Kevin Summerfield felt Derby County got what they wanted out of Tuesday’s pre-season friendly at Doncaster Rovers.
Summerfield, the Rams’ assistant manager, and first-team coach Kevin Phillips oversaw the 1-1 draw against the newly-promoted Sky Bet League 1 side, with Richard Keogh on target for the Rams in what was a double-header of action.
Half of the first-team squad were in action at the Keepmoat Stadium, while the other half ran out 1-0 winners at League 2 Port Vale with manager Gary Rowett and first-team coach Mark Sale in the dugout at Vale Park.
The main aim of the evening was to give as many players as possible 90 minutes of action in the lead-up to the new season.
From Summerfield’s point of view following the game at Doncaster, with every player that started completing the match, it was a case of mission accomplished.
He also had words of praise for the players’ fitness levels and work ethic after three weeks of pre-season training.
He told RamsTV: “The priority was to get the lads to play 90 minutes across the two games.
“The result doesn’t matter in the long term because from this we know they have the minutes under their belts; they are fit enough and their muscles can handle it.
“We kept everyone on, a few of them could have come off, but we kept them on and we know that they can handle it.
“It’s been tough for the players and they’ve worked really, really hard. We’ve been delighted with them so far; they’ve run and worked and also done all we’ve asked of them.
“Hopefully, come Saturday, we’ll be closer to doing 90 minutes at a better pace. We can’t fault the players though and now we will sit down and start preparing for Saturday.”
Reviewing Derby’s performance against Doncaster, Summerfield felt there was room for improvement.
The Rams had chances to come away with another victory under their belts with Chris Martin hitting the post and missing a penalty, while Andreas Weimann hit the crossbar late on.
Rowett’s right-hand man felt that Derby could have done more when in possession, but accepts pre-season is about working on areas where the side can do better.
He said: “We hit the bar, hit the post and missed a penalty and – on top of scoring – there wasn’t a lot else other than that.
“That was disappointing but there was a lot of things that we’ve been working on in terms of keeping our shape and getting back behind the ball a bit quicker that we did very well.
“On the ball, we were a little short today. Maybe that was to be expected because everyone was playing 90 minutes.
“You always think you can do certain things that little bit better. We wanted to achieve certain things tonight and we’ve done that.”
