Gary Rowett has indicated that Saturday’s starting line-up at Kaiserslautern will start to resemble the direction he wants to take ahead of the opening game of the 2017/18 season.
Derby County’s curtain raiser will see them travel to the Stadium of Light to face recently relegated Sunderland in two weeks’ time on 4th August.
Before that, however, the Rams have a further three pre-season fixtures – starting this weekend in Kaiserslautern – and after spreading the minutes across his squad, Rowett is now starting to focus one eye on a potential starting line-up.
The majority of the 43-year-old’s players got 90 minutes under their belts over the course of the Tuesday night double-header at Port Vale and Doncaster Rovers – which Derby won 1-0 and drew 1-1 respectively.
Now, Rowett, his coaching staff, and a squad of 21 will fly out to Germany today ahead of Saturday’s clash with 2. Bundesliga outfit Kaiserslautern (kick-off: 3pm BST).
With the club’s pre-season preparations cranking up a further notch, the Derby boss has warned his players now is the time to stake a claim for a starting spot for the tasty opening day match up with Simon Grayson’s Sunderland.
He told RamsTV: “It will be a different type of game, a step up, and a match where we will have to work very hard out of possession, but I am sure it will feel like a proper match again.
“We want to ramp the challenge up bit by bit and get minutes in the legs bit by bit as well.
“You want to give everyone that opportunity so that in that first game (at Sunderland) if someone has to come off everyone else is ready and that’s the whole point.
“We have, though, got to have an idea about our starting XI, but ultimately we want everyone challenging for that spot and being ready to step in because you don’t know what is going to happen.
“It will be a good game over in Germany, it will be different having to travel over the day before.
“Again, it will be just a different type of preparation and hopefully we will get what we need to out of it.
“As I have said before, the results are not really the most important thing. Some of the elements we are working on are.”
