Why Derby County need to improve their defence

Harry is a name associated with a much celebrated wizard, but the one in Derby is named Wilson and not Potter! It was a Potter, namely Graham, the Swansea boss, that went home empty handed after our clash with Swansea City on Saturday!

Two well taken goals condemned our visitors to deafest in a game that they failed to get going in!

The first of Wilson’s goals must be a contender for Goal of the Season! Beautifully struck from outside the box and bending in to leave The Swan’s keeper Mulder looking stunned! Mulder of the X-Files would want to see it again and again to make sure it was real!

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It was a fine individual display by Wilson, but the rest of the team put a shift in to secure the points in what wasn’t a thrilling encounter by any stretch of the imagination.

We have entered December and we are fast approaching the halfway stage of the season.

This is the point at which many analysts will site down and scrutinise a teams strength’s and weaknesses that have been evident so far.

We face a trip to Wigan Athletic on Saturday before the big one! Part one of this season’s clashes with Nottingham Forest. More about that next time!

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Wigan were a non-league club when Derby County were busy claiming a couple of league titles back in the 70’s.

They replaced Southport in the league during the days of the old re-election votes taken at the end of the season.

They have done well in their life as a league club and have a few seasons in the clubs top flight, but recent years has seen them flatter to deceive.

This is however, not a fixture to be taken lightly. Derby need to build on the win at the weekend and bag more points in order to keep in touch not with only the top six, but also the top two!

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There’s no one team running away with the division this season and there’s still plenty of teams still in with a great chance of breaking into the higher reaches of The Championship.

What would be good for the team would be to see another clean sheet. Only three so far this season has been noticed by many.

Now it doesn’t matter that much if you are outscoring the opposition, but clean sheets do show a defence that has some solidity to it.

Again on Saturday we let in a sloppy goal! Fikayo Tomori being unfortunate in putting the ball into his own net when we should have been cruising.

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The fact is that Swansea were given a bit of a lifeline and it put us under pressure for the last few minutes.

We have suffered a few injuries this season and our defence is the area that’s taken the biggest hit! Craig Forsyth and Curtis Davies have been ruled out for the rest of the season.

For me Forsyth is the best Left Back at the club and Davies likewise in the Centre Half position.

It’s bad luck for Curtis just when he had got back into the side after an earlier injury.

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Perhaps Frank Lampard will look to strengthen the back four in January. Ashley Cole has been mentioned by several people as a possible candidate to help cover at Left-back and the responses to such a rumours had a mixed response. On the one hand he is extremely experienced, but on the other at thirty eight years old he is well past his best.

What has been good to see recently is Lampard’s willingness to give some of our young players a place in the matchday squad.

Max Bird has now been involved in the last two games and on Saturday another new face from the academy was on the bench, Calum MacDonald.

Bird got a few minutes whereas MacDonald remained a spectator, but it’s still a good experience for a youngster to get the feeling of being part of a match day team.

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Maybe some more players will follow in the footsteps of Will Hughes, Tom Huddlestone, Mason Bennett, Jayden Bogle etc. There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing one of your own products make the grade!