ROONEY ON THE BRINK!
Rams capitulate to leave survival bid to final game
WAYNE ROONEY’S troubled first season in management will extend into an agonising final week after defensive lapses plunged his team further into the relegation mire.
Not even the four-day bonding session in South Wales that preceded this latest defeat could help them summon up the will to hold on against opponents already assured of a play-off place.
His Derby team find themselves only three points above Sheffield Wednesday and Rotherham, with the latter having a game in hand — Derby face-off against relegation rivals Wednesday next weekend.
‘It’s the same thing every week, I can’t fault their effort but we have to stop giving these goals away,’ said Rooney. ‘ It was almost a replica of the last few weeks. It’s very frustrating.’
An hour in with results going their way, the decision to take the players away had looked like a masterstroke, but that all crumbled within three minutes.
‘We prepared excellently, it was a chance to get them together and put in some hard work. If we had won it would have been fine, I knew if we didn’ t there would be questions,’ he said.
‘The one thing you can’t really work on is individual player concentration. Every time we switch off, we seem to concede.’
After a season of constant challenges, which has included everything from dubious ownership bids to questions over wage payments to key injuries, the next seven days promise to be the most testing of all. Third tier status, for the first time since 1984, is a real possibility.
With only one win in 14 games Rooney will need to pick his men up off the floor, their dismal sequence having offered Wednesday and Rotherham an unlikely path to redemption.
Rooney had reason to feel confident after an hour with the live table showing that safety, Derby’s sole ambition after so much strife, was well within reach.
The visitors were ahead after Tom Lawrence had headed in Nathan Byrne’s cross from close range. With Colin Kazim-Richards a physical threat up front, they were starting to play with an assurance that belied their precarious position.
Then came the double punch which might yet become t he defining three minute sofa campaign shot through with problems extending far beyond the trials of Covid.
First, Derby old boy Morgan Whittaker met the flick of Ban Cabango with an angled header on the far post that dribbled over the line beyond the despairing Kelle Roos.
That was compounded when Swansea, who had posed little threat, made it two from almost exactly the same spot. Connor Roberts was fed by Matt Grimes and he volleyed the ball home.
On the sidelines Rooney spun round in anguished disappointment. What had promised to be a blissfully straightforward final week in which plans could be made for the future will now the be the latest stage of his crash course in crisis management.