Derby County Head Coach Paul Warne believes his side did more than enough to win during the 1-1 draw with Morecambe in Sky Bet League One on Tuesday evening.
The Rams totalled 27 shots on goal across the 90 minutes and missed two penalties, one in either half through James Collins and David McGoldrick, on what turned out to be a frustrating night in Lancashire - with Louie Sibley equalising in the second half with a deflected effort.
Speaking to RamsTV after the game, Warne was left disappointed but says he cannot criticise the effort shown by his players.
On the game…
Unfortunately, we probably weren’t our sharpest in the box. We missed a couple of penalties and 100% had another penalty that we didn’t get.
We controlled large parts of the game although Morecambe did have a threat. It’s just disappointing. I appreciate everyone that has made the real effort to come and they’ll be getting back at stupid o’clock in the morning, so it’s unfortunate we couldn’t get the winner to make it back-to-back wins and cheer everyone up.
I’m not sure I’d have taken a point at half-time, but at the end of the season it might be a great one.
On the missed chances…
I expected James Collins to score his penalty because I back him in everything he does. I’m not blaming him, it’s just disappointing because it was a good chance to take the lead and we could have gone on to win the game handsomely.
We got a foothold back in the game, Sibs took his goal really well but we missed another penalty through Didzy just before that which is disappointing.
The lads did everything they could to try and score though. It’s not through a lack of effort or anything, I can’t do anything but admire them for that.
A couple of times we make mistakes and we get countered on. Their goal came from us giving the ball away in the middle of the pitch. Cash could have been sent off in the second half, I think we got away with one there, and that came again with giving away the ball in the middle of the pitch. If we play with wingers and we play with a 4-2-4 we can’t give a ball away there. That’s the disappointing thing for me but generally I think we played well enough to win a game away from home.
On the upcoming games and rotation…
We can’t do anything in terms of rotation. Zero.
In fairness, we haven’t got a plethora of options on the bench that don’t make the team weaker. I like making five changes off the bench, I like changing five players and giving it a right go but unfortunately right now we can’t.
It feels like our first-half performances are quite fresh and then as the second-half goes on, we don’t finish the games as strong as I would like. In fairness, more mistakes are made in the final 15 minutes than any other part of the game.
There are many teams at the top that nick late winners and we possibly didn’t have enough goal threat in the last 10 to 15 minutes of the game.
I can’t criticise the lads' efforts; I can’t. We just need to keep helping them and need them to keep believing.