A fan's-eye view from Ewood Park, with Phil Lloyd

BRIAN Kidd wouldn't approve of it.

Judging by his post-match comments, he's clearly of the school that teaches you not to dwell on the past and to look straight ahead to the next challenge.

That's not possible when you're a fan. A defeat like that at Derby has to be rationalised. When your team loses, you must find some plausible explanation.

Sometimes it's easy. You may not actually have seen the ref walking off arm in arm with the opposing manager, but he might as well have worn one of his team's shirts - usually red! Or there were strange forces exerting their powers, like the dreaded Sky curse that we've only just exorcised.

At other times, it's not so easy. It takes a long journey home, several beers and a detailed autopsy on the game with a few mates. The final verdict is no less depressing but probably fair: the team, your team, was either outplayed, outclassed, inept, unfit, shot-shy, work-shy, punch-drunk, half-drunk - in the worst cases, all of the above!

Late last Saturday, I managed to explain our Derby defeat. It wasn't Nathan's finishing, nor Billy's latest ill-advised peroxide experiment. We were fated to lose. From the Riverside to the Reebok to Pride Park, Rovers have still to get even a draw playing at any of the brand new stadia we have visited.

As ever, there's a moral in the story. Let's make sure we snuff out Sunderland first time, as the prospects for any replay at the Stadium of Light are distinctly gloomy. After all, they're only 10 points clear of the pack in Division One!

Regarding the verbals between Messrs Hodgson and Sherwood, Tim may realise by now that, until he acquires a Lancashire accent and scores 20 goals a season from midfield, he won't win over the hardest hearts among the Ewood faithful.

The fine detail of his contractual wranglings doesn't earn him much sympathy either among those of us who are slightly more financially-challenged than our captain.

But it's Hodgson who emerges as the bitter and twisted one for me. Whether highly-paid players should need motivating is a moot point, but the fact is that Hodgson progressively failed to improve and motivate the team that he took into 1998.

If Sherwood really did contribute to the last manager's demise, I think he did us a favour.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.