Sheffield United 1 Derby County 1

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So many conflicting emotions. Relief not to have lost, frustration not to have won, annoyance at Dion Sanderson for a needless tackle when he was already booked that turned the game in the wrong direction, but pride overall in a massively improved performance, which nevertheless left Derby four points short of the safety line, with one win in 12 games, and a trip to Millwall next weekend as a lucky 13th.

More than a quarter of the season has gone, and a massively depleted Rams side continue to find ways not to win. This time, it was Sanderson who lost his head and tried to win a challenge on halfway, as Sheffield United broke away after a set piece. I'm not sure it was a booking if he was not already booked, but he was - and out of absolutely nothing, the Blades were handed a route back into a game in which Derby had looked fully comfortable after taking the lead.

For the third game in recent weeks, a tight game swung in one moment - against Wrexham, a late defensive lapse cost Derby two points. Against Stoke, a goalkeeping error (following a refereeing error, in fairness) cost Derby one point. Against Sheffield United, an impulsive, clumsy tackle cost Derby two points, and it would have been three were it not for the injury time heroism of the returning Jacob Widell Zetterstrom, who had been a borderline spectator until Sanderson's silly dismissal.

The Swede's availability was a huge relief, but for an hour, we could have had the venerable third-choice 'keeper Richard O'Donnell in goal without a problem, because the Blades hadn't posed Derby any meaningful problems, despite the by-now almost ludicrously makeshift back four in front of Zetterstrom. Max Johnston was fit enough to return to the matchday squad, but was only named on the bench as John Eustace's Flyin' Ryans - Nyambe and Hedges - continued their duties as stand-in centre back and left back respectively. Alex Mowatt also returned to the bench, after suffering a bad cut to the foot. At least three names could be scratched off the injury list then, cutting it from 11 to eight.

As well as Zetterstrom relieving his understudy Josh Vickers, Henrik Meister and Rhian Brewster stepped up in place of Mohammed Fuseini and the injured Lewis Travis, with Bobby Clark dropping back into central midfield alongside David Ozoh. This gave us two technically able players in the middle of the park, but for the first 20 minutes or so, they were largely bypassed as Derby aimed directly for their physical threats of Meister and Carlton Morris up front. Morris' aerial strength was clear, and he looked closer to the real Morris here than anything we've seen since last season, while Meister on the left was an obvious problem for midfielder-cum-right back Hamza Choudhury. However, luckily for the ex-Leicester man, who was heavily rumoured to be in line for a move to Derby before joining the Blades this summer, the referee took one look at Meister and decided that he was getting nothing all afternoon. If the big young Dane so much as breathed on his opponent, that was whistled. The other way around, not so much.

Seeing Championship officials go through the process of Agyemangification again is pretty infuriating - they seem to unconsciously pre-determine that the size of a Meister or a Big Pat is in itself an unfair advantage, especially when they are competing with a full back, and their role is to even things up for the plucky, innocent smaller guy. By the end of his first season in English football, Agyemang had found ways to adapt his game to make the most of his strengths. Hopefully, Meister - who had to be withdrawn after suffering a knock in the second half - will eventually do the same. He has all the physical attributes, it's just about learning to deal with defenders and referees, and use his strength in a way that doesn't get constantly penalised. There is definitely something there - but it would have helped enormously had he taken his one big chance in the first half (and it was officially a 'Big Chance', as defined by Opta).

It came out of nothing. Derby broke up a United attack and the ball dropped to Clark, who looked up and released Meister with an excellent throughball from his own half. The Blades' defence was chronically undone, it was a clear one-on-one with Michael Cooper, but unfortunately seemed to surprise Meister as much as it did everyone else. The Dane was hesitant in controlling the ball, then snatched at an unconvincing finish from the edge of the area, allowing the goalkeeper to spread himself and block it out. But at least Clark had created something meaningful in open play.

Not long before that, Clark had stung Cooper’s palm with a well-struck drive from the edge of the box. That came after Nyambe released Joe Ward down the wing with an accidentally brilliant channel ball (I swear it was meant to be a pass to his feet). Ward's cross on the run was only partially dealt with, Sam Szmodics was blocked on the edge of the box by Tahith Chong, before Clark latched onto the loose ball to strike with some venom.

Meanwhile, at the other end, Zetterstrom was enjoying an uneventful afternoon, while Derby took the initiative, and eventually, a deserved lead from a well-worked team goal.

It came after Meister was just too strong for the big name, ex-England midfielder Kalvin Phillips, remarkably still a loanee from Manchester City. Perhaps he will come in handy for their Championship campaign next season. Meister shielded the ball legally and ushered it towards Morris on halfway, who swept it wide to Szmodics, who usually shoots at any given opportunity, but this time made a much better decision by feeding Hedges, who had made a lung-bursting run beyond him and into the box.

Hedges swept a low shot past Cooper from an angle, only for it to cannon off the upright and back into the goalmouth. The onrushing Meister couldn't quite turn it home, but Clark was on the scene, arriving around 15 yards out to calmly place his first-time finish high into the net. High enough for Meister, who was already inside the goal, to bow to the ball as it whistled over his head. Brilliant goal, well worked, not a spectacular finish from Clark, but definitely not a gimme. Recency bias immediately christened it as my goal of the season so far - sure, there have been more spectacular finishes from Szmodics and Fuseini, but at this stage, I'm more interested in seeing coherent passing and movement, and this was the best example of that we've seen in 2026/7.

And there you had it. Derby's single best 45 minute performance of the season. Three chances to score carved out, one taken, none conceded. They are good players. They can do this.

For United, Ben Brereton Diaz was anonymous on the left wing. Old bogeyman Patrick Bamford was generally well shackled, although he did give Nyambe the slip on one occasion and provoke the defender into a yellow card for a pull on his shirt. That booking didn't prove to be particularly fateful, but Sanderson's, early in the second half, did - and within less than quarter of an hour. After the game, Eustace was left to speculate whether his most faithful follower had 'forgotten' that he was already carded, which would have been particularly goldfish-brained. Sanderson was just characteristically rash and impetuous in trying to win the ball, thought he could do so and took the bait that was dangled to him by the speedy substitute, Femi Seriki.

At the time, I was dumbstruck to see the red card waved by the rather pompous referee, Steve Martin. Having watched it back, the decision from Sanderson to try the win the ball was just a ridiculous misjudgement. It wasn't much of a foul, and had he not already been booked, would probably not have been met with a caution. But there was just. No. Need.

There was more than enough cover in place for Sanderson to simply get on with tracking back into his position. When the back four is filled out by players filling in on an emergency basis and learning their jobs on the hoof, for the only remaining senior head to undercut them in a moment like that was so disappointing. All the work Derby had done to put themselves in a potentially winning position was undone.

It was noted in the League of Gentlefolk group that the fatal Blades counter attack had followed an abortive attempt from Szmodics to wind up for a Hollywood volley from the edge of the penalty area, when the ball was dropping for so long that it was much too easy for his effort to be blocked out at source. In fact, the ball never even reached his foot before a defender took it away. But that's Szmodics. Prolific strikers are selfish and have the ego to back themselves to score from anywhere. He didn't win the Golden Boot in 2024 by passing it to others, and he's not going to start doing it now.

But Szmodics only has three league goals to his name this season. And the bigger picture issue, as Alex noted in the League WhatsApp group, is that Derby are currently scoring so few goals that they can't get away with any mistakes. Clark's strike was only the Rams' fifth goal in eight games. They have led five times in their 12 league games, but only scored more than once in two of them. At the moment, we have to keep a clean sheet to have any chance of winning, and (more understandably, given the defensive injury crisis) we can't do that either - one clean sheet all season, at Portsmouth in the 2-0 win.

At Bramall Lane, though, we got encouraging flickers of creativity and end product in the first half, and had Sanderson not been so rash, who knows, we might have got a second goal on the counter-attack. So there are grounds for optimism to take from this performance. But we need to see a lot more of it, much more consistently. The players are there, the talent is there - and with the injury crisis really only affecting the defence, options are still there to rotate and freshen up when it isn't working. Attacking players of this calibre have got to deliver far more than we have seen from them this season.

Derby weren't able to hold out for the win with ten men. The game-changer for United was Romelle Donovan, who replaced the lumbering Brereton Diaz and immediately buzzed around like a demented little sprite with a firework up its arse. The 19 year-old - who was a promising youth teamer at Birmingham City during Eustace's time there, joined Brentford in 2025 and was then loaned to the Blades for this season - popped up everywhere, picking up the ball in menacing positions, and it was his cross which reached Bamford almost on the goalline. The former Forest and Leeds man, and also an unwitting star of the amazing Athletico Mince podcast, had nothing to do but meet the ball and help it home. We were down to ten men, the box was loaded, we couldn't pick everybody up.

After that, there was plenty of time left for United to score a winner, and it felt absolutely inevitable that they would. Eustace did what he could to shore up, sending on Jack Robinson, the emergency free agent signing who hadn't kicked a ball in earnest since April, as well as Max Johnston for his first appearance since the West Ham defeat, and Oscar Fraulo. A further surprise came when Lars-Jørgen Salvesen was brought on for Ward - this made no immediate sense, but it was done to allow Morris to drop in as an auxiliary centre back. Just stand there and head it out, Carlton, like some new-breed Paul Warhurst. The target man-turned-defender gambit was more prevalent when there were fewer subs to use, but needs must. It was just a case of all hands on deck to repel the boarders at that stage.

But the biggest and dare I say most ravishingly handsome hands of all belonged to Zetterstrom. Without him, we would undoubtedly have been consigned to another deeply damaging defeat. Tipping the substitute Tyrese Campbell's low drive onto the bar was the first match-saving intervention, then he managed to contort his strapping frame to get a palm onto the annoying Sydie Peck's first-time placed shot, after Phillips had drilled a low free kick across the face of goal to the back post. In the scramble that ensued, Campbell could only help a free-bouncing ball high over the bar, and despite changes of underwear being required for all parties of a black-and-white persuasion, Derby had somehow survived.

It was entertaining, nerve-shredding, encouraging in many ways, exasperating in others. For 45 minutes, it was Derby's best performance of the season, but then another individual gaffe undercut it. And despite the undoubted positives which can and should be drawn from this - there'll be no criticism of the manager from me this weekend - the overall situation remains worrying, and the gap to safety now stands at four points. For next weekend, Sanderson's headloss moment makes the short-term defensive crisis even more acute, with Eustace facing a decision on whether he can start Jack Robinson. If he can't risk that, then there is no obvious alternative centre back available to fill the gap alongside the repurposed full back Nyambe. On that basis, it would be unreasonable to criticise the manager unduly if his team suffers yet another defeat.

After Burnley suffered a shock 4-1 hammering at Lincoln City yesterday, time was finally called on their hapless head coach, Nicky Hayen. That means that of the current bottom three, only Derby have not changed manager so far this season. And with several relatively big name clubs languishing towards the bottom of the table, it would be surprising if next month didn't see the start of a wider 'open season' on Championship managers, with clubs using the next international break to take stock ahead of the winter transfer window.

At Derby, mutiny was definitely in the air last weekend - not least right here at the Derby County Blog - but at Bramall Lane, we saw enough to show that the players have it in them to dig themselves out of their current hole, while on the other hand, also seeing enough to demonstrate why things have been so far from straightforward this season. The improvement needs to be sustained and converted into wins soon - ideally in the crucial upcoming home games against struggling sides in Norwich City and Bolton Wanderers.