Derby County Assistant Head Coach Richie Barker is hoping the team can continue the fine run of form when they make the short trip to Burton Albion on Saturday in Sky Bet League One (2pm kick-off).
The Rams go into the game unbeaten in ten matches in all competitions and Barker is keen to build on recent results by turning some of their recent draws into wins.
Barker sat down with RamsTV ahead of the short trip to the Pirelli Stadium to talk the positive run, getting key players back from injury and preview Saturday's contest against the Brewers.
On Paul Warne being nominated for Manager of the Month…
It’s the bigger recognition of the work from the team. An unbeaten November - obviously we’d have liked a few more points but in just his second full month in charge it’s pretty good. Hopefully there will be a few more to come.
He’s well aware that if we end up losing next week it means nothing and if we aren’t successful come the end of the season then any awards are just another thing to clutter up his house.
On the unbeaten run…
We’ve changed or at least wanted to change the mindset of the players. We wanted to become harder to beat and harder to score against.
We’ve wanted to be more organised, have a determination between the group of the recognition of how hard it is to not get beat.
There’s a lot that goes into it but a big part of that is harping on every day in training about becoming harder to beat. We set the lads a challenge a few weeks ago and talked about that to be successful you have to go on runs that go into double figures of not getting beat. Within that run there will be some draws and some wins but if you can go on a couple of those runs then somewhere along the line you won’t be too far away.
On turning draws into wins…
I think if you draw a lot then you’re not far away from being a bad side or not far away from being a good side - and I think we’re not far off being a really good side.
There are certain things that we still need to tweak daily in training with individuals, with units and then with them as a group as well.
On getting players back from injury…
It’s not wrong of me to say that for a while, the team picked itself. We didn’t have as many options as we would have liked and ended up picking formations more to get players on the pitch as opposed to the shape and formation and what we needed to do to win each match.
Competition for places is obviously very important and there wasn’t enough of that. I think you could pretty much look back at the last five years and there isn’t a game we won’t have not used a substitute as a staff and there won’t be many games where we haven’t used the maximum number that were allowed.
We’ve looked behind us at times and without being disrespectful to young lads, it simply wasn’t fair to put them on in this environment.
Like-for-like changes are important for us and we’ve not been able to do that so maybe this may now be the little change we needed to turn draws into wins.
On Burton Albion…
It’s as local as it gets for us in this division and two very different football clubs that have gone in different directions. I’m old enough to remember Burton Albion as a non-league club so I have huge admiration for how they’ve gone through the pyramid - they did it the correct way.
It will be a really difficult fixture. As a group of staff we’ve not been very successful there in the last few years and I know the football club haven’t either. It’s not something we will be taking lightly and we also know when you go into a local derby, form goes out of the window.
