[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Denied a Boxing Day game for the second year in a row, Bank Holiday Monday sees us venture up to Pride Park for a 3pm kick-off against Derby. With Thursday's scheduled game against Preston now postponed due to a Covid outbreak in the North End camp, this will be our last match of 2021, and most won't be sorry to see the old year go.

The Rams will also be glad to see the back of these twelve months, which have seen them hit by a points deduction that's sent the club to the bottom of the Championship, needing to maintain promotion-level form for the remainder of the season just to escape relegation. Even without the points penalty they'd have been firmly in the dogfight, but that's no guarantee that Albion can simply breeze by Rooney's men, considering our indifferent showing in the fog at Oakwell and a woeful historical record in Derby that's seen us win just one of our last thirty matches up there, back in 2003-04. The Rams star forward Tom Lawrence has recently hit a vein of home form, netting four goals and creating another, so Albion will need to show some resilience. The masterplan? Take what we can get from this, then dive into the transfer window quicker than a burglar on Boxing Day.