Derby County Head Coach Paul Warne was left feeling frustrated after his side drew 1-1 at home to Lincoln City in Sky Bet League One on Tuesday night.
Olamide Shodipo gave the visitors a first-half lead, but they were reduced to 10 men after the restart when Ben House received his second yellow card of the evening.
Conor Hourihane got the Rams level before David McGoldrick looked to have won it late on, only for his header to be disallowed for offside.
Speaking to RamsTV after the game, Warne gave an honest assessment of the performance.
On the game…
I’m disappointed and frustrated. Maybe I got the team wrong, so I have to take some responsibility for that. We looked a bit jaded as a team, which isn’t like us really. We didn’t move the ball quick enough and a few too many players weren’t at their best, not through a lack of effort. At times in the second half through good play, we did create chances, but in the gilt-edged moments we weren’t good enough to take them. We got a goal and grew into it and we were in the ascendancy but there was always that risk, because they got in a couple of times one on one, and another day we could have ended up losing.
On the half-time substitutions…
We’ve got a really strong bench and I just thought that we looked a little bit jaded. I wanted to get Jason Knight a bit higher up the pitch. We just weren’t getting in behind them at all. It wasn’t that James Collins was having a bad game, we just didn’t really get him the ball. The change of shape allowed us to bring on Harvey White, who is a good footballer. I thought we might switch the ball quicker and play with a bit more purpose.
On not creating enough chances…
When we got our goal, I just wanted us to create a few more chances. We probably condensed all our chances into the last 15 minutes, which is disappointing. When teams sit in we have to be a bit more creative to break them down. A couple of times we did, and it nearly came off. We had a few very good chances, especially later on that we didn’t take. But I have to credit Lincoln, I thought they were really good.
On the positives…
Luckily, we come away with something when we’ve played pretty poorly. I don’t leave the ground tonight thinking: ‘we’re this and we’re that’. We need to help the team, it’s our job as coaches. We need to lick our wounds and get the best out of the team on Saturday when we face Charlton back at home.
Words by Dale Winfield.