Gary Rowett says this week is all about ‘finishing off our preparation work’ as Derby County gear up for their 2017/18 curtain-raiser at Sunderland.
The Rams will get the new Sky Bet Championship season underway with a long trip to the North East to take on the Black Cats at the Stadium of Light on Friday night (7:45pm kick-off).
Rowett’s squad reported back for pre-season training towards the end of June to kick off preparations for the new campaign.
The 43-year-old, who admits he’s still keen to do more work in the transfer market in the next month, believes there are still things his side can do better.
He feels his side are moving in the right direction but, as ever, he is always looking for ways to improve and develop as a team.
The last month or so has been about being ready for the big kick-off and the Derby boss feels there’s plenty of work to get through ahead of the trip north.
Rowett told RamsTV: “I feel that we’ve worked incredibly hard over the course of pre-season.
“The great thing for me about a game like Hoffenheim on Saturday is that we’ve still got lots of focus for the last week ahead of the first game.
“We still need to move better as a team. By that, I mean when we go and press the ball and keep the distance between our units then we have a chance of winning the ball back.
“I think when Tom Huddlestone gets on the ball the team comes to life because of his range of passing.”
He added: “We need to be a little bit more clinical with our finishing and we’ve seen that in pre-season.
“We’ve created chances in every single game that we’ve played in but we just haven’t been ruthless enough and showed the quality enough to win games by more margin - but defensively we’re very strong.
“We need to now take that work into this week and finish off that preparation.”
Rowett had been tempted to give a run-out to some his players in the Under-23s’ friendly with Barnsley this week.
However, he is instead keen to keep his entire squad together ahead of Friday’s game at Sunderland given there is one less day to prepare.
He said: “The only slight frustration about the week is that by moving the fixture a day closer to the Friday, it means you lose a day in your week to prepare.
“The Barnsley Under-23 game was originally down as an opportunity for the ones who didn’t get minutes against Hoffenheim to get some game time, but we will probably keep them all together for the week and do a little bit of work on what we need.
“There has been plenty of good work but now we need to finish it off and prepare for Sunderland.”