First Team Coach Matt Hamshaw says there were 'shoots of optimism' from Derby County's performance in the 1-0 pre-season victory over Chesterfield on Wednesday evening.
The Rams made it two wins from three pre-season outings with a single goal victory at the SMH Group Stadium against the National League side, thanks to James Collins' second half header, but Hamshaw believes the team can perform a lot better.
Speaking to RamsTV after the game, Hamshaw gave his verdict on the performance.
On the performance...
There's shoots of optimism there but like the gaffer has just said to the players in the dressing room, we didn't think those levels were good enough tonight.
You can make excuses about being leggy, we've still got extra work to do but there's some positives there and it's now our job to work with the players and make them realise that.
If we want to be where want to be this season, we need to be more clinical.
On the positives in the display...
I thought Birdy was good in the middle of the park. We're experimenting a little bit with Nat up top but I think he's probably more comfortable playing as a ten.
Wardy looks a threat going forward and he's created a couple of goals for us already in pre-season. We've got six players that haven't played tonight and had plenty of young lads come on at the end.
I don't want to come across too negative, we just feel like we need to be better.
On James Collins and Joe Ward's link-up...
Wardy has a great delivery hence why we signed him. He's positive and forward-thinking. Like I've said a few times, there's a lot of positives but there's areas we feel we need to crank up and be better come first game of the season.
On what the next couple of weeks look like ahead of the season opener...
We just need to knit everything together really. There's times when we could tidy up a bit better, times where we can make a threatening pass rather than playing safe. There's load of things we can work on and the lads know that. We weren't expecting to come here tonight and see football utopia, everything is just culminating slowly.
We've been in this situation before and we know come the first game, everybody will know their roles, everybody knows what's expected and it's us getting to know the lads and them getting to know us.
On the current injuries...
They are nothing serious, they are just little small niggles that you will always get in pre-season.
I think Chesterfield will have a really good season this season, they've got a great squad. We had six out and if we were bringing them six in tonight, our team in the second half would have looked way different.
We'd like to monitor minutes a little bit more, it's just down to knitting everything together.
There's a lot of positives but we want perfection and there's nothing wrong with that, we'll keep striving for it.
On Craig Forsyth's Testimonial on Saturday...
It will be great for Fozzy, he's been a great servant and deserves it. It's a little bit of a plea for all the Derby fans to come out and thank him because it will be really good to get as many people there as we can for him.
It's a pre-season game but it's Craig Forsyth's Testimonial first and foremost and we want to make sure that he and his family have a good day.
