A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Derby County will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Sam Szmodics and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Ryan Hedges falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Squad23 Nov 2026
6 new faces, and Derby County are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Jaydon Banel is on it.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Derby County have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Sam Szmodics was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Derry Murkin falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Derby County are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑2 defeat, delivered by Charles Butler to a room that had heard them before.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout16 Nov 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Ethan Laird
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Derby County can pretend not to have heard.
Derby County offered $1.3M; Norwich City said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Everything agreed with Birmingham, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
16 combined actions and 7.19. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
Sam Szmodics was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 7 goals between Derby County and Sheffield United, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.
In brief
SquadWords at Derby County training over how hard people work