Derby County winger Nathaniel Mendez-Laing says 'everyone played their part' in the Rams' late comeback at Crewe Alexandra in the First Round of the Emirates FA Cup on Sunday afternoon.
Derby looked to be heading out of the cup at the first hurdle until injury time strikes from Mendez-Laing and Conor Hourihane rescued a 2-2 draw and set-up a replay at Pride Park Stadium against the Sky Bet League Two promotion chasers next week.
Speaking to RamsTV after the game, the winger gave his verdict on the overall performance.
On the game...
It was a grind. The conditions were difficult and Crwee are a good footballing team. I still think we controlled the game for the majority of it, but we didn't really take our chances. Even at 2-0 down I was confident we would get back into the tie.
On the comeback...
We wanted to go through today but a replay at our place isn't such a bad thing, in front of our fans at our stadium, so we'll look forward to that one. We showed a lot of character and maybe in previous weeks we haven't really done that. I was very confident we would get back into it and credit to the boys and credit to the coaches for the substitutions that they made. Everyone played their part.
On his confidence in the comeback...
I know what's in the changing room, we've got some great players in there. We were playing great football too. We had so many chances, 33 attempts on goal away from home is crazy. I knew if we'd got the first, we'd go and get the second.
On his fourth goal in four games...
I was buzzing. I always want to contribute whether it was a goal or assist. I got a bit of luck from the goalkeeper but we take them all day long! Hopefully we can go on and get some more wins now.
On his recent form...
You always want to score goals and create goals, it's what I'm here to do. As long as I can keep that up, I will be happy. A win would have made it even better today, but we're in still in the hat.
