After Derby County flew back from Tenerife on Saturday, Frank Lampard told RamsTV that he has been impressed with his players’ attitude and commitment over the course of the training camp.


The Rams spent six days out in the Canary Islands, during which a number of intense double-sessions were undertaken as the Rams build up their fitness levels ahead of the 2018/19 campaign.

Reviewing the week, Lampard, the Derby manager, says great strides have been made by the group.

“It’s gone very well,” the 40-year-old said about the training camp.

“The conditions for us have been great and the pitches are really conducive for training. We have been working hard.

“The lads have worked incredibly hard and I have been very impressed by their attitude. I expected that from meeting them all last week at home.

“Great strides have been made and it was a really good week for us.

“We want to train how we want to play and you can only transfer that on to the pitch by working hard at a certain level, at a certain intensity and a certain speed.

“It’s still pre-season and we are still building towards things, but we are getting better and stronger. We want to set that tone straight away and the lads have reacted really well to that.

“We will probably crank it up a notch or two by the time the season starts, but I can’t complain with how they are responding at all.”


One word in particular that Lampard continuously came back to within this interview was intensity.

Naturally, at this stage of pre-season, a lot of running drills are being completed, but the Rams’ manager revealed that it is being done in a manner that drills in his ‘basic principles’ which will be key over the course of the campaign.

Lampard also revealed that more work on the tactics side of his game will be brought into play ahead of the first pre-season fixture against Notts County this Saturday (14th July).

“We have been trying to get across the basic principles and the idea in terms of tactics,” he added. “Right now, though, it is more about individual fitness and collective fitness as a group.

“We do a lot of that with the ball, so there are always messages about how we want to play. We have a build-up now too.

“The games start next week so we will probably start working more tactically when we get back. This week was about intensity and that’s a word that I keep coming back to.

“That’s the basics of football. If we are prepared to work as hard and be fitter and stronger than the other teams then that’s a great start for us. That has to be our base.

“It’s a long week here and we have worked hard. When the lads come down to the training pitch we really want to see them at it for an hour and a half every single time and we have had that.

“Everyone has a different body language, but what you want to see is what is inside them and, again, that’s what I have been getting.”