Pre-Season: Burton Albion vs Derby County

A trip to Burton Albion's Pirelli Stadium rounded off Derby County's pre-season with the Rams conquering the Brewers in a 3-1 victory. Over 5,000 fans were present at the game, a record attendance for the fixture, to watch their respective teams for the final time before the Football League season opens next weekend. Fresh from welcoming La Liga’s Villarreal to the iPro Stadium, Derby were the favourites to round off preseason with a resounding win against their Staffordshire rivals. Rams boss Paul Clement had his side experiment with a new 4-2-3-1 formation in this game, but admitted in his post-match comments that the players had not practised the formation in training prior to this encounter, much to the surprise of those who saw the performance of the Rams players who looked like they had been playing it for years.

This particular preseason friendly is often a regular occurrence and a staple of both teams’ preseason schedules, but this time newly promoted League One side Burton provided a tougher test for Derby than they have in previous seasons. Regardless, it was the Championship promotion hopefuls who started the brighter. Derby retained possession for the early periods and created a number of good chances. The visitors, sporting their smart new 'nightshade purple' away kit, also resolutely recovered the ball by cutting out Albion attacks with intense speed and urgency. The home side seemed to struggle with the pace that the Rams brought to this fixture, and could not seem to keep the ball to create chances.

The best example of Derby’s high tempo terrorisation of the Albion players was in the run-up to the opening goal. It was intense pressure high up the pitch that allowed ball-winning midfielder George Thorne to dispossess the Burton player, ex-Ram Tom Naylor, to slide a ball through to dangerman striker Darren Bent, who slotted the ball into the far corner to give his side the lead. Derby soon followed this up with a second goal courtesy of Andreas Weimann. One major criticism of first goalscorer Darren Bent, is that his hold up play and passing is often lacking in comparison to his significant rival for the striker position, the talismanic and often unselfish Chris Martin. However, Bent’s interplay with pacy wide man Johnny Russell created Derby’s second goal, with Russell continuing on from Bents good work to find Weimann in the box, who fired over the top of Burton’s on-loan goalkeeper Remi Matthews and into the net.

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Derby continued to apply pressure until the half time whistle, with goal-scoring opportunities by Ince and Weimann placed straight at the goalkeeper. Away fans in the Pirelli will have felt their side could have easily been 4 or 5 up at the break. Despite all these chances, the first half finished just 2-0 to the deserving visitors. In response, the home side mounted a comeback early in the second half. After the game, Rams Head Coach Paul Clement bemoaned inconsistency in his side’s performance. It is likely that he refers to this period of the game with this comment as Burton began to look the better team, capable of strolling through the previously steely Derby defence with ease. A Burton goal looked inevitable based on this play and the Brewers pulled one back with new boy Tommy Thiele. The play began with an Albion free kick on the right hand side. Loan signing Mark Duffy crossed the ball to Anthony O’Connor at the back post, whose header towards goal was inadequately cleared by the Derby man on the line, falling to the feet of Thiele, who couldn't miss from point-blank range.

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2-1 was the score, and Derby needed a response of their own before the home side found an equaliser. The catalyst for change was Derby’s four substitutions, as moments later the tide was turned with a goal. Powerful midfielder Jeff Hendrick had only been on the pitch for 3 minutes before his ambitious attempt from distance deflected to the feet of Johnny Russell, who beat the offside trap to restore the away team’s two-goal cushion. The visitors took this chance to seize control of the game once more and saw out the victory, almost making it 4-1 through Jamaican international Simon Dawkins if not for a good save from the Brewers goalkeeper.

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One of the biggest talking points of this game since the full time whistle has been the impressive return of Jason Shackell. The Rams defender left the club in 2012 for a reported figure of just over £1m, much to the frustration of many fans. His return for an undisclosed fee, believed to be around £3m, has been lauded by many fans as the best signing of the summer and many fans believe him to be the perfect man to ensure a defensive crisis like the one that hit the team towards the end of last season is not repeated. Shackell was impressive in this game and was a large part of the reason for Derby’s unyielding defending early in the game. Some fans have fears that Shackell has already hit his career peak in the ‘missing years’ while he was not at the club. In this game though, the 31-year old ex-Burnley captain seemed to still be every bit as good as he was at the Clarets, and much better than his already impressive performances in a Derby shirt back in the 2011/12 season. It is early days, but those fans who have him down as an early contender for ‘signing of the summer’ may just be right.

With preseason wrapped up, Rams fans can be pleased with their teams showing in the six friendly matches they have played in. Ever since the only loss of preseason in the first friendly against Grimsby, Derby have not looked outplayed in any of the following five games. A sense of embarrassment and determination to set things right followed that loss at Blundell Park, and with each preseason game, fans have seen more and more quality in this team, each game being better than the last. With the season opener against Bolton now less than a week away, Derby supporters will be buzzing with excitement to see how the players will step up in quality once again to rise to the challenge where it really matters – the Championship fixtures.