A late congratulations to Derby County

By: Ian Rose | May 30th, 2007

I should have gotten to this earlier, but what with all the scandals and such, who has the time?

Anyway, I wanted to give a little shout out to the English Premiership’s newest side, Derby County, who beat West Brom to join automatically promoted Sunderland and Birmingham. This is notable, at least to me, not only because Derby’s been out of the Prem for four years and basically rebuilt a team from scratch after the financial crisis that followed their last relegation. What’s also interesting is that Derby is, currently and historically, one of the most Scot-influenced teams in the Premiership.

Currently, Derby has four Scottish players on roster - defenders Jay McEveley and Robert Malcolm and midfielders Stephen Pearson and Gary Teale. McEveley and Teale also happen to be current Scottish internationals, both being named to Alex McLeish’s 24-man roster for today’s Austria match and the Faroe Islands Euro qualifier next Wednesday. Teale has six caps for Scotland, and McEveley will be seeing his first senior international action if he hits the pitch in either of those matches. And, like the top side in the league, there’s a Scot at the helm. Manager Billy Davies, a Glasgow boy, had memorable playing stints at Dunfermline and Motherwell before heading south to manage.

Historically, Derby has had more than its share of Scottish greats, both on and off the pitch. Archie Gemmill, a great Scotland international player and scorer of a famous goal against Holland in the 1978 World Cup (see “Trainspotting” for this particular goal’s significance), was there from 1982-84. Hearts standout Dave Mackay both played for and managed the Rams. And John O’Hare, Scottish international and veteran of Nottingham Forest’s 1980 European Cup team, also spent some time at Derby.

Congrats to Derby County - it’s great to have another Scottish manager, and a few more of our NT players, in the premiership.