Widell Zetterstrom Injury Deepens Derby Rams Crisis

Derby County’s season has taken another heavy blow, and this one could linger.

Jacob Widell Zetterstrom, the goalkeeper they fought hard to keep in the summer, faces up to two months out with a knee injury picked up in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat at Birmingham City.

He went down in the second half, grimacing, looking for a moment as if his afternoon was over. Instead, he played on. He finished the game, stayed in goal, and tried to drag a struggling Derby side through another difficult Championship outing.

The damage, though, was done.

Scans have now ruled him out of Sweden’s upcoming Nations League campaign, where he had been named in the squad for four group games against Romania, Poland and Bosnia-Herzegovina in late September and early October. For a keeper who enhanced his reputation on the World Cup stage, it is a brutal interruption.

For Derby, the timing is worse.

Widell Zetterstrom is not expected back until around mid-November. That lay-off could see him miss as many as eight league fixtures at a time when the Rams, already toiling near the wrong end of the table, can least afford another absentee.

And he is far from alone.

Before the Swede’s injury at St Andrew’s, Henrik Meister had already departed on a stretcher after a head knock, another worrying sight on an increasingly bleak afternoon. Both now join a treatment room that is starting to look more like a roll call.

• Matt Clarke
• Derry Murkin
• Filip Bilbija
• Rhian Brewster
• Craig Forsyth
• Lewis Travis

– all sidelined. All unavailable as Derby try to piece together some momentum from a patched-up squad.

It leaves Josh Vickers stepping out of the shadows. The 28-year-old has been named on the bench in every game so far this season, waiting, watching, knowing chances for goalkeepers rarely come without a cost to someone else.

Now the gloves are his.

Derby did well to resist the interest Widell Zetterstrom attracted after his World Cup performances, betting that his presence would underpin a push away from trouble. Instead, as autumn closes in, they face a critical stretch without him, leaning on a backup keeper and a squad already stretched to its limits.

For a club trying to climb, the next eight games will reveal whether this is just an early-season storm – or the start of something far more uncomfortable.