Why Derby County over Cardiff would be the ideal destination for Cameron Jerome
Norwich City forward Cameron Jerome is a target this January for both Cardiff City and Derby County of the Championship. Cardiff boss Neil Warnock is reportedly keen on taking the 31-year-old striker back to South Wales, though he looks like he’s having competition from Gary Rowett’s fellow promotion chasers Derby County.
With Danny Ward sidelined through injury, Warnock knows it’s important to strengthen his attacking options, with promotion a very real possibility and thinks Jerome is ideal. The striker spent two years with the Bluebirds from 2004 to 2006, netting 24 times in his 73 appearances for the club.
Derby County, for their part, are hitting top gear now and may yet be a good bet to pip Cardiff themselves to second place in this division, gaining automatic promotion in the process.
Despite their strong position in the table, the Rams are short of firepower according to Gary Rowett, at least where the No.9 position is concerned, with Chris Martin, Darren Bent and David Nugent all admirable players but all with their own shortcomings.
Jerome is proven in this division and is seen as potentially the last piece of the puzzle for Derby, a player who can finally get them over the line and into the Premier League. He’s been at Carrow Road since moving there from Stoke City in August of 2014, scoring 42 goals in all competitions after having started in 100 games for the Canaries, which is a thoroughly decent record.
Included in that total is the opening goal of the Championship play-off final of 2015 at Wembley when Jerome netted against Middlesbrough. Despite all of this success and regardless of his club being short of strikers themselves, he has been limited to only 11 starts this season and has scored just once.
Jerome’s last start was in Norwich’s 2-1 loss to Bolton on November 4th and so it seems likely that Norwich will be willing to cash in as and when a bid is received. The question is, where should he choose to go?
Well, a lot depends on whether or not he still has links to Cardiff as a town and whether he sees any of them as positive. If that’s the case, it could be a comfortable transfer for him but these things rarely work out that well.
It’s not all about what is happening right now, but what will happen. With that in mind, the smart play may be to think Derby have a better chance of finishing in the top two over 46 games than Cardiff. So purely for football reasons, it may be the Rams who are the most attractive proposition.