Former Blues manager Gary Rowett has today been tipped to takeover as Derby County manager.

Rowett, who lives in the Derbyshire area, has been linked with the Derby post previously after the club sacked manager Paul Clement last campaign. Derby have approached the former Blues manager and numerous betting companies have suspended betting on him becoming their new manager.

Gary Rowett was never really able to spend money as freely as he wanted to during his time at Blues, but with Derby’s spending power competing with the very best in the division, Rowett will be able to make additions without breaking the bank.

Blues, in the main,  were defensively sound under his management but often tame when it came to going forward and really breaking teams down. This may have been due to the players that he had at his disposal, or genuinely due to his style of management which was often counter-attacking,and this occasionally got sussed out by a number of lower-placed teams.

The expectations are different at Derby, they’ve came close to promotion, losing out to QPR in the playoff final in 2014. The owners of the club are expecting promotion in the not too distant future, and Rowett may well be the man they expect to deliver it.

With Rowett seemingly on the verge of having his first job back in management since being sacked by Blues in December, a former manager of Derby this term, Nigel Pearson, has been linked to take over from Gianfranco Zola.

It has been reported that the former Derby and Leicester manager has his admirers at St.Andrews. Despite him being previously linked with a return back to Leicester in the offing, Pearson is available.

If the club were to give Zola the boot, would Pearson be the right fit for Blues? He has won promotion with Leicester and against all odds, kept the Foxes in the Premier League despite them being bottom at Christmas. He clearly has the potential to do good things. His sacking at Derby was a strange one, he wasn’t able to gather any real form during his time there and something clearly didn’t work for him . He’s a strong-minded man and is a different person to Gianfranco Zola that’s for sure, if he could galvanise and recreate that spirit he had at Leicester City, he’d be a great appointment.