Robbie Savage back in shop window as Nigel Clough picks him to face Manchester United

Less than three months ago, Robbie Savage was spending time during his loan period at League One side Brighton and Hove Albion mulling over the possibility of a move to Lebanese club Al-Ansar in an attempt to prolong his career.

Fast forward to the present, and the midfielder is back at Derby County, with the opportunity of assisting the club to the Carling Cup final at Old Trafford on Tuesday night, after their astonishing 1-0 win at Pride Park nearly a fortnight ago.

But for the arrival of Nigel Clough as new manager of Derby County two weeks ago, Savage would probably have been shopping for a new pair of UGG boots in Manchester rather than making it into the stadium. As it is, Clough’s arrival has brought Savage back in from the cold, an experience he has likened to being pardoned from enforced exile in Siberia. It has saved him some money in the process, he jokes.

“The gaffer has saved me a lot of dough because I am usually in Manchester shopping, spending my money,” Savage said on Monday. “Under the previous manager I knew no matter how hard I trained I wasn’t going to play.

“I thought I would never play for Derby again and I wouldn’t have if [Paul] Jewell was still the manager – no matter how well I trained.

“I would be going out in the street and people were saying, ‘Who are you playing for now?’ I was made to feel that low on confidence and that bad a player that I was looking an any option possible. I went from Siberia to Beirut.”

What better opportunity for Savage to prove his worth this evening than against the club where he was a trainee, and against former team-mates Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes, who he describes as the “best two Premier League players ever”.

However, while the 34-year-old is restoring his own confidence under Clough, the rest of his team-mates seem to have stalled in their attempts to rebuild their own self-belief.

Their 2-0 defeat at home to Queens Park Rangers on Saturday was their third in a row in the league, and revealed “the deep-rooted” structural flaws that have caused the side to fall to fifth from bottom in the table, leaving their manager to accept his former side would have performed the basics better.

“The lads at Burton were better at doing certain things,” Clough confessed. “No player in the lower leagues would have made those basic mistakes on Saturday. I have been in a state of shock for the last 48 hours.”

Yet while he accepts that his side’s confidence is low, he does believe the fact that they have little pressure or expectations on them to win tonight will only help them.

“We were expected to beat QPR at home, and in the home match here [against United] we weren’t expected to get anything,” he said. “With the way the players are at the moment, that almost suits them. I think they would rather be going to Old Trafford than Blackpool or Barnsley.” Buy cheap ugg boots .