Assistant Head Coach Richie Barker says Derby County’s new signings will benefit when they step onto the Pride Park Stadium turf for the first time on Saturday in the side's final pre-season friendly ahead of the 2024/25 Sky Bet Championship season.
All of Head Coach Paul Warne’s summer arrivals will get their first taste of football at Derby’s home ground when they play Real Valladolid ahead of the new season (3pm kick-off), apart from midfielder Ebou Adams who featured on loan during last season’s promotion-winning campaign.
Barker spoke to RamsTV about the benefits of familiarising the players with their new home, seeing progress during Wednesday’s friendly at Barnsley and the challenge that the Spanish top flight opposition will pose.
On Wednesday night’s friendly against Barnsley…
There were loads of positives. In the end, it's the result that gets published. However, there were some good minutes, a couple of 90 minutes, and loads of opportunities created. We were disappointed with some of the goals, but the game was stretched a little bit towards the end when we were playing with ten men. It looks like we're going in the right direction if you take that game into account.
On seeing both physical and tactical progress against Barnsley…
In fairness to the lads, we had a really good meeting with them afterwards and we spoke about all the different aspects of the game. One of those was physical, because we expected a greater output and for the ball to be moved quickly. We expected the movement to be better, hence why we made Tuesday's training session a little bit easier. It's probably the easiest day they've had for a while. They all commented saying that they feel like they're getting there physically.
On the final week of pre-season…
We're still going to continue to work the lads hard. They'll work hard up until Saturday and then we start to come off them after that. They've played with a lot of fatigue in their legs and that's definitely what they've come back with. That's how it should be.
We had quite a long post-match meeting on Thursday morning that because there's only a certain amount of work we can do on the grass with playing the night before. You must get some tactical stuff over. We did explain that the meetings will be a little bit longer for the time being because we're still drip-feeding information in to them. Once they've got most of the stuff sussed, then it's just a matter of putting it in place. We'll just keep giving them the information. Hopefully they keep taking it on bit by bit and then we'll all be ready for next week.
On the challenges Derby will face in their final pre-season friendly against Real Valladolid…
Without being too stereotypical, they’ll be technically very good and they'll be comfortable in possession. If the weather is like this at the moment, they'll probably manage the weather better than we will! it will be another good test for us.
For the new players, it's a really good opportunity for them to experience Pride Park and hopefully a good atmosphere and a good day. It goes without saying that the crowd won't be quite what it'll be for the first league game, but it is a time to learn where your place is in the dressing room and stuff like that.
What time do I have to be there? What does it look like when we are there? All that sort of stuff, such as which half of the pitch do we warm up on? All the things that you take for granted once you've been at the club for six or seven weeks or even a couple of months, they'll learn on Saturday.