After 84 minutes with the Derby equaliser, how many people realistically expected us to go on and get a winner given how we'd relinquished the initiative to a hungry Derby side? But we did. Priceless two points and maybe our luck has turned as for once we win a night game, we get a late winner after a late setback. Hopefully we can get some momentum and confidence back, and start to piss off our rivals again as we did in December. Negative points: appalling referee yet again with the usual flaws of fussiness, selective blindness, chronic weakness (Meyler booking) and refusal to stop Derby's keeper timewasting at dead ball kicks (first time was in 15th minute). There were at least 5 occasions in the first half when the keeper took the piss and the ref turned his back, as we have often seen them do this season. As soon as we went 1-0 up and Stockdale started doing it, the **** in the black ran up and warned him to speed it up. Utter ****er. Nice to see our stewards helping the Derby fans position their huge DERBY COUNTY SUPER RAMS flag in the North Stand over many rows of seats. Curiously it was very close to the place where some City fans tried to position a far smaller flag against Barnsley and the stewards made them remove it. Good to see such even-handedness, when most clubs seek to maximise home advantage.
If that was the Hull City of last season conceding with 6 minutes to go, we would accept that we weren't going to score another. However I still had belief we could bag another and nick it, shows the difference from last season.
Because of Clough's tactics I felt we had a chance. They obviously came looking for a draw and played a boring, stifling, time wasting game in the 1st half. Once we scored they actually started to play football and looked a decent team, but as soon as they scored they reverted to the negative football and even brought another defender on. If they'd actually tried to go on and win it I don't reckon we'd have got the 2nd.
We'll see after Charlton and Blackburn. If we win them two, February won't have been too bad. And if win them and go on and do the same at Bolton, then it's been pretty successful if you ask me.
The next two games will put us on more games played than our rivals (specifically Leicester, who is still our main competitor to #2). To keep our fate in our own hands we need to make sure we win them and put the pressure back on our rivals.
Thiose 2 games in hand will be Blackburn @ home on 26th feb and Cardiff City away on 9th april. Its a full championship programme next tuesday by the way.
