Rory Delap was encouraged by the character shown by his Under-18s side in their eventful 5-5 draw with Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Premier League-North.
The Rams fought back from deficits of 4-2 and 5-3 to take a point from the game, with Adam Davie’s strike seven minutes from time drawing them level.
The result sees the Under-18s occupying fourth place in the league with 16 points from their first nine games, and Delap was pleased with the way they battled until the end.
Speaking to dcfc.co.uk, he said: “You sometimes don’t see that in young teams.
“They can go under when they go two or three goals behind, but we know this group has got loads of character about them.
“They’ll pick each other out in a good way and demand more from each other. I think you saw that especially when going 4-2 and 5-3 down today.
“They were at each other in a positive way, and it got them going and got them back into the game.”
Derby had put themselves in a commanding position in the match, with goals from Jason Knight and Morgan Whittaker putting them 2-0 up after 15 minutes.
However, they allowed Wolves to take the lead by the half-time interval, and Delap says that it was a poor day defensively for his side.
He said: “It’s disappointing to concede any goals, so you want the players to be proud and really have that desire to keep a clean sheet.
“This season they’ve done that on the whole, and we’ve had one of the better defensive records in the league up until now.
“Like the set-piece for them to go 3-2 up; It was a great strike by the lad, but he had far too much time to hit it and should have been under pressure. There was a couple of other goals where our defensive positioning from a cross wasn’t good enough.
“We know we’ve got work to do defensively and it might be the kick up the backside that they need to avoid becoming complacent.”
Despite uncharacteristically conceding multiple goals, the Rams also produced some attacking play that caused Wolves problems of their own.
The home side’s tally of five goals was the most they’ve scored in a single match this season, and Delap was pleased with their attacking intent.
He said: “Going two-nil up and being pretty comfortable, I thought the energy we displayed in that first 15 minutes was really good and that’s what we’ve been after.
“But then we took the foot off the gas for whatever reason. We’ve just spoken to the lads now and no-one is too sure what happened, so that’s something that we need to recognise.
“We just said to them at half-time you’ve got to dig yourselves out of this one now, and we want to see character and no-one go under.
“Fair play to them; even though they went 4-2 down, they stuck at it, dug deep and managed to come away with a point at the end.”
The Under-18s next match will be on Saturday 25th November when they travel to face Newcastle United away from home.
Words by Marc Walker
