Why I think the east Midlands can pull off a play-offs hat-trick, and my Tweets of the week with Rio and Roo

By Robbie Savage

Published 23:01 20/01/11

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Welcome to a new ­section of the column: the best tweet I’ve sent in the past week, and the best one I’ve received in return.

My old chum Rio Ferdinand, with whom I once shared a frank exchange of views in the tunnel at Old Trafford, is now exchanging tweet correspondence with yours truly.

Hopefully he saw the funny side of the one on the right above. I called it 'Rooney gives Rio a lift to work!'

And in return, with a little help from the airbrush at Rio’s local Photoshop, I got sent the one on the left back...

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It's a sobering thought, but Derby’s rematch with local rivals Nottingham Forest tomorrow could be the last ‘big’ match of my career.

If I don’t play for Wales again - and I’m taking nothing for granted there - it could be my farewell appearance in a spicy derby fixture.

Down the years, I’ve been lucky enough to play in some fantastic fixtures when local pride has been on the line - Villa v Birmingham and Blackburn v Burnley spring to mind - and the Derby-Forest rivalry is up there with the best of them.

We have an extra incentive to do well tomorrow lunchtime after Forest humbled us 5-2 at the City Ground last month, but I’m not going to write Billy Davies’ team talk for him by bragging that we’re going to do this or we’re going to do that.

What I will say is that Forest are a good, powerful team who I expect to be involved in the promotion shake-up at the end of the season.

Although our last two performances, at Crawley and Watford, have not been good enough, I would love to think Derby might be there or thereabouts as well.

The Championship is a crazy division where a team can win seven out of nine and then lose eight of the next 10, which is exactly what we’ve done.

But based on what I’ve seen this season, I would expect the automatic promotion places to be filled by two from QPR, Cardiff and Swansea.

After that, Forest and my old club Leicester, who have been quietly filtering up the table since Sven Goran Eriksson took over, might be the next best bets.

And of course, it would be brilliant if we could nick the last play-off spot to make it an east Midlands hat-trick.

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