3/1 To Win
As Darren Wassall mentioned in the first of this two-part interview, the alarm bells could have been ringing for Derby County’s Under-23s at the halfway point of the 2016/17 season.
Bottom of Premier League 2 Division 1 after a 2-0 defeat to fellow relegation battlers Tottenham Hotspur, comfortably beaten 5-1 at Pride Park Stadium by a slick Manchester City side in the Premier League Cup and four of the near mainstays were all set to head out on loan – it looked bleak from the outside.
Wassall, though, was never concerned.
Four wins, three draws and three defeats saw the Rams recover their form spectacularly over the second half of the season as they beat the drop to retain their Division 1 status for the 2017/18 campaign.
And in the second-part of this season review, Wassall says a big reason why Derby stayed up boils down to the players who stepped up to the mark over 2017.
A number of his first-year professionals, scholars making their name with the Under-18s and even an Under-16s midfielder were chomping at the bit for their chance and once they got it, they never looked back, but the turning point, Wassall feels, began with a narrow 2-1 defeat at London Colney…
“I think the Arsenal performance, just after Christmas, was a big moment. We realised that we were on the right tracks.
“We lost the game 2-1 but we performed brilliantly. That gave everybody a lift. We had just lost 5-1 to Manchester City and it could have gone either way.
“City put on a great performance at Pride Park. We went to Arsenal with a little bit of pressure on us really off the back of that result.
“We might have lost, but the performance was excellent. We didn’t look back after that.”
“The Academy is not here to win leagues and cups – it’s great if we can do that – but we are here to give our best young players opportunities.
“The fact that the four senior boys, in Jamie Hanson, Farrend Rawson, Callum Guy and Charles Vernam, went out on loan gave the likes of Alex Babos, an Under-16s midfielder in Max Bird, Kellan Gordon, Calum Macdonald, Emil Jakobsen and Cameron Cresswell an opportunity that they hadn’t had prior to Christmas.
“They all took their chance to impress with both hands and that’s why we’re still in this division.
“It’s because those players that came in really grasped that opportunity and their performances, both in and out of possession, really were excellent.”
“The Southampton game at St Mary’s, two weeks before the Chelsea match, was as important as the Chelsea result because it actually kept the season alive and meant we would go into the last game with the season in our own hands in terms of where we finished.
“To go to a top Academy like Southampton’s – at their home ground – and produce that performance that the players did epitomised everything that we are about, not just as an Academy, but as a football club.
“We showed grit, we showed determination, character, the will to win and the will not to get beat and, with the winning goal, some quality as well.
“They are the sort of the performances that we have been looking to achieve over the eight years we have been here.”
