Thu 07 Aug - Posted in Breaking News
Time to read: 3mins
Derby County Head Coach John Eustace pointed towards his squad’s ‘fantastic attitude’ ahead of their 2025/26 curtain-raising visit to Stoke City.
Derby will begin the Sky Bet Championship campaign when they make the short trip to the bet365 Stadium to face the Potters on Saturday (3pm kick-off).
The Rams have added ten new recruits to their ranks this summer, with attacking midfielder Bobby Clark and defender Dion Sanderson joining on loan in the last few days ahead of the new campaign.
After completing their pre-season activity with a 2-0 win over Greek top-flight side Atromitos at Pride Park last weekend, the Derby boss admitted valuable time on the training pitch over the off-season was all part of the process, but urged patience among his squad as Derby aim to 'build something special'.
Eustace spoke to RamsTV ahead of their Championship opener in the Potteries.
It's exciting. We've had a really good six weeks and the level of the attitude of the boys has been fantastic.
We've had a lot of young boys training with us over the six weeks, which has been brilliant for them. It's great to expose them to first-team football and the 11-12 regulars, senior boys who have been training with us, have done very well. The attitude of the group has been fantastic.
It's been a great six weeks with the staff and the players, being able to grow the bonds in the group. We had it anyway, after all the good work that we did last year, but all the boys have been excellent.
We wanted to get the age profile of the squad down, and we wanted to bring some leaders in who bring Championship experience as well, which is key. We have some really exciting young players with something to prove.
The club have worked their socks off to make sure we got the players in. It's now about getting them involved in the squad and seeing it grow and improve throughout the season.
They’ll give us a really difficult game. They've got a fantastic squad and a very good manager in Mark Robins, who's done a terrific job wherever he's been. We know it's going to be a difficult game, but we'll be ready for it and want to be as competitive as we can be.
As I have said from day one, we want to build something very special here. That's not done through a quick process. We've brought 10 players in up to now. It's going to take time for that group to develop and grow, and to help the players that are already here as well.
From what I've seen up to now, the attitude of the group has been fantastic. We want to create something very special - but we're going to have to be patient. It's going to be an exciting season.
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