The Derby chairman, Mel Morris, was interviewed on BBC Radio Derby in November, when he was asked if a failure for Derby to win promotion this season would “necessarily” result in manager Paul Clement being dismissed. “You had one word in there that I just want to delete,” Morris began, “you said we won’t ‘necessarily’ get rid of him if there’s poor performance; this season, we won’t be getting rid of Paul Clement. Period.” In the same conversation, Morris agreed with the suggestion that Clement could be “Derby’s Sir Alex Ferguson”. File that backing under “unequivocal”.

At the time Derby were in the middle of a very healthy run of form, losing only one game in 19, so perhaps you could understand Morris, a Derby fan as well as the man who runs the club, getting a bit carried away. Now, after seven games without a win, Clement has been dismissed, with Derby fifth in the table and only five points behind the leaders, Hull.

In an episode of The West Wing one of the senior White House staff is revealed to have leaked military secrets to the press. When told the identity of the leaker, President Bartlet says: “Is it possible to be astonished and yet at the same time not surprised?” The news of Clement’s dismissal provoked a similar reaction, because while this seems like a panic based on the sort of bad run most teams in the second tier will suffer at some point, there had been signs that something like this might be in the post.

Following a routine home draw against Reading in January, Morris entered that most holy of sanctities, the dressing room, to give the expensively assembled Derby players a ticking-off for their poor performance. In the next game Derby were comprehensively outplayed and beaten 3-0 by Birmingham (managed by Gary Rowett, perhaps Clement’s logical replacement) and afterwards Clement preemptively denied that the team were in “crisis”. It was obvious, given the £25m and rising spent on the squad, the likes of Tom Ince, Bradley Johnson and Jacob Butterfield recruited, and the way Derby had missed out on promotion in previous years, that nerves were jangling at the iPro Stadium, however premature that might seem.

In the statement announcing Clement’s departure, Morris claimed that it wasn’t poor results that had been the deciding factor, but rather not enough progress had been made on “building on the Derby way and style of football enjoyed in the past two seasons; adding depth and strength to our playing squad; and, developing and improving player and team performance”. The “way” of Derby or any other club is one of those ephemeral concepts which nobody has ever really quite managed to nail, but in fairness to Morris this isn’t something that he has just discovered and is wheeling out as an excuse.

In that BBC interview he said: “I separate out measuring Paul based on the number of points we achieve, and what I look at is the performance and the improvement in the squad. If the squad is improving, the value of the squad rises, the cost to move on is less … It is about constant improvement. If we don’t achieve it this year then I think we have a much better feel on what we’d like to do next year. But I think the key point to me is all about this performance.”

Whether you believe that or not is one for debate, but while it’s rather doubtful that Morris would’ve worried too much about performance had Derby scrapped out a few ugly wins recently, his position seems to have been that a bad run of results were fine, as long as he could see that Clement could correct it. Of course the question now becomes whether seven games, or indeed the seven months since Clement’s first game, is really enough time to properly judge whether he was the man to bring that performance and improvement.

“We’ve got high hopes for Paul, so we’ll support him,” Morris told the BBC. “Therefore that ability to look beyond this season is critical to what he does.” With that long-term aim seemingly quite clear, what exactly has happened since that interview, other than this current poor run of form? It’s tricky to come to any conclusion other than this was a panic measure based on the cost of the squad and the looming spectre of the past two seasons, when Derby were the best team in the division before respectively being mugged in the play-off final by QPR and collapsing after February.

Clement was not perfect. The football he played was not always attractive and he seemed to have a slightly skittish approach to team selection, a little unsure of the best way to use this large group of players purchased for him. But even then, these faults could either serve as an argument for keeping Clement or for getting rid of him: his defenders might say he needed more time to work all that out, his critics could note that managers have to know much quicker these days, and that sort of time simply isn’t realistic anymore.

Particularly for a club in a hurry, as Derby are. Morris’s promise not to dismiss Clement was nice to hear at the time and his words spoke to a long-term plan, but it fell firmly into the who-are-you-trying-to-kid camp: a club in the Championship does not spend £25m on players and remain content with a solid 8th-place finish, ready to build for next season, no matter how much the pretty football is in keeping with the club’s “way”.

Still, what makes this especially curious is Clement’s replacement, the academy director Darren Wassall. Wassall is said to be a fine coach but has no experience of being a manager, and is now given the significant task of improving this squad and playing attractive football (if you believe the club) and/or winning promotion (if you believe logic).

The club maintain that Wassall will be in charge for the rest of the season, but one should have large pinches of salt at the ready for that promise. David Moyes was at their game against Fulham at the weekend, but if Rowett can be persuaded away from Birmingham, given the enormously impressive job he has done there, then Clement’s dismissal might eventually go down as a ruthless but pragmatic decision.

Rowett and Clement live on the same street, and there might be some awkward moments ahead at summer barbecues.

The question that keeps popping up, though, is what exactly did Derby and Morris expect when they appointed Clement? He was a novice manager, despite his strong coaching background with Chelsea, Paris St-Germain and Real Madrid, so he was going to make mistakes, and one would logically think he would therefore need more time to learn from those mistakes. His appointment was a gamble, but to bail out at this point makes Derby look as though they haven’t really seen whether that gamble has succeeded.

“There’s an interesting thing about Alex Ferguson,” said Morris in November, “is that I think he defined the culture and the philosophy of Manchester United because he had that long-term tenure. He became the way the club operated. In a similar way Paul has an opportunity here to shape how we run this club.” According to Morris, seven months was long enough to show whether or not he could do that. All the best to whoever comes in next.