Rowett Thrilled With Finishing And Work Rate

Gary Rowett felt that Derby County’s flurry of goals in the first half against Millwall epitomised the recent form of his side as they head into Christmas having won each of their last four games.

The Rams scored three times in six minutes in the first half, with David Nugent netting either side of Matej Vydra’s 14th goal of the season.

Rowett was thrilled with the quality of the three goals, as well as the work that went into creating the openings.

He told RamsTV: “The goals were excellent. Nuge’s first is an opportunistic run across the near post and a fantastic finish.

“We’ve said it so often, but the second came from superb link-up play between Nugent and Vydra, he’s so clinical from anywhere within 30 yards at the moment.

“The third goal really epitomised today’s game, the lads never stopped chasing anything, they worked very hard against an energetic young side.

“Bradley Johnson chased the ball down, it looked like it was going to go out but he kept it in and Nuge reacted brilliantly to put the ball in the only place that he really could.”

Since the defeat against Ipswich Town, Derby have won four in a row without conceding a goal, but Rowett doesn’t want to get carried away with the statistics as he gets his side ready to face Hull City on Boxing Day.

He said: “We’ve got some good stats that make for good reading, but we won’t keep too many more clean sheets if we defend like we did today at times.

“I just focus on we’re going to do now for Hull, what changes we’re going to have to make, if any, and that approach keeps the players grounded.”

The boss sees that his side are in a good place at the moment, but he expressed the belief that the real challenge will be to keep up this current run of form.

He added: “At the moment we’ve got a real strength and backbone to the side, when we need to we can dig in and do that side of the game.

“We’re getting better and better in terms of the attacking moves that we’re creating and we’re scoring goals.

“Lots of things are good but we’ve got to maintain that, that’s the beauty of football.”