Conor Hourihane acknowledges that Derby County’s first season in League One was deemed a “failure,” making their promotion back to the Championship in their second attempt all the more rewarding. The Rams amassed an impressive 92 points this past season, securing second place on the final day of the campaign.
This points total is notably 16 points higher than their previous season’s tally, where they finished in seventh place and missed out on the playoffs, falling short of their immediate return to the Championship goal.
Derby County’s promotion, clinched with a victory over Carlisle United, is credited to the collective effort of the squad and Paul Warne’s coaching staff. Hourihane, whose contract status is pending, expressed satisfaction in contributing to the team’s turnaround.
“You see tweets after games and you see that certain records have been broken,” said Hourihane. “The gaffer might mention it or Richie Barker is quite big on stats, clean sheets which I get of course – they’re targets that the coaching staff want to reach at certain stages of the season, but for the players it’s been promotion and being fully focused on promotion.
“We had the disappointment last year of not making the playoffs. To go on now and achieve what we did this year probably, only until now, makes me think how much of a failure last year was for the club like this to only finish seventh. It’s not good enough really, so go on and flip that on its head and to get into the top two where we wanted to get, it’s been some turnaround over the last few years.”
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