"COME back and ask me that in January," Jim Smith suggested when, with the season only lukewarm, he was asked whether his Derby County team could maintain their good early form and avoid that familiar predicament of recently promoted clubs to the Premiership; a long struggle against relegation.

So here we are in January. Derby have kept up the good work, at least at home, and, approaching today's game against Blackburn, stand seventh... almost in sight of a place in Europe. But Smith has imposed a press blackout, probably as a result of forgetting just how many media people he told to come back in January, but officially because he wants the players to concentrate fully on "the job in hand".

Why worry about repeating the question? The answer is obvious. Of course Derby are not only good enough to stay up but to prosper. Most opposing managers this season agree with that. Smith's daring side share with Manchester United the only unbeaten home records in the Premiership, although away performances have been conspicuously less reassuring and include the embarrassment of surrendering a three-goal lead at Leeds in November.

At home everything is different. Pride Park, their impressive new stadium, is aptly named. It houses a thoroughly cosmopolitan team presided over by a manager who is not an obvious lover of things foreign but, through force of circumstance, has brought about a blend of several sensibly priced imported players and a few experienced home-produced ones. The policy may point the way for other clubs. Not that it seemed that way when, last month, Gianfranco Zola dismantled Derby at Stamford Bridge. Smith admitted that was a lesson well-taught. Zola, he said, is special. His own Italians are good but not that special.

In Francesco Baiano (pounds 1.3m from Fiorentina) they have a playmaker whose skill in drawing opponents to him before making a clever pass can turn a difficult game into victory, and he links well with Dean Sturridge. Don Howe recommended him to Smith on the basis of being "good enough to look after himself in the Premier League and sharp enough to score a lot of goals". So far the tally is 12 and certainly he looks after himself to the point of unpopularity with opponents, especially Southampton's Carlton Palmer who last week was not the first to accuse him of diving to get a penalty.

Derby have had their difficult patches when goals have been hard to get, and defensively they have looked frail, particularly earlier in the season when for two months they were without their captain, the Croatian Igor Stimac, who immodestly but rightly had told Smith he was what the club needed and has continued to tell him so ever since he signed. "They need someone to scream at them; somebody strong like me; somebody to tell them what to do," Stimac said. But while he has improved their security, it is their entertainment value that has made them worth the ticket money. Occasionally, though, Smith has been forced to stamp on prima donna behaviour, notably from the Costa Rican Paulo Wanchope who treats being substituted as an insult tantamount to questioning his parenthood. Sometimes the 21-year-old badly under-achieves, but more than anyone he is the team's top entertainer who scored his first goal for Derby at, of all places, Old Trafford where his team's 2-2 draw proved that they had to be taken seriously. Indeed, Alex Ferguson was passing their dressing-room door afterwards and was amused to overhear Smith giving his team a "real roasting" for "failing" to win.

Wanchope has a detached, laid-back attitude which was lazily cultivated on the beaches of California where he lived for a time: "If I don't even know the names of my opponents, why should I worry about them." Smith knows that Wanchope has ambitions to play in Spain so may not stay for long.

Even Kenny Dalglish, not one for heaping praise on his own players let alone those of the opposition, said Derby are "better placed than expected" and full of "quick players who make you worry about them when they get the ball". Colin Todd, the former Derby player now manager of Bolton, has divided loyalty. "Eranio and Baiano gave our defence a lot of trouble when we played them last month. It's a good Derby side now but when we got back at them their defence wasn't so effective." No doubt they will continue to suffer the cost of their adventure. Roy Evans could hardly believe that they played an open 3-4-3 formation at Anfield, where they lost 4-0, but he admires them all the more for that. "We badly needed a win when they came to us, but when you looked at the game overall, they gave us no end of problems and really didn't deserve to go down by that much." You could say Derby are popular but not quite fulfilled... much the same as Smith himself.