I am under no illusions about the quality of the Derby County team, I do not believe that they have a ‘right’ to be in the premiership or even that we should be challenging for the play-offs every year because we are a big club in the Championship. I am however beginning to get annoyed with the way that every year Derby seem to pick a month where suddenly they can’t play football anymore.

This year we seem to have chosen late January into February as our month(s) of disaster picking up one point out of a possible 12 and going out of the cup. What surprises me the most about this run is that this Derby team isn’t that bad. I completely understood us flirting with relegation last year because the team were objectively awful, any team that anchors itself around Robbie Savage is clearly on a hiding to nothing. But this team is supposedly different, it is a young group of hungry players with a fair amount of competition for places (especially up front) who have beaten West Ham, Forest and Birmingham this season. So why if this is the case were we 3-0 to Barnsley after 30 minutes a month ago?

The excuse is always that the championship is an unpredictable league and anyone can beat anyone, which is certainly true, I think Derby are a prime example of that. But why do Derby have save up all their rubbish-ness for one or two periods a season? Does Nigel Clough have no power to inspire the minds of these young players? Do the players have no memory at all? Have they cut off access to Moor Farm and forced all the players to stop training?

The truth is no one knows the answer, but Derby have gone from a team a few points off the play-offs to a team firmly rooted in mid-table, and if this run continues we may have to start look over our shoulders again, and I am really fed up of doing that. The forecast doesn’t look good either with our next two games against Leicester and Birmingham.

I guess what I want from this team is a bit of promise, I want them to show me that possibly they may get better, that maybe next year I might get another trip to Wembley, or at least I wont have to see us get spanked as many times as the year before. However improvement is very very unlikely, we are not drowning in cash and our manager is just average. So Derby will remain just average, we are too good to be relegated but not good enough to go up. And our season will remain predictably unpredictable.

The only thing I have to look forward to is guessing which month we will be terrible in next season October? November? March? The possibilties are endless.