From the outside looking in, Billy Davies departure from Derby today seems a typically harsh, knee jerk sacking, typical of the short term nature of modern football.

How can a club sack a manager after only 12 games, who took them from  staring into the abyss of division 1 to the Premiership in his first season? It's definitely a big call by new Rams supremo Adam Pearson so lets look at a few facts.

Firstly whilst most Rams fans have always loved Billy as a manager, not many would say they ever enjoyed him as a person. He's a very ambitious and unapologetic "career" manager and even if we'd been flying this year, most people would expect him to move on when the right job came up.

Secondly he is supremely self confident (arrogant?) and doesn't care what anyone thinks of him. This has never been an attractive trait and there were many Rams fans who seemed to be waiting for an excuse to turn on him when the goodwill ran out. A prime example being his post play off final interviews where instead of revelling in his finest hour, he chose to rant about his contract and his lack of backroom staff.

When you've performed a minor miracle, all of the above is excusable. Which brings me onto this season.

Our spectacular misjudgement of the transfer market and general failure to close deals was not Billy's fault. However he has signed 7 or 8 players and employed a ludicrously large backroom staff of cronies. More importantly he has been responsible for picking and setting the team up. If we are looking at purely results, any Rams season ticket holder could prepare and pick the team for the next 12 games and couldn't feasibly do any worse.

As the results got worse, or more accurately didn't get any better, Billy's post match rants about lack of investment and the January window got more desperate, culminating in his major attack on Adam Pearson post Chelsea.

Maybe Billy was just too abrasive and his back me or sack me argument didn't wash? Maybe he's given up and he didn't want a relegation on his CV (stand up in your office tomorrow, slate your boss to everyone and see what happens)? All Rams fans will remember Wembley forever and Billy will always get a good reception, but how many are truly sorry to see him go I'm not sure.

Now the focus switches to Adam Pearson and his shortlist of 3 (Ince, Jewell and Mclaren allegedly). He says we haven't given up and he's sick of hearing that we can't compete in the Premier league. Now we're getting a new manager, we'll soon find out.

Finally, how gutted must Leicester be? They've messed around with managers all season and finally appoint 27th choice Ian Holloway. Two days later you get the best championship manager in the country available and he's already living in the area.  Shame.