Pat Lyons hailed Derby County Under 23’s “excellent” second half performance as they opened their Premier League Cup campaign with a 1-0 win away at Birmingham City.
Offrande Zanzala scored the only goal five minutes after half time to secure the points for the Rams, although the striker was later sent off after a clash off the ball.
Derby stepped up their game after the break to dominate proceedings, and Lyons was pleased with the improvement.
He told RamsTV: “It was a bit of a battle in the first half, we didn’t really get going, it could have been better all-round.
“We said at half time that they needed to up their game a little bit in the second half and they were excellent for 20 minutes and we should have killed the game off after going 1-0 up.
“We created three or four good chances but they came back into it, but we showed some good resilience to keep a clean sheet and win the game – even with 10 men.”
Despite the performance, the coach picked out a vital improvement that the youngsters need to make going forward.
He added: “It was a bit of a scrappy one, but Luke Thomas and Lewis Walker were unlucky at the end not to make it 2-0 and I think that would’ve given us the breathing space that we needed.”
Jason Shackell, George Thorne and Ikechi Anya all completed 90 minutes at the Birmingham County FA and the influence that they had on their younger teammates didn’t go unnoticed.
Lyons said: “The attitude was excellent. Jason was superb, George is getting more minutes, and Ikechi did well going forward.”