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View Full Version : Most dominant derby run since McLeish era?



G B Young
23-02-2017, 01:17 PM
While I know this is our longest unbeaten derby run since the 70s, a more recent comparison can be made with the McLeish era when our derby results were as follows:

May 1998 (H) W 2-1
Aug 1999 (H) D 1-1
Dec 1999 (A) W 3-0
Mar 2000 (H) W 3-1
May 2000 (A) L 2-1
Aug 2000 (A) D 0-0
Oct 2000 (H) W 6-2
Dec 2000 (A) D 1-1
May 2001 (H) D 0-0
Oct 2001 (H) W 2-1
Dec 2001 (A) D 1-1 (Sauzee as boss)

One defeat in 11 derbies, and even that was an end-of-season game where we were without the talismanic Sauzee and Latapy. We should actually have won a couple more of those games, in particular the 0-0 at ER when Mixu attempted a Cummings-style penalty 'dink' in the last minute and like Jason sent it over the bar!

There's a parallel to be drawn with that era which saw relegation coupled by a turnaround in our derby form.

The 70s dominance, it should be said, would have been far greater had we played four league derbies a season back then. In those days it was just two per season.

G B Young
24-02-2017, 01:06 PM
It also crossed mind that prior to McLeish the manager with by far the most dominant derby record was Eddie Turnbull.

As players, both Turnbull and McLeish were hard as nails, most definitely the kind of guys you wanted in your team, and I wonder if that mentality transmitted to their players on derby day? While Stubbs deserves immense credit for sparking the derby turnaround of the last three years (and in a quieter way was a tough player too), Lennon strikes me as being cut from the same cloth as Turnbull and McLeish and it will be interesting to see how effectively he maintains that 'boss the derby' mentality next season - assuming we go up and Hearts don't get relegated (is it mathematically possible they could still go down?).