Derby County’s First Team Coach Matt Hamshaw says the squad are ready to ‘gear up’ in their final two pre-season friendlies before the 2024/25 Sky Bet Championship campaign.
The Rams head to Barnsley on Wednesday night (7:45pm kick-off) before ending their pre-season programme on home turf on Saturday against Spanish La Liga side Real Valladolid on Saturday (3pm kick-off).
Hamshaw spoke to RamsTV ahead of Wednesday’s game at Oakwell to discuss getting the right intensity in training, implementing more tactical instruction and coming into the 2024/25 season with a fit squad.
On the final two weeks of pre-season…
It is slightly different, if I'm going to be brutally honest. The last few games have been about just getting minutes in, getting time in the legs, letting the lads get back into the pitch areas that we're looking to having a little bit of an experiment in.
The lads are playing a little bit fatigued and a little bit leggy. For these next two matches, we'll look to implement a few more things. I don't want give too much away, because we're fully aware that every club's watching every team, as we are with other teams.
On the majority of the squad being available for the new season…
Apart from Jake Rooney, who we're gutted about, we are looking in a good place. Everybody's had minutes and geared themselves up. It now becomes probably less about minutes and more about us looking at how it's going to look going into the season.
On balancing intensity levels in pre-season training…
It's a really difficult task and it's the hardest part of pre-season. We don't want to get injuries, but at the same time, you have to push them to the edge of the cliff and not let them fall off. We're looking to get them all as fit as we can. We've taken precautions along the way with minutes. I'm sure most of the fans have seen players coming on, a raft of changes and a lot going off. Whereas now, though, we'll knuckle down. We've still got two weeks left of pre-season, so we'll gear up and look to implement a lot more things.