Derby haunted by old boy

Wednesday, 26/01/2011

by Josh MacDonald, Shoot's Derby County blogger

After a disheartening 3-0 defeat at Watford, our following encounter with bitter-rivals Nottingham Forest only seemed like a more difficult task to complete.

Still reeling from the 5-2 defeat away at the City Ground earlier this month, Clough and the team needed to savour some pride, regain the bragging rights and more importantly, get some points on the board.

Forest came close after 17 minutes, with McGugan testing Bywater from a thumping free-kick effort.

Pride Park was pumping throughout the first-half, with the best chance falling to Chris Porter, only for the ball to be hastily cleared off the line.

After a scrappy and physical half of few real chances, we could take heart into the break, a team effort stamping our mark against one of the in-form teams of the Championship.

Tensions were rising from the start of the second-half, particularly after the introduction of ex-Ram Robert Earnshaw to really fire things up.

New-boy Ben Davies came agonisingly close on 70 minutes, which could have quite easily set the score at 1-0, if not for a fantastic stop from Lee Camp.

The game looked to be anyone's game throughout the second-half, but Earnshaw returned to haunt us, bagging a goal for the away side with a well executed strike after 79 minutes.
 
To add insult to injury, Dean Moxey picked up his second yellow card of the match late on, leaving a demoralised team and crowd to finish off the match at the scrutiny of the Forest away support.

New Ipswich manager Paul Jewell returns to Pride Park on Tuesday, with Nigel Clough determined to do a bit of business and make several signings before then to revamp the squad and try to take us back to the form that was present early on in the current campaign.

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