In Defence of the Beautiful Game

So new beginnings at Derby, it seems the defining epitaph of our last few seasons of stealing defeat from victory has been that we were 'a soft touch'. Whilst I agree with this comment, in defence of the beautiful game I think there's more to it than this.

I personally believe you can play your way up out of this league. I think it's easier to stay in the Premiership with a cultured team, than your bog standard 4-4-2 thug life outfit, that usually puts up a good show, or brave fight, for 1-3 seasons before returning, without trace, whence they came. I also believe being a passing team gives you a market advantage over all the other teams trying to bore there way into the Premier, and then stay in it.

In my mind we were most potent with GT holding and Martin up front. This gave us the priceless forumla of defensive balance and attacking variety. GT gave us cover and support for Hendrick, Hughes and/or Bryson to fjannie around with it and allow us to play through the centre and not just from wide positions. Martin gave us an outlet when getting squeezed, when teams pressed us we'd get it to him and he'd relieve the pressure, that in later seasons would see us crumble. They both gave us some physical presence too.

Before the play-off defeat teams attacked us Burnley, QPR and Leicester were the teams that people tried to shut up shop against. Under the defensive radar we effortlessly picked off teams on the break and when we got our passing game going, we didn't even need to rely on the counter attack.

It sadly wouldn't last it was a balance we failed to recreate,support and/or build on for a number of reasons.

In 2014/15 we gained the favourites tag and teams set up to stifle us.

SM was happier to control the game than go for the jugular here. In my mind we weren't really a possession based side until 2014/15. With the Eust still in the side teams were wary of pushing us back and watching us crumble. So they'd sit back in two banks of four and let us play and we got comfortable with this. It was here that we became a soft touch in my mind, tika-taka-ing it at a snails pace in areas where teams let us have the ball, where we weren't under threat and posed no threat.* Had we shown more bravery here I wonder if things might have been different.

* Tika-taka as a defensive tactic as opposed to an offensive tactic.

In January 2015 now without the Eust or GT our 'softness' began to show. When Bryson, Hughes and Hendrick gave the ball away there was now no cover and we got punished, teams learned to push up against us. A midfield with Oscar holding* and denied space became the now famous 'soft touch'.

* SM did use Oscar/Omar several games before our big slump, with teams defending deep the 'soft touch' wasn't that apparent, when they started realising they could push up against us, SM started fiddling with Hanson and Hendrick and the tweakometer became the sheetometer. Martin's injury gave teams permission to push up on us and we fell from grace quicker than our midfield could lose possession.

Hindsight is of course 20/20 here and the appointment of Paul Clement and subsequent Mel Morris transfer awgee sent us into a slow, steady then very fast tailspin, where our midfield was exposed week in and week out. Bryson, Hughes and Hendrick became lost at sea in many games and obviously with trying to play a posession game with no defensive checks and balances in place we got the tragic kickings we deserved.

We failed to balance our creative, attacking and at times too fooking sexy for the Championship team, with the defensive foundations that a fit Eust/ Thorne and Martin gave us. We failed to build on the footholds that allowed the best footballing side out of Derby since Eranio and Baino, to emerge and I'm still not f..king over it and probably never will be.

Instead of Bent, Lingard and Ince had we got a defensive holding midfielder to cover for the Eust, had we got a hold the ball up striker to cover for Martin and had we got a box to box running midfielder for those Watford/Wigan-under-Uwe games things would have been very different and we would have been promoted with a team very capable of doing some damage aganst teams that attack us. Instead of the god awful Prmiership games where the poorer teams try and defend heroically but if they go a goal behind, have absolutely nothing to offer creativity wise to get them back in the game. We would likely have had to invest in a different type of striker, Gray and the Nuge of old would have been good shouts, but other than that I think we had the basic formula.

GR coupled with austerity means we'll be like every other club scrapping to get out of this league so they can become fodder for the mega-rich clubs to batter for a season, taking the money from the kicking and hopefully building a more efficient unit of strong, athletic battlers to go again.

It is what it is, I hope GR does it, but we weren't JUST a soft touch, we played some trouser stretching football, we had something special, we just failed to balance and or replace the defensive foundations that allowed us to express ourselves properly.

We cut the flowers from their stems and then cursed them for wilting.

Make football beautiful again.