Davies out at Derby : Miller coming home to Caps?

[nolando]

Miller must be gone too, one would presume.

Davies parts company with struggling Premier League club Derby

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DERBY, England (AFP) - Billy Davies lost his job as manager of English Premier League basement club Derby County, the Midlands side's chairman Adam Pearson said Monday.

Davies arrived at Pride Park 18 months ago and took the club back into the Premiership via the post-season play-offs. But the Rams have won just one of their 14 league matches so far this term and are now four points adrift at the bottom the table.

"I have met with Billy Davies this (Monday) morning and we have decided mutually in the interests of both parties that to go our separate ways is the correct decision at this time," Pearson said in a statement issued by Derby.

"Billy Davies leaves Derby County with our best wishes and our genuine gratitude in achieving a magnificent promotion to the Premier League, where everyone connected with the club wanted to be," added Pearson, who only took over last month.

"We've agreed mutually to a parting of the ways," Davies told Sky Sports. "At this point I would like to thank, very much, the staff and the players.

" I would like to thank the fans, who've been magnificent and, of course, the board for what has been a fantastic time at Derby County."

Davies, asked if he felt any sadness at his exit, replied: "That's football. We know the situation but as far as I am concerned, and I've said this before, these players and the staff have been a pleasure to work with and I've thoroughly enjoyed the great times I've had at Derby County.

"But it is time to move on."

Davies's last game in charge of County was Saturday's 2-0 league defeat at home to Chelsea.

Afterwards the 43-year-old Scot pleaded with Pearson, who said when taking over that Davies had his full support, to provide funds for new players come the January transfer window.

"We need to invest in the squad. I have not spoken to the new chairman Adam Pearson for over two weeks, but we need to bring in six new players. I have already identified three of them, but we cannot compete without investment."

Davies took charge at Derby in January last year after opting to leave Preston, whom he had steared into the Championship play-offs for two successive seasons.

Having kept Derby in the second tier of English football, Davies's first full season in charge saw them narrowly miss out on automatic promotion before they beat West Brom in the play-off final at Wembley.

Derby were widely tipped to go straight back down again and last weekend's loss was their fourth in a row and meant they have gone eight games without a win.

Pearson, after completing a reported 3.5 million pounds buyout of former chairman Peter Gadsby's shares," said: "Billy has done a fantastic job to get the club into the Premier League and, if the worst came to the worst and we went down, we couldn't have a better manager to bring us back up.

"We are absolutely 100 percent committed to him."

His departure saw Davies become the sixth manager in the 20-strong Premiership this season to leave his post following Chelsea's split with Jose Mourinho, Martin Jol's exit from Tottenham, Sammy Lee's sacking by Bolton, Chris Hutchings's ousting by Wigan and Steve Bruce's departure from Birmingham.

However, within days of leaving Birmingham, Bruce was installed last week as manager of Wigan.

Former England boss Steve McClaren, who made his name as a coach at Derby, was installed by leading British bookmaker Ladbrokes as the favourite to replace Davies at odds of 5/2.

McClaren was sacked last Thursday, less than 12 hours after a 3-2 defeat against Croatia at Wembley, combined with Russia's 1-0 win over Andorra, meant England failed to qualify for the finals of the Euro 2008 championships.

[Gian-Luca]

There are rumours on the usector.ca board that Miller will be the new TFC assistant coach to replace Bob Gansler, who effectively retired.

[Guest speedmonk42]

I thought people liked us.