Rooney: “No Excuses - It Wasn’t Good Enough”

Wayne Rooney admitted Derby County’s performance simply was not good enough as they were beaten 4-0 by Blackburn Rovers in the Sky Bet Championship on Saturday afternoon.

A difficult afternoon for the Rams saw them fall 3-0 down inside the first 15 minutes at Pride Park Stadium.

Tyrhys Dolan scored after 10 minutes and former Derby midfielder added a quickfire brace soon afterwards.

Adam Armstrong netted a fourth for the visitors midway through the second half to condemn Phillip Cocu’s side to a third successive league defeat to start the campaign.

Derby’s captain says the side must learn from an afternoon which he admitted hurt everyone in the Rams’ camp.

Speaking to RamsTV, Rooney said: “I can’t make any excuses for today; it wasn’t good enough and all I can say is we will work hard to put it right.

“I am not going to stand here and say we will win the next three, four or five games, but we are working hard to get better.

“We will take the work we do this week into the Norwich game next Saturday and try to get a positive result. That is all I can say, I am not making any excuses for todayand it hurt all of us.

“Right now as we stand here, it isn’t a great feeling for any of us.”

He added: “We started the game well and could have gone 1-0 up but within a few minutes we were 3-0 down. At that point we were chasing the game.

“It is not nice when you lose and it is not nice to lose at home. We have to learn; it is a bad start to the three games and no wins.”

Rooney believes the Rams are being punished for ‘basic errors’ on the pitch and his comments echoed those that were made by Cocu in his post-match media commitments.

Ahead of next weekend’s trip to Norwich, which will be Derby’s last game before the October international break, the 34-year-old former England international says a response and immediate improvement is needed.

He said: “I think anyone who watched the game could see that we had a spell where it looked like there was a bit of confusion.

“We were all over the place and we conceded three goals. We managed to create a couple of chances after that, which was surprising because having a blow like that when you concede three goals that quick is tough to take.

“I can’t stand here and say ‘we did this’ and ‘we did that’. We lost 4-0 and it was not good enough. We all have to improve; we have to improve on a few things in terms of how we are during the game and I think a lot of basic errors are costing us that we need to cut out.”