Anya: ‘We Knew We Had To Put Things Right’

Ikechi Anya felt Derby County’s fight back to earn a point against high-flying Huddersfield Town on Easter Monday went some way to putting the defeat at Brentford right.

In front of a 29,000-strong audience, Jacob Butterfield’s late deflected strike from the etch of the area, against his former club, cancelled out Collin Quaner’s early opener as the Rams earned a share of the spoils at Pride Park Stadium.
With momentum on their side, Anya believes that Derby would have gone on to claim all three points – had time been on their side. Speaking to RamsTV to review the game, the 29-year-old Scottish international said: “I felt that we deserved the goal, and even deserved to win the game. 
“They managed to get in front through one lapse in concentration at the beginning. That was disappointing and we need to do better with that.
“Huddersfield made a few changes to their line-up and they let us have the ball and were very hard to break down at the back.
“Luckily, though, Butts (Jacob Butterfield) came on and we managed to get a little bit of luck with the goal.
“We really do feel as though if the game had lasted another 10 minutes, we could have made it 2-1.”
In terms of the what draw against Huddersfield meant, Anya felt, that to some extent, the performance and result went along way to making up for the disappointment of their 4-0 defeat to Brentford on Good Friday.
The loss against the Bees was the first Gary Rowett’s has tasted since taking charge last month and the 43-year-old had demanded an immediate reaction from his players.
On the back of such a difficult result, Anya was grateful that there was a chance to put things right so quickly and believes that the performance against the Yorkshire high-flyers was a demonstration of the squad’s bounce-back ability.


He added: “After Brentford, the gaffer spoke to us and made it clear that he wasn’t happy with the performance we put in there, and rightly so. 
“We let ourselves down, we let the fans down and we knew we had to put things right. Luckily we had the chance to do that pretty much straight away and I felt we did against Huddersfield to an extent.”
Going into the bank-holiday fixture against the Yorkshire high-flyers, Manager Gary Rowett made a total of five changes to his starting XI.
Anya, who claimed the Man-of-the-Match award, was just one of the changes and he spoke of the importance of different players being given an opportunity to showcase what they can do.
“I think all the guys who were given a chance did well,” he explained. 
“Now it is up to the gaffer about whether or not he’s going to keep them in the team.
“Places are up for grabs, everyone wants to impress and with the last three games, everyone is looking forward to next season now.
“If you want to be part of his plans, you’ve got to put in performances when he calls upon you and we’ve got everyone battling but it’s healthy competition.”


Tweets by @ dcfcofficial