The Athletic’s Ryan Conway recently appeared on the Totally Football League Show to discuss the recent goings-on at Derby County.
The Rams parted company with Phillip Cocu with the club currently sitting bottom of the Championship table. The Dutchman took charge of 65 games, winning 22, drawing 17 and losing 26 (as per Transfermarkt).
According to Sky Sports, Wayne Rooney will now be the ‘senior figure’ in the new interim coaching staff made up of the former Manchester United man, Liam Rosenior, Shay Given and Justin Walker.
In the club’s latest defeat versus Barnsley, Liam Rosenior took charge with Cocu having to self-isolate after the club’s chief executive Stephen Pearce tested positive for the virus that interrupted the 2019/20 campaign (as per BBC Sport). When discussing some of the decisions made in-game by the coach and whether there may have been a potential falling out behind the scenes leading up to Cocu’s sacking, here is what the journalist had to say:
“Not from what I’m led to believe, because Liam had addressed [some of the decisions he made] post-game. It was quite strange, actually, because he said that the decision at half time that he made to bring [Kamil] Jozwiak on and withdraw Matt Clarke and drop Rooney back into midfield, as you said, that decision, he said, was his decision – but he had talked it through with Phillip, which I found, I don’t know, maybe a little bit strange if Phillip had picked the team and picked the shape.
“That to me was a bit like, ‘okay, that’s weird.’ But I didn’t get the sense there was any sort of dissension, you know, amongst the coaching staff.”
Was Phillip Cocu solely to blame for Derby's poor form?
Yes
No
TIF Thoughts on Ryan Conway’s comments regarding the situation leading up to Phillip Cocu’s sacking…
In our view, in order to understand why Cocu was shown the door so early on in the season, you need not look further than the current table and the club’s recent results.
The former PSV Eindhoven boss, a three-time Dutch title winner, replaced Frank Lampard in the summer of 2019 after the Rams narrowly missed out on promotion to the Premier League and taking into account the decline between then and now, it may be understandable as to why the club felt the need to pull the trigger on the 50-year-old.