Next Derby County Manager Odds: The Rams approach John Eustace

EFL pundit Gab Sutton discusses the managerial situation at Derby County following the sacking of boss Paul Warne last week, and the subsequent move for Blackburn boss John Eustace.

Derby County Sack Paul Warne

It’s been a positive week for Derby, on three fronts.

Firstly, manager Paul Warne, unfortunately, had to go for the Rams to improve their chances of beating the drop.

That’s not to say it’s been easy for the four-time League One promotion-winner, who had been working with a bottom six squad on paper before the injuries: with them, bottom three.

Warne is clearly a thoroughly decent human being, a true trailblazer for vulnerability and empathy in modern leadership: football is a far, far better sport with him in it.

At the same time, the struggles of Gareth Ainsworth at this level with QPR shows, while managers in League One can rely predominantly on being a phenomenal culture-setter, creating a climate in which people go above and beyond for one another, it’s just nowhere near enough in the Championship.

There are advanced coaches in the league like Danny Rohl and Ruben Selles who have been honing their craft for two decades, instead of playing, as well as managers like Gary Rowett, Alex Neil and Paul Heckingbottom who have been proven to deliver results at this level year on year.

Warne would argue he’s never had the resources to show he can deliver such results, having managed at this level in five different seasons: four times, with Rotherham, who always had the lowest budget (give or take the odd exception) and once with Derby, who nearly went out of business less than three years ago.

Across ‘four’ of those seasons - we’ll kindly scrap his return from the Millers’ doomed 2016-17 campaign by classing that season as a write-off due to mismanagement and poor recruitment from Alan Stubbs followed by Kenny Jackett walking after five games - it’s still not great.

With the above discounted, the former fitness coach’s record stands at 123 points from 131 games, amounting to an average 43 points over a whole season.

Is that record appalling, for a manager who’s always doing his best to cobble together a team that might be able to stay up on a bottom-end budget? No, it isn’t. It’s not a million miles off.

In such a cut-throat industry as football, however, not being a million miles off still doesn’t quite butter the parsnips.

The game is evolving at the higher levels at a fast pace, technically and tactically. Fresh ideas are coming into the Championship, and the standard of coaching has improved.

So, yes, it’s been tough for Warne, but then that’s also kind of the point. It is tough. So, if you want to stay working in the Championship, you’ve got to prove yourself capable of making the pound stretch further at that level.

And, beyond an impressive run of one defeat in nine at the start of Rotherham’s 2022-23 campaign before moving to Derby, which contributed to the survival ultimately attained under Matt Taylor, the 51-year-old is yet to do that.

So, as his long-term colleague, Matt Hamshaw, quite rightly said on Saturday, Warne should be remembered for winning promotion at Derby, and getting the club on the right track again after a previous era of financial strife.

Nonetheless, it was a change that probably needed to happen - but they’ve had a welcome boost in the interim period so far, with Hamshaw overseeing an unlikely point at Norwich, thanks to an injury-time penalty from Jerry Yates.

How Derby appointing John Eustace could shape the Championship dogfight 

With a relatively favourable run of fixtures between now and the end of the season, there is an opportunity for the next person to make an impact.

And, finally, the club have reportedly made an ambitious swoop for Blackburn boss John Eustace. 

Going from a club that’s inside the Play-Offs to one inside the relegation zone might seem like an odd choice from the outside, but Eustace may be unhappy with the lack of transparency from the ownership at Ewood Park, with the Solihull-born boss possibly keen to move closer to home, somewhere he already has an affinity with the fanbase from his playing days.

Plus, the noises the 45-year-old has made in the media suggests reports of Derby’s approach are accurate, and that he does have interest himself.

Eustace has worked wonders in the Championship in his career so far.

He steered Birmingham to a safe, 17th-place finish in 2022-23 with a thin squad, before overseeing a strong first quarter of the following campaign, after new investment, with 18 points from their first 11 – prior to the infamous sacking so CEO Garry Cook could appoint Wayne Rooney.

Eustace’s record at Blackburn, that same season, was a reasonable if unremarkable 20 points from 17 games, before he really showed his mettle by delivering an unlikely Play-Off push this season, in much the same way as the start of his second season at Blues.

In short, this is a manager who consistently gets results at the level: humble and down-to-earth, yet his sides also tend to look extremely well-coached.

Eustace’s sides are aggressive from the front and, while they’re not afraid to go long at times, especially if they don’t have the personnel to play out from the back, they can also play good, high-tempo football once they get into the opposing half.

So, if the East Midlanders can pull the appointment off, it should drastically increase their chances of beating the drop.