What a difference two seasons can make in football.

28th May 2007 saw Derby County sneak a 1-0 win against West Bromwich Albion in the 2006/2007 play-off finals courtesy of Stephen Pearson’s scrambled goal.

Billy Davies had finally cracked what he couldn’t do with Preston and brought a team into the top league. Although he had done it years ahead of his own schedule and that was to be a disaster for us.

Unfortunately it ended in tears, our following season in the Premiership was officially the worst points tally ever with only eleven points and the Rams are still fighting off the legacy of that dreadful season, and we are still stuttering in Nigel Clough’s first full season in charge.

Our opponents on that day and this weekend West Bromwich Albion finally went up the next year in 2008 as champions, they too however come straight back down last season all be it with a much healthier points than the one the Rams came back down with.

This season the Baggies are giving Newcastle a serious run for their money at the top of the Championship and I can’t see past them either to win the division or to go back up automatically.Robert Di Matteo’s side are an extremely strong unit.

They have weathered their time in the Premiership in a much healthier state than the Rams. Derby are still recovering from Billy Davies running out on us, and the legacy of Paul Jewell’s torrid time at the club.

Fans have been getting on Nigel Clough’s back, but what has happened at Derby County would be a job for most experienced managers (as Jewell found out), let alone one scooped from the non-league.

Derby’s home form at the moment is keeping us out of trouble (fifth best in the division), but away from home we are dreadful.

The game this weekend is an acid test of how well Derby are coming out off the slide since the traumatic fallout from the Premiership.

A decent result against a side like the Baggies and I will feel a lot better about the Rams chances to survive this transitional season.

Under Roberto Di Matteo West Brom have been having an impressive set of results recently, their demolition of Middlesbrough brought an end to Gareth Southgate’s time in charge of Boro and this month they have seen off high flying Leicester City at the Walkers, beaten Bristol City 4-1 and Sheffield Wednesday 4-0 away last week so the signs are it could be a tonking for the Rams if they don’t approach the game correctly.

Derby’s home form has been sustaining us, but I fear for this weekends fixture. Although in general, the Baggies fans took the play-off defeat like true fans (in comparison to the way Southampton and Preston fans over-reacted when weplayed them out in the play offs), I imagine many of their fans will still feel cheated about the way Derby won the play off game in 2006-2007.

To be honest I can’t blame them, although it was great (at the time) to go up, their team of the time was actually much better than ours and I can’t help but feel if Derby had lost that fatal play-off game we might be in a better position today.

Although we went up, the team that Billy Davies had assembled wasn’t in any way a top quality side, we battled yes, had character yes and we scraped one-nil wins to get to the Championship play-offs, but the next season the team was woefully unprepared and the side we put out in the Premiership the following season was overwhelmed by its lack of quality compared to even the most mediocre Premiership sides.

So, in comparison, West Brom fans can probably sit back and feel a little smug now, knowing that the cycle of history is smiling on them.

There is also an intriguing fixture this weekend when fourth-placed Nottingham Forest play third placed Leicester City at the weekend. I think it would be fair to say that both of these sides have surpassed expectations so far this season.

Leicester fresh up from Division One have re-organised under Nigel Pearson and when Matty Fryatt is in form they can beat anyone in the division.

In Leicester’s squad this season they also have Matty Oakley and Stevie Howard from the Rams play-off season.

Oakley has been reportedly playing quite well in the championship although Howard is at best a fringe player at Leicester.

However, I’ve heard from a number of people that have been to City’s games that they also have a lot in common with the Rams when they won promotion.

They’ve played poorly in a number of games, but they have the ability to snatch a result. So like Forest if they go up, Leicester could be Derby MKII.

The East Midlands player swap has continued with the Rams taking DJ Campbell and Paul Dickov on loan whilst we see out our player injury crisis.

Having spent out wad on useless players in recent history like Emanuel Villa (£2 million for the hard-working but industrious Argentine) , Laurent Robert, Kenny Miller and crew the Rams are having to work with Nigel’s cheap buys and scraps from other clubs.

But i’m not going to knock Nigel, he only has what he has to work with.

Forest are also doing well, and this is where it sticks in the craw, under Billy Davies and with the Rams former premiership flop Robert Earnshaw as a one of the six-strikers he has to call up.

Davies has assembled a half-decent side at the City Ground, and they are tough to beat edging a lot of games by the odd goal or drawing. They have the hallmarks of one of his hard to beat championship sides.

Last season only a point seperated the Rams and Forest and this year, grudgingly I have to say they will probably surpass us.

What should worry Nottingham Forest fans is not how they do this season, they could very well feature in the play-off battle, but they must be asking the question looking at Derby’s history and wondering where Billy is going to take them next.

I would say it is fair to say that many Derby fans whilst acknowledging what Davies did for Derby are still bitter about the manner he left, and this bitterness can be felt by his former club Preston as well. Their fans have little good to say about him and the way he left them.

Has he found his home at Forest? He is a good, proven Championship manager, but can he take them any further? Will he find something to kick off about? has he got a plan for Forest like he did for Derby, and if so is he ahead of schedule again? all questions that must be at the back of Forest fans minds at the moment given what happened to Derby, although I guess most of them must be happy that they are finally in a season when they have finally emerged from the Rams shadow.

Davies has already made known this season that he feels there is ongoing battle between football managers and club hierachies.

The Forest board will be glad of the success he has brought, but managing Davies himself must be a full-time job for them.

This warning also applies to Leicester they are having a good season. I guess what I’m trying to say to both Leicester and Forest fans is that they should be careful for what they wish for. Could either side flourish in the Premiership?

Of course it is early days yet, there is a long way to go in the season, but assuming Forest or Leicester went up I can’t see it myself. I think both Billy Davies and Nigel Pearson would struggle to compete in the Premiership with the teams they have at the top level without significant investment.

I think Davies knows this as well and he won’t get bitten again, the moment the Forest board fail to back him and I bet you he’ll have a big huff again.

Two other Derby County managers have been in my thoughts this week. The first one is Davies’ predecessor Phil Brown. At Hull, he seemed to be doing a good job until the infamous half-time team talk at Man City last season seemed to wreck his teams morale and they plummeted.

However, Brown has seem his team come a little closer together recently and this can be in no small way to the impact of Jimmy Bullard who seems to have put a spring back into the teams step. Whether Brown is any good as a manager I still can’t tell.

At Derby he brought in Dean Holdsworth and during one game he played him at the back, as a joke or what I don’t know, but Brown has an eccentric persona and ‘different’ management techniques.

Saying that however, he has taken Hull to the highest position they’ve ever had, so you can’t knock him for that. Whether or not he can sustain it, in the way that Tony Pulis seems to be doing at Stoke I don’t know. I thought that the sale of Michael Turner to Sunderland really put knocked the wind of Hull’s sales for a bit.

To complete the Derby County connection our former chief executive Adam Pearson has returned to Hull.

The whisperings are that if Hull get relegated this season they could face a financial tsunami to put the club in trouble. Again, Forest and Leicester fans can look at this and they should shudder if a similar thing happened at their club.

If one or the other managed to go up, to compete they will have to spend. Could either side comfortably do this?

Both clubs have well known chairman in Nigel Doughty and Milan Mandaric, but from a fan base point of view they are similarly sized clubs to Derby. (* although as we like to point out on many occasions less well supported)

Although I doubt either side could make as much as a financial mess as what happened at the Rams.

If either side chased the dream it could end in a disaster, again you have to look at Stoke and say that seems to be the way forward for an ambitious middle-sized side to progress.

In many ways whoever goes up this season from the Championship could be damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Go up and don’t spend and be ready to come back down again, although like West Brom you could be in better shape the next season.

Try and buy your way to stay in the Premiership and it could be the end of your clubs ambitions for seasons to come. Portsmouth and Hull are looking in really dodgy shape this year, and it could happen to the next set of teams to go up. Portsmouth at least had a bit of success in the FA Cup, but their financial situation has ruined the clubs start this season.

So what do you do?

The last former Rams manager that I will come too is George Burley, recently sacked by Scotland some club will undoubtedly come for his management skills.

Burley has had a rough time in charge of the Scots, but he was severely limited by the quality of the players at his disposal.

In 2004-2005 Burley took the Rams to a play-off slot, and unlike Billy Davies he is still held with some affection in Derby despite the acromonious way he left the club.

I can see Burley going back into management quite quickly and he may have a better time than he did with Scotland and he may get another club out of the doldrums, and unlike Davies he will do it by playing attractive football.