Two strikers may be best against Hatters
THE form of individuals, and of the team, makes predicting Derby County’s starting 11 a tough task.
Who will line up against Luton Town when the Rams return to Championship action on Friday?
I was asked which of the remaining eight games is the most important for Derby and it has to be the next, for a number of reasons.
Derby need to emerge from the rut they are in. They have gone seven matches without a win and they have scored only two goals in their last six. This has left them in a relegation scrap.
So much can change on the Luton game, and over the Easter weekend.
If Derby can beat Luton, and one or two other results involving fellowstrugglers go their way, then the table can look very different heading into the fixture away against Reading on Easter Monday.
Luton will be a tough nut to crack. They have won four of their last six games and are 13th on 50 points, 10 points better off than Derby.
So who should Rams boss Wayne Rooney pick to face the Hatters?
Three at the back seems to suit and Teden Mengi has impressed in the last two away matches against Barnsley and Stoke City. This allows the wing-backs to provide the width, something that certainly suits Nathan Byrne on the right.
Graeme Shinnie and Jason Knight can, hopefully, produce the energy and the snap in central midfield that we saw during the run of five wins in six games.
Derby really could do with winning this game. To do so, they will need to ask more questions of Luton than they have managed to ask many teams in the current poor run. They
barely troubled Stoke last time out, failing to register an attempt on target. The game was a real missed opportunity.
With this in mind, I would go with two strikers in Colin Kazim-Richards, if fit, and Lee Gregory, and operate with a number 10 behind them, either Tom Lawrence, who is more of a threat centrally, or Louie Sibley.
Both players can float and find pockets of space, and, hopefully, provide cleverness, menace and unpredictability, something that has been missing because Derby’s play, apart from the second half against Brentford, has been too predictable of late.
The shape would be more of a 3-4-1-2.
Could this 11 work?
■■Roos; Wisdom, Mengi, Clarke; Byrne, Knight, Shinnie, Forsyth; Lawrence; Kazim-Richards, Gregory.