FAN’S VIEW  2025/26 – DERBY AWAY

Derby County 1 Oxford United 0

This has to be a relatively brief FV as we’re playing again on Tuesday and I’m rather busy doing this and that. This and that hopefully taking my mind off OUFC and what is looking increasingly likely.

Another 12:30 Saturday kick-off but no problem as such because I had a lift and we were parked up quite close to the ground by 10:00 (don’t ask).

Pubs were open but we were getting mixed messages. On one hand I was hearing that it was home fans only with bouncers on the doors and they were checking people trying to get in. Alternatively I was getting messages saying well we’re inside and there’s a good choice of beer. At that time of day I’m not that fussed to be honest but there was plenty of time before kick-off so we decided to walk along the river Derwent towards the city centre and see what was what. It was pleasant, calm and the sun was shining. But soon we came upon this.

Paul Pike an 18-year-old Birmingham fan had travelled to Derby to watch his team on 21 March. He was seen outside the stadium at 13:00 but then went missing. His possessions were found beside the river and his body was later recovered. These tragic events bring football fans together and really make you stop and think deeply.

Time to praise our very own Will Vaulks for being named the overall EFL Player in the Community at the 2026 EFL Awards. From the OUFC official site: “Will has played a leading role in driving suicide prevention and mental health awareness, using his own personal experiences to inspire change and encourage open conversation”.

Seriously, it’s been said over and over but “It is good to talk”.

Just off the river about a mile from Pride Park there’s a couple of pubs that are in the Good Beer Guide. We nodded and smiled at the doorman as we walked into the Alexandra Hotel at 10:40. He smiled back. Not a problem. This is a pub with a railway connection, including a class 37 locomotive cab in the car park. There was a decent choice of ales but I opted for Castle Rock (the owners) Harvest Pale, not least because of the hour and the strength. Only 3.8%. It hit the mark so my second pint was the same. Sizable cobs, mine was cheese and onion, at £3 a time also did the job required.

I’ll be honest and say that I was never expecting us to get anything out of this game. We started okay and for the first few minutes took it to the home side as we showed some spirit. By the final whistle that deep down desire and battling to the very last appeared to have long gone. Not necessarily a criticism, just a fact. If you’re second best there’s not a lot you can do about it and second best we were.

I’ve watched Pompey and Blackburn on TV recently and they, particularly the former, had something that we didn’t. (Caveat here – the opposition who were supposed to be amongst the very best in the division were pretty crap on the day). It can be said that most things like that are currently going against us but make no mistake that we are where we are is down to no-one but ourselves.

In recent games it has looked like a case of if we go down, we’re going down fighting. I’d be hard pushed to argue that here. We just didn’t quite seem as if we had it in us.

There was a lot familiar about this game and no doubt I’ll be repeating myself to a great extent. We had 33.5% possession. Allowing the opposition to have most of the ball can be the game plan. That works if a team is as solid as a rock and can hit their opponents with a rare lightning-quick break and clinical finishing. That’s not us. Those we play have more possession than us because they’re technically more gifted and keep it better than we do. Plus we’re often not that good at getting it back from them when they’ve got it. I find it noticeable that our midfielders don’t pick up loose balls very often in the centre circle area. We seem to be quite easy to play against.

If I was a Championship manager, I’d be very happy to allow our back line to have the ball at their feet.

Derby were more technically gifted than us and played as a team in a way we did not.

As we now know our main source of goals is set plays and that’s where, midway through the first half, the only goal of the game came from. Unfortunately the ball ended up in our net not Derby’s.

Miles Peart-Harris took a long throw on the right, level with the six-yard box. All 10 white shirts were in their own penalty area. It was the usual ball could go anywhere thing, cannoning off a player of each team. A Derby foot on the edge of the area twisted the ball away, Jamie Donley attempted to win it but failed and as a collective the home side reacted faster than we did. In the blink of an eye it was 3 v 3 but theirs were positioned much more advantageously than ours.

The scorer, Jaydon Banel, ran over half the length of the pitch before slotting home from just outside our penalty area. Jamie Cumming didn’t move.

On the face of it we’d got what we deserved. BUT – and on watching the replay – I think there’s something of a case that the goal should have been disallowed. Sammy Szmodics was one of the two options Banel had to play the pass to. Freeze framing shows that Szmodics was marginally beyond our last defender and in Cumming’s direct line of sight when the ball was struck. He probably wasn’t getting to it anyway and I’m in straw clutching territory.

Donley had a very poor first half and Peart-Harris was far from great as well. The latter has disappointed me a lot recently. I’ll back the manager but there had to be a strong case for bringing replacements out for these two for the second half. I heard quite a few fans expressing the same opinion at the break.

I also heard it said that Stan Mills wasn’t playing well. Without doubt not as well as he has been but nowhere near the worst of a mediocre bunch on the day. Did anyone have a good game?

I’m going to throw in another but/however type argument here and question once more whether I’m being too harsh. Ridiculous as it might sound, we had the better chances.

Does that make us unlucky? Realistically, no , because we cocked up when presented with those chances. Time and again. We have not got that class others have. Here Banel had it. We didn’t. Compare and contrast their breakaway with ours.

In the first half Mills won the ball and with his pace went 50 yards but was driven wide and nothing came of it. He didn’t get a shot away but I felt sorry for him because he had no sprinters in yellow shirts helping him out.

In the second half we had more chances.

Peart-Harris was through on goal. No composure. No goal. Not good enough.

Yunus Konak won the ball and like P-H was through on goal. We had three attackers closer to the goal than all but one outfield Ram. Jeon Jin-Woo was to his left in an inviting and better position than Konak. Our Brentford loanee blazed over the bar. It was dreadful. Jin-Woo rightly had a go at him. The Derby commentator on their official channel described Konak’s decision making as “shocking”. Not good enough.

And then there was that Mark Harris miss right at the end. “Technically not good enough in the box” said the Derby commentators.

There’s so much during a match that elicits the “not good enough” comment in the stands. And there we have it. We are not good enough.

It’s not just in the lack of finishing. We completely switched off when Derby had a throw in and allowed Szmodics to gather the ball not far from goal. Then there’s Cumming’s distribution in general and in particular here when he attempted to send Mills racing away but didn’t get quite enough elevation to get the ball over the defender. Not quite good enough.

This was a really damaging result with Pompey and West Brom winning and Blackburn getting a draw against Coventry.  Wrexham winning and Millwall still being in with a good shout for automatic promotion has done us no favours either. Our fans however demonstrated they are sticking with the team. The applause at the end was rousing and before kick-off I’m sure the back of the stand was vibrating a touch. In between there was, I seem to recall, a bit of gallows humour with “that’s why we’re going down.”  But why not if it is not nasty and vindictive? Got to have a laugh.

Shall I claim that the fact we only lost by one goal is a positive of sort? Wearing very thin now though. No points is what it is.

Time for a quick moan about referee Sam Allison, who as a player used to be on Swindon Town’s books. Not of a very high standard, was he? Derby’s time wasting was clearly excessive. I honestly thought that 10 minutes should have been added on at the end of the 90. Cameron Brannagan rightly kept complaining when delay after delay occurred. Allison kept pointing at his watch as if to say, I’ve got it in hand I’ll include it at the end. When the board went up with just five on it that was an insult. Bran had further cause to be aggrieved when he got booked. We’d been awarded a free-kick. A Derby played held on to the ball to slow us down in taking it. I thought referees had been told to clamp down on this sort of nonsense. Our captain tried to grapple the ball free. Nothing violent. Yellow carded. Where do they get these officials from? Chippenham in Wiltshire in this case.

I, like so many loyalists, love football even if it is at times a love hate relationship. There are other occasions when one cannot help but ask “what’s the point?”. We’ll just go through it all again, whatever that may be and wherever that may take us, next season.

More to the point though in the here and now the question isn’t “what’s the point” but “what’s the points?”. West Brom’s points? Page after page could be written about the Profit and Sustainability rules. The rights and wrongs of them. What should and shouldn’t be included in the figures? What punishments should be dished out for breaches based on previous cases? When should those punishments be applied? The lawyers are likely rubbing their hands. WBA will likely beat both Watford and Sheffield Wednesday although nothing is a given. Their other game is against Ipswich so let’s say they’ll get another six points. That will put them on 55. Take three off to bring their total down to 52. Fingers crossed. We’re currently on just 44. No pissing about allowed now, not one bit of it. Nothing else will matter if we don’t win all three remaining games, starting with Wrexham. That would put us on 53.

Perhaps Chris Wilder can do us a favour by beating Blackburn. If so, the most they can then get will be 52 and they have a worse goal difference than us. They’ll almost certainly beat Leicester on the last day of the season because the Foxes will be down by then, won’t they?  Their next two games are against Hull in sixth place and Millwall in third.

Can we find that extra inner desire from somewhere and conjure up some quality to go with it? Can miracles happen? We’re 3/10 for the drop and 9/5 to beat that team from Wales much of America has fallen in love with.

(Longer than I thought)