3/1 To Win
All roads lead back home for Joe Ledley this weekend as he prepares to take on the club where his football career began.
Derby County travel to the Welsh Capital to face the Sky Bet Championship’s early pace-setters, Cardiff City, looking to head into the second international break of the 2017/18 Sky Bet Championship on a high, kick-off: 3pm.
The Rams travel to Wales off the back of a 1-1 draw at Brentford on Tuesday night.
Ledley, making his debut, made an instant impact in Derby colours and was also on the scoresheet in the stalemate, scoring within 16 minutes at Griffin Park.
His first appearance in club football for nearly seven months was a memorable one and in a sit-down interview with RamsTV, it was clear that the man himself enjoyed every moment of it.
The 30-year-old said: “It was my first league start in about seven months and it was brilliant, I’ve waited a long time to be back playing, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication off the field and it’s paid off.
“Just being in the changing room, getting ready and getting all of the adrenalin back into me – you do miss the feeling and it was just great being out there.
“There’s also nothing better than scoring goals, you can ask any player.
“It’s the third time on the bounce now that I’ve scored on my debut so it’s a great feeling and maybe on a different day we would have seen that game out.”
The only frustration from a team perspective was the fact that they could not hold on for all three points.
For all of Brentford’s possession – they had 76 per cent of the ball over the course of the 90 minutes – they only registered two shots on target, with Scott Carson largely untroubled on the night.
Ollie Watkins, however, stabbed home a finish from close range with just five minutes of normal time remaining and denied Gary Rowett’s side a win on the road this campaign.
“It was a frustrating game,” Ledley said summing the match in West London up. “We always want to be dominant when we go away from home and play fantastic football but it’s not as easy as that.
“Brentford are a good passing team and they play good football but they didn’t really hurt us, they didn’t have many clear-cut chances, we defended really well and it was frustrating not to come away with the three points.”
Now, though, Ledley is looking to record that elusive win when the Rams take on his boyhood club Cardiff this weekend.
The midfielder enjoyed six memorable years in the Welsh Capital between 2004 and 2010, where he helped the Bluebirds reach an FA Cup Final as well as a Championship Play-Off Final before leaving to join Celtic.
Ledley, though, will be putting sentiment to one side and is solely focused on helping Derby return to winning ways ahead of the international break and is looking for the Rams to build on their solid showing against Brentford in midweek.
He said: “It will be a good atmosphere, as it always is at the Cardiff City Stadium – they have passionate fans and it’ll be good to go back.
“We need to be solid like we were on Tuesday – it was hard for Brentford to break us down and we need to keep that from now until the end of the season.
“It’s a great club and I owe them a lot, it’s where I started my football and they gave me the opportunity to do what I love doing and I had fantastic some years at Cardiff.
“It’s down to us on Saturday to put things right, we need the points just as much as Cardiff.”
