By RYAN TOLMICH
After just one full season with the club, Zak Whitbread is set to depart Derby County.
Derby County announced Tuesday that the club has not renewed the contact of the 31-year-old American defender. Whitbread made 11 appearances for the Rams this past season. Prior to signing with the club in June 2014, Whitbread spent three months with Derby County while on loan from Leicester City.
Derby lost just once in Whitbread’s 15 total appearances as a member of the club.
In what has become a recurring theme, Whitbread’s time with Derby County was riddled with injuries. The American defender missed 39 games over his season and a half with the club while hampered with calf and hamstring injuries.
Whitbread’s release by Derby will send the defender on the hunt for his sixth professional club. Prior to his time with Derby, Whitbread has spent time with Liverpool, Milwall, Norwich City and Leicester.
—
What do you expect from Whitbread going forward? What would be a logical next step for the defender?
Share your thoughts below.
He has something like 15-20 appearances in the EPL and no US caps. That’s got to be a record.
Zak Whitbread and Oguchi Onyewu come back to MLS. We have expansion teams struggling and other teams in need of defenders……..
“Back” to MLS?
You will see s lot of muscle, tendon and ligament injuries to some players past the age of 30, although it seems Whitbred ‘s whole career was plagued with injuries. Diet changes and warm climates have been known to reduce these type of injuries, maybe a transfer to a warm climate team in the MLS is in order, although I’m sure the Galaxy, or another team do not want to shell out another 50K to some other MLS team whose sole purpose of putting them on their discovery list, is to make a quick 50K. and have no intention of signing him.
Good Luck to him,
I actually read that MLS was scrambling to change the discovery process, because of this pending catastrophic situation with Zak!
I hope they can get it changed in time!