Derby County 0 Sunderland 0IF ALL good things must come to an end, then what about bad things? The jury were still out on that one on Saturday when Mike Riley finally put a seemingly interminable goalless bore of a game out of its misery.

The significance of the result was as minimal as the entertainment. Derby, relegated in spirit if not in fact, took their points total into double figures but also extended their run of league matches without a win to 22. Sunderland broke a sequence of 10 successive away defeats but wins for Birmingham and Reading still dragged them towards the bottom three.

Roy Keane's side would surely have achieved their first away win of the season but for the piece of flagging folly which ruled out a perfectly legitimate goal 10 minutes before half-time. Michael Chopra was in line with the last defender when Andy Reid's cleverly angled pass gave him the chance to slip the ball past Roy Carroll, but the linesman did not see it that way.

"We should have won," Keane declared. "It was not a classic but in terms of chances we had the best of those. Obviously we did score but that was taken out of our hands by the officials. When officials make decisions it's not about luck, it's about getting these calls right. But we're not here to blame officials for our away form. We had other chances and, if you don't take those, you've no one to blame but yourself.

"The official made a wrong call, but then we've had a few of those this season, such as at home to Villa and Reading away - massive decisions that have gone against us," said Keane.

"I don't remember too many that have gone for us, but hopefully that will change between now and the end of the season.

"More likely we have to hope the Man Upstairs will give us the biggest help with one or two decisions, because the officials certainly aren't helping."

Had Daryl Murphy's shot not hit a post in the third minute after he had deftly controlled a long ball from Nyron Nosworthy and spun away from a defender, Sunderland might have won comfortably, for their opponents had little to offer.

But as Keane admitted, "We ended up huffing and puffing with Derby", and the nearest Sunderland came to snatching a late winner was when Danny Higginbotham's shot was blocked by Hossam Ghaly.

Nobody pretended the match had been anything more than a rag-bag of fitful passing and half-formed ideas. "It was like watching paint dry," said Derby's Paul Jewell, yet even drying paint can hold the attention if the brushwork has been applied by a true artist. Saturday's game, however, was more DIY than Delacroix.

Derby have 10 fixtures remaining in which to avoid if not relegation, then at least the ignominy of going down with fewer points than the record low of 15 which distinguished, in a manner of speaking, Sunderland's descent two seasons ago.

Jewell said he was less concerned with getting the necessary points than with getting more than the other 23 teams in next season's Championship, but Derby did not do that when they came up and on their present showing even another play-off place might be beyond them.

A losing habit is hard to shake off, and after Sunderland were relegated in 2006 they lost their first four fixtures the following season before the newly-arrived Keane began to turn things around.

Derby could be in for a similarly long haul. On Saturday they looked like a side that had forgotten the basics of how to win.