Derby County were knocked out of the Papa Johns Trophy following a 3-1 defeat to Manchester City Under-21s at Pride Park Stadium on Tuesday evening.
A hat-trick from City's Carlos Borges ensured the Rams played no further part in this year's competition, despite David McGoldrick's first-half equaliser, but Head Coach Paul Warne was able to find positives to focus on.
Speaking to RamsTV after the game, he spoke of his disappointment to lose the contest but wasn't allowing anyone to get too disheartened about the result.
On the result…
Disappointing first and foremost is my reaction. We set up to try and win. I was a bit disappointed with the first-half; we went the same system as we always play but it was causing problems down the left side as they set up with a 5-2-3.
We had to change it and put Kwaku Oduroh back one so the first-half I wasn’t best pleased with. I thought we got close to them but didn’t get close and tackle. It wasn’t enough of a physical game for me.
I thought we were a lot better in the second-half. We were more aggressive and created enough chances to win the game. We got done by the quickest man in the world; nobody is going to catch him unfortunately in a race.
On the bigger picture…
We’re playing again on Friday at Ipswich and with games coming up all the time, it gives people opportunities and gives us opportunities as staff to see them as we haven’t seen all the players play.
We didn’t get any injuries. Knighty is a bit sore, but that's it. My intention was to play Knighty, Sibs and Birdy for 30 minutes each to share the load as I didn’t want to carry any fatigue into the Ipswich match and the same applies with the strikers. From that respect, it was good.
On scoring from a set-piece…
It wasn’t a classic set-piece. We also had another chance with Eiran Cashin again. He’s getting more and more aggressive from set-pieces and we’ve got to get goals out of him this season.
Dobs had a good chance. I thought he was going to go down for a penalty truth be told but he stayed on his feet and probably didn’t settle himself as quick as he could have done. The move at the end, the diving header – that would have been good.
It’s disappointing to lose but if you’d have offered me the chance to come through injury free and take the group into Friday night, I might have taken it. The fact Korey Smith played and Didzy got some minutes, I take that as a real positive.
