crossing position and then not deliver a quality final ball. Well, in back to back games he has now produced the goods with an assist for the winner against Mansfield Town in the Carabao Cup first round and the winner against Barnsley in the league. The former Cardiff City man will stress full backs this year with his brand of direct attacking and fleet feet, forcing defenders to get into a foot race with him down the line.

James Collins is the unluckiest man in Derby so far. The Irishman has taken 10 shots and failed to score with all of them. A frustration, obviously, and nobody will be more irritated than the man himself BUT, as Ruud van Nistelrooy once said, sometimes it is like trying to get ketchup from a bottle. You shake, and shake, and shake, and eventually it all comes at once. Collins has been putting himself in plenty of good goalscoring positions - a pair of headers against Oxford United, the early chance against Charlton Athletic - he will eventually break his duck and his goals could fire Derby into playoff contention.

Tom Barkhuizen is an exceptionally clever footballer. The runs he makes are very sharp and already he has a solid connection with another summer arrival - Conor Hourihane - with the pair often rotating positions out on the right and creating space for each other. His winner against Mansfield was a classic example of being in the right place at the right time - ghosting in between a pair of defenders to nod home a well stood up Mendez-Laing cross. Expect him to get a lot of goals this season by way of very smart movement. I would advise anybody to just watch him for five or 10 minutes and see how he makes his runs, when he times them and how he can have defenders fighting for their lives as he drags them into waters which are too deep for them.

Midfield will be creative, but may need combat

This midfield of Bird, Hourihane and one extra, be it Louie Sibley, Korey Smith or Liam Thompson, will cause problems for any team. There is plenty to like about them and they all blend together well.

One concern is the lack of a true ball winner outside of Thompson who may not start as many games as the others. Bird is developing into a true box to box midfielder wonderfully, but his strengths lie in with the ball at his feet, not nicking it back from the opposition. Other teams have had success with such a model - but it may be something which catches Derby out here and there. That is, unless, Thompson becomes a mainstay in the side as the teams’ water carrier - which you cannot rule out.

The identity is there - but time is required

Right okay, I know….I know. You have heard it too many times before. We hear it with every new manager and when every new player comes to any club. The phrase almost doesn’t register anymore but let me ask a simple question: Is it reasonable to expect a new manager and 12 (is it 12?) new players to all gel, click and start battering teams from the word go? No, it is not.

Is it reasonable to expect them to be better by October? Yes, very much so.

The lack of sharpness up front, the sloppiness at times, the new manager getting his identity across to a bunch of new players, the at times pedestrian pace - which does not happen nearly as much as it did under Phillip Cocu - are all going to happen until they click.

And because of everything the playing squad and staff have been through over the last couple of months alone, it is unfair to judge this squad, in any way, to previous ones in the last three seasons - just yet. Four games is not enough time to put assessments in stone.

There is a germ there of what this team can be - and it is *very* exciting. A team is going to get their backside beat by Derby this season. A few might. But we may have to wait ten or so games for that very convincing 3-0 win to come. But it’ll be worth it.

[photo: @dcfcofficial]