Derby County goalkeeper Joe Wildsmith says the squad can take great confidence from the Carabao Cup Round Three clash at Liverpool -despite ultimately being knocked out of the competition.
The Rams held the Premier League side to a 0-0 draw in normal time before losing out 3-2 on penalties at Anfield against the cup holders.
Speaking to RamsTV after the shoot-out, Wildsmith - who made several fine saves - gave his thoughts on the match.
On the night…
It’s right up there as nights go. The occasion, the ground and the players on the pitch were all great but first and foremost the display the boys put on was amazing.
They really showed themselves in a good light tonight and they should all be proud of themselves. It’s no disgrace for us to go out to Liverpool at Anfield. We’ll take massive confidence from this into MK Dons on Saturday and will try and ride that confidence.
On his performance…
My job is to make saves, I’m the last line of defence and if I can do that then great but the boys in front of me made it a lot easier for me tonight. It’s easy to come here and lose 5-0 or 6-0. It had happened to Premier League teams so for us to go and get a 0-0 draw, the boys worked endlessly. I thought they were all excellent. You make saves as a goalkeeper and get spoken about, but I really want to mention the boys as they were excellent.
On making big saves at big times…
That was always going to happen, we shocked them a little bit in the first half with how resolute we were and then a few of the bigger hitters came on off the bench and it livened the crowd up a bit.
It was about game management after that and seeing it out to the end.
On being a ‘pantomime villain’ tonight…
You have to play up to it sometimes and kill the game, that’s part of football. If you get the result in the end then it’s no skin off my back.
On taking confidence onto MK Dons…
The boys are in good spirits, not down and not gutted. We’ve taken a lot of confidence from it, played well as a team and hopefully we can take that into league action now at MK Dons.
On the penalty shoot-out in front of the Derby fans…
It was a great experience. That will be exactly the same at MK Dons on Saturday with the amount of fans going down there. If we can make away grounds as loud as our home stadium then it can only benefit us.
