TURBO TRAORE KEEPS BORO MOTORING FOR PROMOTION
Pace ace the main man in Ram raid
BORO fans jeered “it’s happening again” as Derby failed to get back into the Championship’s top six, with time now running out.
Adama Traore ran Derby into the ground and they are stuck in seventh place with three games left in which to try and rescue themselves.
But after only two victories in 13 games, it’s looking more and more like a re-run of all Derby’s promotion disasters over the last five seasons.
From losing at Wembley to QPR in the last seconds of the 2014 play-off final, Derby have broken dreams with tearful regularity season by season.
But if you are talking about not being able to stay the pace – what a performance Traore put in.
He’s the Usain Bolt of the Championship, jet-propelled speed tearing Derby to bits and setting up both goals.
“He’s a fantastic player,” said Boro boss Tony Pulis.
“Traore is as quick as any player I’ve ever worked with.
“Every time he gets the ball, we want him to run forward with it. We don’t want him to be coming inside and trying to do anything too clever.
“I just think it’s been a case of unwinding everything that might have been swinging around in his head.”
Traore, 22, began his career with Barcelona, never getting further than their reserves. They must have had no need Olympic-quick players to keep him out.
Then Aston Villa invested £7m on him but a club in decline wasn’t the ideal setting and Traore ran out of chances.
Now it looks like Traore could be swiftly be taking Middlesbrough to the play-off final.
Derby couldn’t cope and boss Gary Rowett said: “Traore presents a tactical conundrum because when he sets off and goes off on runs, he ends up with two players on him and he still finds a way through.”
Now Derby have to beat Cardiff on Tuesday to get back in the top six.
“I feel like a broken record because for about the last 10 weeks, I’ve said exactly the same thing – we’ve still got a chance of the play-offs,” added Rowett.
“We’ve got to go again on Tuesday in what will be a massive game (against Cardiff).
“It’s still in our hands still, ridiculously. But something is only in your hands if you are tall enough, or strong enough to grasp it and not let it go.”
Traore just kept motoring at Derby down the right-hand side. Derby decided to go with three central defenders and one of them, Craig Forsyth, was the man on the left who was supposed to stop Traore.
Twenty minutes in, Forsyth found how difficult that was going to be.
Traore took him on, shifting the ball from foot to foot like a card player shuffling a deck and then blistered past Forsyth.
He got in a good cross, some-
thing Derby didn’t seem to appreciate quickly enough, and Muhamed Besic was not closed down and crashed in his first goal since his January loan from Everton.
Some help from left-sided Marcus Olsson wouldn’t have gone amiss, Forsyth must have thought, but in general, Derby needed to help themselves.
Their form has fallen off a cliff since they were second in the table in February.
Jonny Howson almost added a second in the 60th minute when he took Traore’s angled long pass and shot against the crossbar.
It was Traore who made Boro’s second, his pass finding Britt Assombalonga for an easy, unmarked tap-in 20 minutes from time.
David Nugent’s late penalty did nothing to ease yet more Derby promotion apprehension.