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Rob Hulse STAYS!
Rob Hulse: Staying put.
Do you remember when we had a tall polish striker called Gregorz Rasiak? Do you remember how influential he was in the team back in 2005? Do you remember what happened on 31 August 2005? That’s right. We sold him at the eleventh hour for a tiny fee and no hope of signing a replacement. This summer, many Rams fans were expecting history to repeat itself.
This time it was a tall lad from Crewe who was the potential departee, and the date was 1st September 2009, but many fans had the outcome down as a bad result for the Rams from the off. Middlesbrough, the smaller of the two North East clubs to be relegated from the premier league last season, were long known fanciers of Rob Hulse, Derby County player of the year 2008/09. He scored 19 goals in his first full season back from injury and caused opposition defenders plenty of problems all year round, so the fact that he was attracting attention came as no surprise.
The Rams had been knocking back speculation all summer regarding ‘Boro’s interested in the Derby talisman. Back in July, Adam Pearson said “Rob is our player of the year, an important player for us and not one we are looking to sell” while also denying that Middlesborough had even made a bid for the player. Speculation continued to mount as the Rams carried on with their pre-season which, ironically, didn’t include Rob Hulse due to injury.
Rob missed the opening games of the year and only made his first start in the new Derby strip in the 3-2 defeat against the red dog scum bags this previous Saturday. During this game he managed to score what appeared to be a perfectly good goal but the referee decided he’d seen something he didn’t like and disallowed the goal. Having nearly seen Hulse open his account for the year at the weekend, Rams fans would have been devastated to lose him knowing just how dangerous he is.
It looked as if he was staying put as the transfer window was closing in. Then, on the final day of business, the Derby Evening Telegraph runs the story that Rob Hulse was the target of a big money bid from Middlesbrough. Word on the internet suggested the bid was as anywhere between £3.5 - £4.5 million pounds. That’s enough to buy three Luke Varneys!
That was it for many Rams fans as they took to the inter-radiotelewaves to tell everyone how we were being sold up the swanny. Forums were awash with doom merchants passing on their wares to all that would listen. It was a like walking though speakers corner only in small font and the occasional bit of txt spk, lolz.
Whenever someone sensible said something like “FFS - it hasn’t happened yet!!” they were immediately shot down by gun fire that sounded like a manic depressive listening to Radiohead while trying to think of reasons not to die. “It’s just a matter of time……………….” they’d say as they plunged their scalpels into their limp, scarred wrists.
By 3pm the tension was downright scary. I genuinely thought some Rams fans were going to throw themselves from the top floor of the internet, splattering the Derby County forums with blood coloured pixels spelling “DCFC 4 LIFE” across the TFT monitors of Rams fans worldwide.
Sky Sports decided to re-run the bid from Boro story for a second time late in the day, which only served to compound people’s woes. There was no news on the official site and no news on Radio Derby; the silence was deafening. This, according to the non-believers, could only mean one thing- Goodbye Rob Hulse.
That’s what they all thought.
Oh yee of little faith. News came in over the official website that Rob Hulse was staying! ROB HULSE WAS STAYING!
We cheered, we celebrated, and we punched the air with glee. This was great news…or was it.
Yes, it definitely was great news but still some people moaned. Why? Because it’s what they do. Radio Derby’s Monday moan-in is full of these people and so, it would seem, are internet message boards. Rob Hulse stopping at Derby only served to prove the conspiracy theories are true if you believe what you read on t’internet.
You see, the official version of events (which I have no reason to doubt) goes like this: club receive bid for Rob Hulse, club tell Hulse about the bid, Hulse sits down with Nigel Clough to discuss options and Rob decides he wants to stay. The end.
But to some people this means that the club had accepted the bid and were quite happy to sell one of our better players without having a suitable replacement lined up. They say this is all nonsense and shows our club is being run by fools. How so, I hear you ask? Surely this proves that the club is run by people who respect other people’s right to be informed. Surely the first person who should be updated of interested in a player is the player himself because if he doesn’t want to leave, the deal is dead in the water. Offer as much as you like but if the man won’t leave, you can’t pull him through the door to your club.
In this instance, Rob Hulse decided that he was happy where he is. He weighed up the pros and cons of playing for Middlesbrough under Gareth Southgate or staying at Derby with Nigel Clough and he rightly concluded that he was better off in the Midlands than the North East. You really cannot fault the man for that.
In a world of Manchester City’s millions and Christiano Ronaldo’s ridiculous face, it’s refreshing to see a player make a decision based on his own desire to succeed rather than false promises and the lure of more money. While Derby are big spenders in the Championship, it’s probably a safe bet to assume Middlesbrough would have paid Hulse more wages and they definitely wouldn’t have made him give up his win bonus. For every Rob Hulse there are ten Mark “greedy bastard” Pembridges or Paul Kitsons , so it’s rare that a club like ours can find a player with even an ounce of loyalty when the money is on the table. Let’s hope Rob has many great years at Derby and can get up there with the Derby greats of yesterday year. At 29 years old, he still has plenty to offer the Rams.
Transfer Deadline Day
Transfer deadline day is here!
The action starts now as new faces join The Rams and old faces say good bye. The bank holiday weekend saw two familiar faces exit Moor Farm for the final time as Martin Albrechtson and Clause Davis had their contracts ended. This will have cost the club a fair sum of money as both players had considerable lengths left on their deals but it’d beneficial for all parties to just part ways at this stage.
Next up it seems that Jordan Stewart is on his way out of Derby. BBC Radio Sheffield were this morning reporting a swap deal had been agreed with the Rams that would see Jordan move to the Blades while Lee Hendrie, 32, would join the Rams.
It’s also been reported that Boro have bid £3.5m for Rob Hulse. It’s long been speculated that the north east club were interested and it now appears to have a more substance as the Derby Evening Telegraph are running the story.
More details later as the day heads towards the 5pm deadline.
Forest Vs Derby Media Round-Up
We love him because he's mental
As usual Ramballs has scoured the internet for the match reports and coverage of the weekends game. Having seen the highlights on The Football League Show, I now think Connolly’s reaction to Tyson’s run for the third goal were poor. He steps up with his arm in the air when Tyson was already on the ball. Also, I still have no idea what Hulse’s goal was disallowed for given the ease with which Morgan (I think) went down.
If you missed it, check out Bywater laughing amongst the post-match nonsense. It’s on the Iplayer around the 15m 16s mark and it’s just another reason to love Bywater.
If you haven’t done so already, check out the RamBalls report here.
Here are the match reports from around the net.
Red Dogs 3 - 2 Derby County
The City Ground was the scene of yet another exciting, but ultimately disappointing, East Midlands derby game which saw the red dogs collect the Brian Clough trophy for the first time. The Rams learnt today that you can’t win them all, especially when you concede three goals in the first half.
Within one minute of kick off, 58 seconds to be precise, Derby were one goal down through an excellent strike from Radoslaw Majewski which left Bywater with no chance. This was not the start that the Rams had anticipated and things weren’t going to be getting better in a hurry.
The referee put his mark on the game very early on by dishing out three yellow cards within the first 12 minutes. For a game which is clearly going to be a tough, physical contest, this was disappointing as it prevented the game from flowing as you might expect in these circumstances.
The Rams still looked dangerous going forward and the ball managed to find its way to Gary Teale who has demonstrated a cool finishing ability this season. Not so today. He received the ball on the edge of the area and struck a shot wide of the left post.
The reds second goal came from a set piece after Kris Commons conceded a free kick. The ball was played in deep and Dexter Blackstock managed to squeeze himself in between Rob Hulse and Miles Addison to put the ball beyond Stephen Bywater.
Rob Hulse looked to have pulled us back into the game only for the referee to disallow the goal for no apparent reason. Would this be a repeat of the Atwell show last season? It would appear so.
The referee can’t be blamed for the goals conceded though and the third goal was a good example of pace beating our defence. Kris Commons lost possession and Forest burst forward. Dexter Blackstock played a good ball to Nathan Tyson ran behind the defence and slotted beneath the oncoming Bywater.
The half time whistle blew and Derby left the pitch with a mountain to climb in the second half.
If the Rams had to climb a mountain, they must have had some Kendal Mint cake at half time as they came flying out of the traps. Kris Commons was replaced by Lee Croft which gave the Rams more balance as Crofty on the right caused problems for Forest for the rest of the afternoon.
The Rams soon clawed their way back into the game through Miles Addison. His overhead kick came off Cohen and Lee Camp was staring at the ball as it rolled into the bottom corner of the net. Game on!
It was clear that the lads believed they could still get something from this game as the passing became more precise, the movement was better and the tempo increased and on 61 minutes, Jake Livermore found the back of the net from just outside the area.
The rest of the game was frantic with several opportunities for the Rams, the best of which fell to Rob Hulse. Hulse came close to getting on the end of a Teale cross which would certainly have pulled the Rams level if only he’d got just the slightest of touches.
Lee Croft continued to cause problems down the right but he failed to put the ball into the dangerous areas when he got into good positions.
As the final moments of the game drew close, the action became more frenetic and tempers began fray. Savage was involved in an exchange of verbals with one of the Forest unknowns and Stephen Pearson picked up a booking late in the game despite not doing anything other than walk away from a heated situation. This was just one of many moments of poor refereeing in this game.
The final whistle blew and the scum scored their first victory of the Rams for six and half years. You might have thought this would be satisfaction enough for the red dogs but that wasn’t true for Nathan Tyson who plucked the corner flag out of the ground and started waving it around right in front of the 4000+ Derby fans. Before long all the players had come together for a round of handbags at dawn which included the coaching staff of both sides. No doubt the FA will be looking into this matter but I doubt they have the power to enforce a full frontal lobotomy on Tyson which may well be the only thing to cure his supreme idiocy.
Check out this footage from after the game.
Ramzone Article: Bragging Rights
This is the RamBalls article which was posted on www.Ramzone.net yesterday
June was a terrible month for an obsessive football fan like me. There is no club football news, no transfer activity to speak of, no pre-season friendlies to attend on miserable Tuesday evenings; it’s rubbish except for one specific time.
Wednesday June 17th was that date this year, 10am to be precise, and I was giddy with excitement at 9am. By 10:01am I had a still-warm-from-the-photocopier copy of the fixtures in my hand and my beady eyes were scanning the text for two words: Nottingham Forest. It didn’t take long to find and by 10:02am I had cleared my diary for August 29th so that I could be at the City Ground for the first big game of the season.
Holidays can be rescheduled and excuses can be made to miss your best friend’s wedding because quite frankly, given last season’s visits to Nottingham, this is a must see game.
I’d rather not sound as excited as a child on Christmas Eve but I am so I will. Derby vs Red Dogs is a game that always gets the blood pumping and brings out the passions of each set of supporters and this time I feel something special is in store.
We Rams fans have enjoyed holding the bragging rights over the red dogs since February when we took the champagne from the ice when we beat forest twice and we aren’t in a hurry to let them go anytime soon.
Local derby games are always difficult to predict because all of the pre-match energy and super hyped build up to the games mean the form book can be shredded up and used as ticker tape.
Derby have got off to a decent start with seven points from a possible twelve where as Forest have been less successful with only two from twelve. Although their win in the cup against Boro on Tuesday night will have given their spirits an untimely rise.
According to reports, that low return in the league doesn’t reflect Forests performances which has seen them play well only to struggle in front of goal. On the other hand, Derby fans haven’t been blown away with dominant performances but, most importantly, on two occasions the lads in black and white have managed to score more than the opposition.
Forest have been desperate to add a new central defender to their ranks, as their 4-2 defeat at the hands of Watford highlighted, but they missed out on two of their main targets; Reading snapped up Matt Mills and we showed Shaun Barker that we wanted him a little bit more.
After the defeat to Watford, Wee Billy told the press that he saw it coming and the defeat only served to highlight the problems that he had been continously bleating on about. He has since changed his tune as this week he said “very shortly, one or two teams will suffer big losses at the hands of this team” and it’s up to Nigel and the boys to make sure it isn’t us and I for one expect it won’t be.
While we haven’t blown teams away this season, we have largely played as a decent team (Rotherham aside).. Our biggest problem is likely to be the pace of the Forest forwards against our back four. Tyson and Earnshaw could potentially run our lads ragged, but the five man midfield, with Savage sitting deep, should prevent the trees from being able to play the ball through the defence but it won’t stop long balls over the top.
Our main threat, assuming he makes the starting eleven, will be Kris Commons who was superb in last year’s encounters. Commons, once the hero on the red side of Shottingham, will be well rested for the game and his addition to the squad makes the game more exciting (particularly for us Rams fans).
He had a reputation while at Forest of not turning up in certain games and while that has been true on some occassions while with Derby, it isn’t true of the local derbies.
Rob Hulse could also make a return to the starting eleven, having missed pre-season, which is good news especially after Steve Davies was stretchered off against Plymouth. Hulse will be looking to get on the score sheet for the first time this season in order to catch up with current leading scorers, Miles Addison and Gary Teale.
Whatever happens, it will be an exciting affair. Last season had almost everything; penalties, an own goal, a terrible referee, a red card, disallowed goals, comebacks, scarf waving, Derby victories and even an inflatable phallus in a Forest top. Just about the only thing missing from that list is a Forest win.
Derby County 2 - 1 Plymouth Argyle: Media round-Up
I thought I would save you the bother of trawling the internet to find some Derby vs Plymouth match reports and I have added the ones I can find to this page. Happy browsing!
TheRams.co.uk
DCFC Official Site
BBC Online
Sky Sports Online
Daily Telegraph Championship Round up
Daily Mirror Report
The Sun CCC Round-Up
Daily Star Match Report
ITV Match Report
ESPN Match Report
Western Morning News Online Report
Sporting Preview Match report
Plymouth Argyle Official Site
Plymouth Argyle Mad
Derby COunty Mad
Football365 Report
Derby County 2 - 1 Plymouth Argyle
Pride Park was bathed in sunshine today for the Rams match against Plymouth Argyle. Paul Sturrock’s side came to Derby looking for their first win of the season but it wasn’t to be as the Green Army couldn’t match the Rams in the second half.
The starting eleven featured Steve Davies as the lone striker with support from Spurs loanee Jake Livermore and Stephen Pearson in midfield with Croft and Teale playing out on the flanks. Once again, Nigel Clough saw fit to stick with Jake Buxton and Miles Addison in the heart of defence with Shaun Barker warming the bench alongside Kris Commons and Rob Hulse.
From a Rams fans perspective the first half was poor up until the 30 minute mark. The lads were wasteful in possession and the movement just wasn’t there, nor were many simple passes to feet. Bywater nearly landed himself in trouble when his pass fell well short of the target and Dean Moxey played a fantastic ball, from inside the Plymouth half, out to the other side of the pitch for the Argyle wide man to run onto. Composed football this wasn’t.
Argyle went close on ten minutes when Derby failed to clear the ball and Karl Duguid hit a first time shot that deflected wide. The Greens didn’t have to wait too long for the lead though, as Jamie Mackie ran onto a long ball and struck the ball against the post. Alan Judge followed up and tried to take the ball past Jake Buxton who brought Judge down and conceded a penalty in the process. It was Judge who was fouled and Judge who handed out the punishment as he slotted home a powerful penalty. I didn’t see the replay at half time but someone who sits near me did and he said the foul was committed a yard outside the penalty area. I can’t comment because from where I sat it looked like a nailed on penalty but we’ll soon find out on tonight’s Football League show.
Plymouth continued to press and spent much of the next ten minutes camped inside the Derby half but failed to make any serious inroads. It wasn’t until the 35 minute mark that the Rams started playing with a sense of urgency and incisiveness that had been missing until that point. The Rams started to get bodies forward and they got their reward five minutes before half time.
A deep free kick was cleared to Robbie Savage, the new Rams captain, who was just outside the box and hit a low ball back into the area which found Jake Buxton who slotted home from 6 yards.
Half Time 1 - 1
The second half was a different game completely as the Rams found their stride but once again struggled to find the net. Stephen Pearson came close to giving the Rams the lead but the ball travelled wide of the left hand post. What followed shortly after will no doubt cause problems for Nigel Clough in the coming weeks.
Steve Davies was fighting for the ball and then went down on the deck in a lot of pain. The stretchers came on and took the young striker off and now we have to wait to find out what the damage is. It’s a real shame for Steve as his Derby career has been blighted by injury so far and you just feel that if he had a decent run in the team he could really give opposition defenders a problem. Fingers crossed that it is not as serious as it first seemed.
Rob Hulse replaced the injured Davies and his height gave the wide men something to aim for in the middle. Around the 70 minute mark he headed wide and it’s just a matter of time before we get Rob Hulse returning to the starting eleven and firing on all cylinders.
Kris Commons entered the fray shortly after 70 minutes replacing Lee Croft. Croft’s performance today caused the Argyle full back a lot of problems and won the Rams a number of free kicks. With Croft off the pitch, Gary Teale moved onto the right hand side and Kris Commons took up left wing duties.
Derby eventually took the lead in the final minute of the match after a string of corners finally resulted in the ball finding Miles Addison who is proving to be a real handful for the opposition during set pieces. Miles rose highest and put the ball in the net giving Derby a late winner.
Possession
Derby 43% Plymouth 57%
Shots on target
Derby 9 Plymouth 2
Shots off target
Derby 4 Plymouth 6
Corners
Derby 13 Plymouth 5
Fouls
Derby 6 Plymouth 23
Attendence: 26,186
RamBalls Additional Comments
The first half was not pretty viewing and we made hard work of getting the win against a Plymouth side who didn’t really threaten us all that much. The attendence at today’s game was also disappointing as Pride Park was home to just over 26,000 fans for the afternoon which, quite frankly, is poor. I recognise the low number of away fans meant we were unlikely to break the 30k mark but 26k is low by our excellent standards. Kids under 8 were free but that still didn’t help. I’d also question the logic of chanting “is that all you take away?” to Plymouth fans who faced a 500 mile round trip to see a team which is struggling to perform under Paul Sturrock.
Jake Livermore had a good debut. He has bags of energy (although he did appear to cramp up a little towards the end) and is comfortable playing a passing game, especially in close quarters. When he was subbed off I heard one “supporter” shout “fuck off back to spurs, you’re shit!” which is not only wrong but also a really strange way to get behind the team. Hopefully our lads get more support from the rest of our fans in future.
Finally, the match day announcer did a better job today than the guy who did it against Peterborough but that wasn’t hard. Simply announcing the right team coming onto the pitch was better than the last game although announcing the attendance without the away fans included was a little strange but it didn’t make that much difference to the total.
Bring on the Forest!
Plymouth Vs Derby: I FORGOT TO DO A PREVIEW!
Whoops.
I clearly forgot to do a preview for this one so the post-match analysis will be super-dooper fantastic, I promise you.
My prediction for todays game is 1-0 to Derby because Paul Sturrocks green army aren’t playing good football if you believe the Plymouth fans. I’ve seen some of their predictions and most of them have them letting in 2+ goals which bodes well for us Rams.
RamBalls will be back on track this week with proper news, previews and more.
Blackpool Vs Derby County: View from the forums
It would be unfair of me to give a full opinion of the draw at Blackpool when I wasn’t there. I’m quite happy with the result because every point away from home is valuable but it’s the game on Saturday that will tell us if it was a decent point or not. There are a lot of fans around the messageboards who still appear to need 24hr suicide watch despite is picking up four points from the possible nine.
I’ve been browsing some of the messageboards and I’d like to share some of the more considered write-ups from yesterdays game.
First off, Milton_Keynes Ram from popside.com shared their post-match thoughts. MKR knows football and I think if you want a decent report of the rams performance, head over to popside.com and read MKRs comments after each match.
A clean sheet is always welcome but god that was a boring and crap game of football. In patches on Saturday at Scunthorpe we played better than we did last night, but the difference was a lot more solid against what was admittedly a very very poor Blackpool team who will probably struggle all season.
The first ten minutes we looked the more controlled and composed team and look to me like we would assert control and dominate the game but a few almost casual moments at the back, players trying to do too much on the ball, or no conviction when passing itl got the crowd into it for them and seemed to give their players the boost they needed and after that we never seemed in total control.
Addison and Buxton in particular looked more solid than at the weekend…..though given the type of forward Buxton was up against I’m not surprised. Moxey and Connolly on numerous occassions played their entire attack onside when they should be able to look across the line or/and take the lead from the centre backs and a better attack would have taken advantage. Savage too played them onside a few times when tracking back. To me I think the individual awareness of a number of players in these instances was poor, couple with poor communication from Addison/Buxton almost caused us problems that should never have occurred.
Green was missed tonight. Pearson started reasonably well in the first 5-10 minutes but rapidly faded out of the game and Savage never really took control of the midfield. Croft was exceptionally poor and should have been dragged off plenty earlier whilst Teale seemed frightened to take the full back on either side on. For the majority of the game Teale was up against Eardley the ex-Oldham right back we were linked with over the summer - looked a very good player albeit the first time I’d seen him.
Commons started well but then drifted more and more out of the game as it went on; surprised reading Clough’s comments about him post-match whilst Hulse was clearly not match fit. Although only on briefly Varney probably contributed more in the time he was on the pitch than in any other game for us besides the second half of his debut at Burnley last season.
Whilst we had problems with the offside rule whilst defending the amount of times Croft, teale and Hulse managed to get themselves offside at innocuous times was criminal.
Very poor and flat atmosphere from the travelling fans although the home fans made up for it. Did well to keep the noise in the ground given one temporary uncovered stand and one half built one. Never intimidating as some grounds can be but full marks for getting behind their team.
Finally if the rumours were to be believed about us being in for Charlie Adam over the summer I’m glad they weren’t true. Rotten rotten footballer.
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Over on the DET forums, ratpackramwrote:
Bywater 6 - nothing to do , one save in second half , dodgy ball control nearly let in their forward
Connolly 6 - poor first half , improved a lot in the second
Moxey 9 - outstanding , class class class , great buy
Addison 8 - never gave them a sniff
Buxton 9 - won every header, small but so is cannavaro, another great buy
Croft 5 - unfit , poor crossing, might do better if he lost a few pounds
Teale 6 - tried but no end product
Savage 6 - did what he does , kept it simple
Pearson 7 - just shaded Sav, had a
bit more going forward
Commons 8 - involved in anything we created which was not a lot to be fair but has our x factor
Hulse 7 - no service , kept battling away trying to flick ball on to himself as no one gambled for the flick on
Might get slaughtered for this but I was impressed with Varney when he came on for Hulse
what about playing him in home games alongside Hulse with Commons on the left linking with Moxey , push Teale on the right , get Croft on a diet and bring Barker in for Connolly.