Derby County 1 - West Bromwich Albion 1

Date:	Friday 23rd January 2026
Competition:	Sky Bet Championship
Derby: 3.9
WBA: 4.7	(5-4-1) O'Leary 3.6, Price 3.5, Bielik 5.0 (Mepham, 74 4.5), Phillips 4.8, Campbell 5.6, Styles 5.1 (Dike, 61 3.8), Johnston 4.4 (Wallace, 61 5.1), Diakité 5.8, Molumby 5.0, Grant 3.6 (Iling-Junior, 8 3.8), Heggebø 4.6 (Maja, 61 4.0) Unused subs: Griffiths, Gilchrist, Mowatt, Taylor Manager: Eric Ramsay 4.1
Scorers:	Mepham (95)
Referee:	Anthony Backhouse 5.0
Attendance:	20,099 Home Fans 3.6 Away Fans 7.7

Submit your ratings for this game by clicking here:

Ratings submitted so far: 16

Brendan Clegg:

Well that was a ride!

On seeing the teamsheet there were some notable changes but it did look like we were going to persist with the 3-4-3 which was a worry.

The good (or so it looked) - The new keeper in. Mepham and Taylor out of the defensive line was a positive. Taylor can't run and Mepham plays with all the aggression and effort you'd expect of a dad having a kick about on the beach. A midfield duo of Diakite and Molumby would at least run and fight.

I felt the back 3 had our best three leaders in it.

The 'not so sure' - Price at wingback again after the abominable way he played against Norwich. Also, and I'm probably alone in this, but I would have started Wallace over MJ for this one given we were away, how we were likely to set up and how physical Derby are. I'd also have gone with a back 4, with Iling Jnr at left back for his height and on the back of a couple of games - basically I'd have gone with our tallest most physical team in a 4-5-1 and gone to try and shit-house something. I don't think we were a million miles off that.

And so the half unfolded and it was an awful game. Derby really are crap as a footballing side and where they are in the table reminds you have how bad the league is and what a missed opportunity this season is. I'm still not over it.

In a terrible game contested by two awful teams - we were comfortably the better side. They didn't get the ball in our box at all. We really should have done more with the situations we created - Campbell missing a pretty routine free header was the biggest chance but Molumby, Price, and Grant also had decent situations in the box where they rushed or showed no composure. Grant, actually unable to make contact with a fairly routine volley for a pro footballer even on his wrong foot, managed to injure his hamstring in the process. He made way for Iling-Junior which sort of made sense but who looked utterly lost on the left of a forward 3 for the rest of the half.

We looked better than against Norwich (couldn't have been worse really) with our back line being no-nonsense, Diakite and Molumby winning lots of 50/50s in the middle and Heggebø grafting away.

However... we again found ourselves trailing after halftime through stupidity and error. Firstly, in the 43rd minute of the half when all you have to do is see it out to the break, MJ tried a ridiculous turn and lost the ball in a terrible area and then Bielik came steaming in to try and hump the opposition player when there was no need. It gave Derby, without a corner/shot/even a throw-in in our half, the chance to cross from a dangerous position.

Over it came, our new keeper, brought in due to the clangers of others, caught the clanger disease instead of the ball in what should have been routine, and it dropped to a Derby player who spooned it home via a deflection.

Even the harshest angry Albion fan must have felt a little bit of sympathy for the players. It felt like we were cursed as they trudged off.

After the break I thought we started well... we won the ball high a couple of times in the first 5 minutes but once again the quality and composure in the box was just hopeless and we didn't pick out basic passes/crosses to give Heggebø any chance.

On about 60 minutes Ramsay at least showed he wasn't scared to change it with a triple-sub with Heggebø, MJ and Styles for Maja, Dike and Wallace with SIJ going to left wingback.

In truth... I thought only SIJ did just about okay as a result of those changes. Elsewhere I thought Maja and Dike were pretty poor, could not get hold of it or do the basics. We lost control of the game and although we maybe still had a structure to us, Derby started to look more dangerous.

We stuck at it but I can't recall a chance or situation. A few nearly moments and we managed to get some crosses in but we were too deep to do it and we didn't have anyone who could dribble further up and cross.

As the injured Bielik made way for Mepham you felt like it would be more likely Derby would add another although they didn't get a clear chance from memory.

Instead we forced a few set plays and, at the death, Mepham nodded a Molumby flick just over the line after we'd got a corner that should never have been following a chance that a fit or physically capable Maja would have buried.

In truth - the least we deserved from that game was a point. The away fans really deserved a win because they were incredible - if only we could find a way to get The Hawthorns rocking again like our away ends which have, through adversity, felt like our best support and atmosphere for at least a decade.

Whilst I hated the approach and question the persistence of our new head coach to go with a formation that he hasn't got the players to play in - you could understand it and I found his after match interview to be intelligent, articulate and peppered with realism and belief - far more than any of Mason's empty cliche-ridden efforts. That might not mean anything... but it is different. Hopefully we can improve with a full week of training ahead. The injuries to Grant and Bielik are a big blow no-doubt though, as two players who the system does probably work for and who do fight a bit.

O'Leary - 5 Not a great start on crosses but I thought his kicking was way more accurate and useful than our other keepers
Campbell - 7 No question ever that the kid will give everything and his pace helped. With where we are at he has to play.
Phillips - 6 Solid enough
Bielik - 6 Again solid enough apart from the silly foul
Styles - 6 Battled away
Molumby - 6 kept it simple and won plenty of balls despite some sloppy errors
Diakite - 7 Really good, used in the best way to suit him. Headers, tackles, blocks - but crucially, do not dribble and make a 10 yard pass as soon as you win it.
Price - 5 A bit of effort which should be the minimum
Grant - 4 Ropey and now injured
Heggebø - 6 Thought he did alright and we fell apart when he went off
MJ - 5 Errors, silliness, could not get the ball in decent areas enough.

SIJ - 4 Tried but could not find a way into the game until he went to LWB
Maja and Dike - 4 They looked miles off it
Wallace - 5 At least you can trust him to battle and use his brain a bit
Mepham - You still owe us a lot more than that pal - but credit for wanting that header more.

We've got to find a way to get a couple of players in this week...

Kev Buckley:

Following the five-nil against Norwich, Ramsay's five-four-one formation contained five changes, including our brand-new keeper, rumoured to have cost us two million, whilst in front of him, Mepham and Taylor made way for Bielik and Campbell, right and left, respectively, of Phillips, with Price and Styles the full-backs. In the four, Molumby and Diakite were flanked by Johnston and Grant, with Heggebø returning to chase things up top.

Albion had had a couple of corners, before Grant had an air-shot from the edge of box, and then had to chase after the player breaking away from him before somehow deciding that taking an early yellow for the team was a better option than allowing the break to develop. As it was, Grant only walked the second booking tightrope for another minute-and-a-half before his exertions - not clear if it was the air shot or the chase - saw him going down to be replaced by Iling-Junior, with less than six on the clock/

Within three minutes of coming on the ex-Juventus man freed Johnston and his pulled-back cross set up Molumby at the top of the box, but his shot was too weak to trouble the keeper, although some four minutes later, Iling-Junior would massively slice an similar opportunity to Grant's, before Campbell, heading wide from a corner rounded out a first twenty, in which Albion had just about edged it.

With fifteen minutes of normal time in the half remaining, Iling-Junior set Price away down the right flank and his nice pass into the box just evaded Heggebø, although five minutes after that, in trying to make something of one of the longer balls that he's more used to being on the end of, the number nine jumped into contact and led with his arm, and picked up a yellow.

It was still looking as though we'd get to the break without conceding but, after Bielik had given away a really silly foul out in the right back area, O'Leary tried to claim the delivery, only to then fumble it, inside his six-yard-box, which presented Derby with the simplest of tap-ins.

Ten minutes after the restart, Iling-Junior drove one across that found Price, arriving unmarked inside the box, but he blazed it high and wide.

As the hour passed. Ramsay changed three players and made the five at the back into a four: Wallace and Maja replacing Johnston and Heggebø, with Styles going off and Dike coming as a second striker. Campbell, almost exclusively used as a right-back, before tonight's start on the left of a back three, moved out to left-back.

The gloss was starting to come off Iling-Junior's recent decent showings as he first took way too long to get off a shot from the edge of the box, and saw it blocked before misplacing one of number of passes that allowed Derby to break, although they shot wide.

It was really was starting to look as though it wasn't going to be our night - not that the last ten away games had ever suggested it would be our night - when Bielik, already carrying a strapped-up shoulder, went down and could no longer continue, being replaced by Mepham with around twenty to go.

There wasn't all that much in that twenty, nor in five of the six minutes allowed for stoppages, come to that, that pointed to us getting any points from the game but then, we finally got a corner right, and a near post flick-on saw Mepham battling to get in front of his marker, and heading goalwards at the back post, although it needed goal-line technology to confirm that the keeper's attempted save had been made behind the line.

Considering how poor the game was, and that Derby could have, temporarily anyway, moved into the top-six, a last minute equaliser that breaks our ten-game losing streak, away from home in the division, can only strengthen any claims to this not being all that great a division this season, and yet, without that equaliser, we could easily have been looking at dropping into its bottom three.

Not clear that going 541 is going to trouble too many sides, and whether the 442, with Maja and Dike not exactly having had enough game time to have "forged a partnership" anyway, would have been deployed had we not suffered the "bad luck", that we've experienced when past managers have set us up to "try to keep it tight" with nine behind a lone striker, and we've still gone behind, leaves a lot of questions, and that's before we start asking how long Grant and Bielik might be out for, so let's just breath a sigh of relief that we can't suffer the psychological blow of dropping into the bottom three this weekend, on the back of that away run continuing. You've gotta start somewhere though.