Adam Pearson has gone on record as saying that several people have phoned to put their names in the hat for the manager’s job.  And that they will be whittling that number down to about four or five people.

Fans have been throwing names around with Cloughie’s lad one of the obvious favourites due to his success at Burton and the fact that he gets his team to play football along the ground, plus of course, his longevity (10 years) at the same club.

Some fans (and bookies) have mooted Ince and Curbishley for the job, but in my opinion, I can’t see why.  Curbishley lost a fair few fans towards the end of his time at Charlton as they played appalling turgid football and usually fell away in the second half of the season.  Ince has no clear track record of being a ‘football’ type of manager, something that many Derby fans seem to want.

If we look at the situation – we have plenty of players, several who are under-performing, some are very experienced and some who have no real experience of English conditions.  Our back four is weak and is horribly exposed when we get injuries.  As a club, we don’t have much money (more than some others though) and so the room for wheeling and dealing is going to be strictly limited.

For me, what this adds up to is we need someone who is going to get the players organised and playing as a team.  I know that we have had so many injuries and that this has disrupted the team, but even so, by now, the players we have should have started to get to know each other on the training ground and be able to play together quite a bit better than they have been doing.  Certainly some of them have prompted fans to think – for that kind of money they’re paid, I’d be working my proverbials off a damned sight harder than they seem to do.

So I think we need someone who can get the team organised.  And stay organised.  Last season, every time it looked like we were getting back on track, we fell apart again.  I think many fans had misgivings about PJ’s ability or resolve in fashioning a team that no-one wanted to play against in the Premiership but we suppressed those misgivings in the hope and expectation that he would eventually come good.

This season, as we have lurched from abject defeat to appalling display punctuated by one or two false dawns we need someone who can make us hard to beat even more.  If we can stay organised, we have enough adequate players to ensure mid-table safety.  If we keep falling apart every so often, then we will slide towards League One with derision ringing in our ears from Florist fans as they stay up – as I have no doubt that Billy Davies will succeed in doing just that even though it won’t be pretty.

So it seems clear to me, we need someone who will work with what we have and shape something for the rest of the season.  Then he (I can’t see a woman wanting to sort this rabble out) and Adam Pearson can work together in clearing out some more dead wood and recruit two or three quality players who don’t get injured and who will hold the team together in the same way as Idiakez and Kenna did for Burley.

And we want someone who is willing to stick around and patiently build something and the Board need to show the same loyalty as they appeared to show towards PJ.  History shows that clubs that rotate managers inevitably slip further and further down, as their Boards run around shouting: “Don’t panic, don’t panic!”

A cool head then, someone committed to playing football, who can patiently build, who can organise teams, who can be ruthless if need be in clearing out overpaid lazy sods, and someone who cares about Derby County.  Those would be my items on my checklist for appointing the next manager.  And I’m afraid that would rule out many of those names touted about.

The DET has stated that we want a “bright, young manager with hunger and desire” which rules out one of my dreamy options – Louis Van Gaal. He has shown he can organise players to play football at the highest levels. But there’s no certainty that he would succeed at this level.

Which is why I applaud Pearson’s intention of taking ten days to look at who has come forward and ask how they are going to address the current season, and then how they will develop the season after and the next.  The next ten days may well determine whether we eventually get back into the Premiership or slip further down into League 1 into mediocre obscurity just like we were when a certain Brian Howard Clough along with Peter Taylor both first came from Hartlepool.

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