Passion Undimmed is Sole Solace for Doomed Derby

Arthur Christiansen, a formidable editor of the Daily Express in its heyday, used to talk of wanting to know what people were thinking about in the back streets of Derby. The Premier League would appear to be more interested in what they are saying on the sidewalks of Bangkok and Beijing yet there is a message from Derby it would do well to heed.

Derby County are going down and have been going down almost from the moment they came up. Any interest they might have in plans to play Premier League games abroad, therefore, will be remote unless they are again a Premier League side by the time the proposals, if sanctioned, become reality in the 2010-2011 season. Yet the voices at Pride Park on Saturday spoke of something that may be forgotten in the latest rush to the commercial trough.

Derby's biggest attendance of the season turned out to watch a team that had won only one of its previous 25 league fixtures, lost 18 and was about to lose another. The match was, for the most part, a mediocre mish-mash of fitful passing and indifferent finishing. Tottenham won comfortably once they had asserted their superiority and scored three times in the last 22 minutes, so there was not much for the home supporters to shout about. Yet shout they did from first to last.

The passion with which Pride Park exhorted its hard-working but inadequate team to get something from the afternoon made the football seem more entertaining than it was. This sort of blind faith is not easily exported. It is hard to imagine Beijing or Bangkok experiencing boundless joy at the winning of a corner or even a favorable throw-in. Most of the time they would be wondering how Derby could be both a county and a town.

But never mind. Under the new American owners Derby County will not be left behind. The club president and chief executive, one Tom Glick, promised in Saturday's program that they were committed to "building Derby County into a powerful worldwide brand". Either Glick is a cock-eyed optimist or the Yanks are about to win the Asian concession for Heinz tomato ketchup. The fans would settle for something more modest, like a winning team.

That is unlikely to happen this season. Derby's only immediate ambition now is to avoid being relegated with the lowest number of points since three began to be awarded for a win in 1981, a dubious honor held by Sunder land who went down with 15 in 2005-06. Derby have nine with 12 games remaining so it will be a close-run thing.

When Paul Jewell took over as manager from Billy Davies two months ago he was under no illusions about keeping Derby up. It was more about what he could achieve when next they attempted to win promotion, backed by new investment. "What I want is to be able to compete in the Premier League," he said after Saturday's match. "At the moment we're bottom of the league because we can't compete at the level Tottenham are at the moment."

Not that Spurs looked up to much on Saturday until Jamie O'Hara came on to link the play more intelligently in the second half followed by Dimitar Berbatov, rested initially with Thursday's Uefa Cup game against Slavia Prague in mind.

As Derby tired Tottenham improved, Robbie Keane's tap-in putting them ahead after Roy Carroll had failed to hold a cross-shot from Steed Malbranque. Younes Kaboul, who had replaced the injured Michael Dawson, drove in the second following a corner and a sharp nod back by Pascal Chimbonda and Berbatov's penalty completed the victory after Alan Stubbs had handled.

Man of the match Jamie O'Hara (Tottenham Hotspur)