Derby County's Interim Manager Liam Rosenior is looking forward to seeing a response from his side when they return to Pride Park Stadium to take on Wycombe Wanderers on Saturday (3pm kick-off).
The Rams go into the game off the back of two defeats in League One, but Rosenior is confident that he has seen enough from his team in recent weeks to know that they have what it takes to put it right.
Rosenior spoke to RamsTV ahead of the meeting with the Chairboys to discuss the reaction to Lincoln defeat and staying positive ahead of an important fixture on Saturday.
His Lincoln assessment…
When you’re emotional and I care and I know the players care and the fans care - it’s difficult to analyse. I actually analysed the game last night [Wednesday].
What I saw was a team that dominated for 12 minutes, a team that looked in total control of the game and had a really good chance - and then we gave away a cheap penalty and that gave them energy and gave them oxygen to go and hold on to something and that’s what they did.
When I watched the game back, all credit to Lincoln, they set up defensively, kicked us back the ball and waited for us to make a mistake. What we didn’t do was take risks enough in possession. We’ve addressed it in a team meeting and we’ll address it on Friday when we walk through how we go about facing Wycombe.
I’ve looked at the statistics, I’ve looked at the times we’ve entered in the oppositions' final third, I’ve looked at crosses and I’ve looked at expected goals. In terms of our overall sample of play, we are doing OK and I’m staying calm. I’ve got a lot of confidence in this group that things will come together and we’ll be exactly where we want to be.
On the team's learning curve…
I think for our younger players and even our senior players – there’s a lot of senior players that I’ve brought to the club that have played in League One before - Tuesday was a learning curive. We have to understand as a football club, myself as manager and the players, that teams are doing so much homeworkm and so much work on us. We are a huge scalp for every single team in this division. Lincoln, all credit to them. Plymouth all credit to them. We can see what it meant to them – we have to match that intensity.
I saw Mark Kennedy’s interview after the game, his players broke records in terms of distance covered - the highest they’ve run - but teams know they have to do that to stop us playing and what we have to do is adapt our game. The bare minimum, regardless of tactics, is that I don’t want to be outrun again. We need to make sure we’re first to second balls, we need to make sure we win headers and make tackles and fight because that’s what teams are doing against us. If we do that side of the game well, our footballing ability and our quality will shine through but that needs to be the fundamental of our game right now.
On what it means for teams to beat Derby…
I’m not saying it doesn’t mean a lot to us, because it certainly does. The fact we’ve lost three games out of eleven, it’s not bad and we’ve got to remember that.
It’s easy when you go on a difficult run, and you lose two games in a league when you’re expected to win every week, to lose focus on what’s important. What’s important is we’re building, we’re working, we’re getting better and in terms of our understanding of what we want to do we need to translate that into results and we need energy on the pitch and we need people that want to fight and run for each other and tackle for each other.
I’m not saying we haven’t had that but teams are basing winning games against us on that. I speak to opposition managers and every one we have played against this season has adjusted their shape for us.
They play the same way week in and week out and they come up against us, because we play in a different way, and they focus tactically and change the way they play which is a huge compliment for us - but what we have to do is forget the compliment and we still have to win the game. That’s the next step for us and one I’m certainly sure we’ll do in the future.
My job is, if we win, I speak about performance levels and if we lose I speak about performance levels. As happy as you are and trust me I was low in terms of losing that game but I’ve got to stay here inbetween because I know if I’m not logical in my thinking or rational in my thoughts that’s when there’s a problem. I want fans to care and be passionate, I want players to care and be passionate but my job is to try and stay in that inbetween position and make sure I’m analysing the game in the right way and seeing the things I need to see.
If I take the sample size of matches, I’m really delighted with how far we’ve come and it gives me a lot of confidence in the future that we are going to be successful.
On keeping the togetherness…
I’ve got no doubt that the togetherness is going to be there. Togetherness is a true strength of your character and we saw that last year in adversity. I knew this little period in the season would come at some point, every team in this league and every team in every league is going to go through a period where they don’t get the results or performances they want. It’s a test for me, it’s a test for us and our togetherness but I know we’ll come through and I’m really excited to put that right on Saturday.
On being back to Pride Park…
I am pleased we’re at home again this weekend but it doesn’t really matter, I just want to see a response. It doesn’t matter if we’re home or away; I want us to play, I want us to be brave, I want us to fight and I want us to dominate and if we do those things we have a really good chance of winning the game.
On Wycombe Wanderers…
Gareth Ainsworth has done a fantastic job there. He’s built a real identity with the football club and the way they play but we have to stand up to that. We have to stand up to what they’ve done, they’ve had success.
They were really unfortunate in the Play-Off Final against Sunderland in May; it was a tough game for them that day..
They will be doing their homework on us and we’ve done our homework on them and I think we need to make sure we need to stand up to the physical threat they pose as well as not just kicking the ball back to them. We need to get the ball down and being brave enough to play our way and if we do that we have a really good chance of getting a positive result.
On the latest team news…
Everyone is looking good. James Chester trained really well again today. Jake Rooney is still out with a thigh problem, Korey Smith is out with his toe injury but they are not far away either.
The players are in good spirits, I’m delighted with their response and they’ve come in with a lot of energy in training but it doesn’t matter about today it matters about Saturday and they certainly know that.
