When Derby go down again, will we sing?
18/03/04 | by Alex Walker

There’s just a few more days before the big game and even those of us who will be listening over the airwaves to events at Prideless Park are getting pant-wettingly emotional in anticipation. As if the local honour normally involved in these game isn’t enough, the result of this match could have a massive baring on the future of both clubs. But while we are all desperate to see a Red win on Saturday, do we really want to send Derby down?

Sure, it would be mightily amusing and they’d probably never live it down. But the chances are they’d never recover either. The club’s already in a mess and relegation to the Second Division would be the final axe in the back of a footballing institution that’s already had several limbs severed. Forest would be very much screwed if we went down, but Derby still have a massive wage bill and a whole stadium to pay for (never mind just one stand), so they'd fare even worse.

The immediate gloating rights would be enjoyable if they slipped out of this league, but the long-term results would be unfortunate. In this long season of little joy, the prospect of two high-stake games against the sheep-botherers has offered a rare occasion to get excited. Both sets of supporters can be thoroughly ashamed of their respective clubs’ performance this season, but come derby-day we’ll both be wearing our colours proudly.

We only have to look at the apathetic attitude we Reds have towards Notts County to see what playing in different divisions can do to a local rivalry. Without regular games against Derby, our next best thing is Leicester, and what a useless excuse for rivals those mindless morons with ideas above their station would make. At least Derby fans are always up for a good bit of friendly banter – Leicester couldn’t do banter if they had witty come-backs tattooed on their troglodyte foreheads for each other to read.

No, we need the Sheep to stay up and provide us with our biannual chance to thrash them. The problem a few weeks ago looked to be that we had no choice but to send Derby down if we were going to stay up. Now, however, after a good run of form from both East Midlands sides, there are at least six other teams involved in the scramble to avoid that final relegation place above Bradford and MK Dons.

With ourselves being four points clear of the woollen ones, they need the points more than us. But at the same rate, our remaining fixtures are tougher than theirs, especially the last few – probably crucial – games. We would normally expect to beat a team in the relegation zone judging by Joe Kinnear’s record so far, but we know that it will be tougher than a regular relegation battle with so much passion at stake.

The Rams are strong at home and have recently acquired a forward who can actually finish! Paul Peschisolido will certainly be their biggest threat up front, and could provide us with some bad memories of last year’s play-offs. Our failure to break down Burnley earlier this week tells us that we need our own striker to take the chances they get, and this could prompt Kinnear to give David Johnson a heroic return. Gareth Taylor might be somewhat redundant against their tall defenders, but in midfield we should be able to out-play them and get some decent balls to Johnno's feet.

Our side is better than theirs, as long as we cut out the mistakes that have dogged recent games (Barry Roche, I’m looking at you). Fingers crossed, knock on wood and spit in your eye, we should collect at least one point from across the M1, hopefully three. But after that, I for one hope that Derby avoid relegation this season so we can repeat the whole thing again next year.

Comments to: forest_1979@hotmail.com