The Rams became the fourth side this season to score three goals in the space of 20 minutes against the Teessiders, who have now slipped into the bottom six places in the Championship.
Steve Gibson sacked Gareth Southgate last October with Boro one point off the automatic promotion positions at the top of the table, and last night's reverse is bound to have made the chairman consider Strachan's position at the Riverside.
Fans' favourite Tony Mowbray is available following his dismissal from Celtic in March, while Billy Davies has also been mentioned as a possible successor despite his current position in charge of Nottingham Forest.
Gibson, who is expected to attend Saturday's home game with Portsmouth, has previously shown considerable faith in his managers, and the Boro chief will be reluctant to dismiss Strachan at such a pivotal stage of a crucial campaign.
However, Strachan's admission that there are fundamental flaws in his team is unlikely to have eased Gibson's concerns given the financial implications of missing out on promotion this season.
It's very, very strange at the moment, said the Boro boss, after goals from Shaun Barker and Kris Commons (2) cancelled out Kris Boyd's early header. There's something fundamentally wrong and we will have to put our fingers on it.
I have never come across it before. I have been at other clubs as a player and manager where teams have shots and incidents in your area, and narrow misses. Everything that goes near our goal at the moment seems to go in.
Perhaps it's punishment for something else I've done in my life criticising referees or something like that. Maybe it's karma.
Whatever it is, it is making a mockery of Boro's pre-season status as favourites for the Championship title. Last night's defeat was their fifth of the season, and extended a winless away run that now stretches to seven league matches.
The performance was a slight improvement on Saturday's capitulation at Watford, and Boyd could have ended with a hat-trick had he converted two decent second-half chances to go with his header.
As it was, though, Derby's blitz at the end of the first half and start of the second proved decisive, with Strachan admitting his players are struggling to cope with adversity at the moment.
It's hugely disappointing, he said. The first half was a big performance from us. But then we started giving the ball away when we had possession.
We had good possession, then we ended up conceding a corner, and they scored.
When people score against us at the moment, they seem to score a second right away.
It happened again.
I look at the players and I ask myself, Can they try harder' Sometimes, they try too hard.
It's frustrating at the moment, but sometimes you have to be able to keep hold of your frustrations because you lose your shape and can be picked off. They need to look at that.
Source: Northern Echo
Source: Northern Echo