Gary Rowett is convinced that Derby County have the quality to make the most of the chances they are creating in the final third.
Ahead of tonight’s Sky Bet Championship home fixture against Hull City, Derby’s first following the two-week international break, Rowett has urged his side to take more risks in the final third to turn more of their chances into goals.
The Rams’ manager has spoken regularly, ever since the beginning of pre-season back in July, that Derby need to be more ruthless in the final third from a team perspective in order to put their opponents to the sword.
The 43-year-old has seen the evidence on the training ground that his players have the ability to score goals on a regular basis, but says the key challenge is to replicate that work in a game situation.
Speaking at his pre-match press conference, he said: “We will have be mindful of lots of different things in terms of the threat that Hull pose on Friday night but, and it’s a cliché to say it, it is all about ourselves and especially at home.
“We have been pretty good at Pride Park in my time here so far. We are creating chances and, generally, we have created more than the opposition in games this season – but we need to make the most of those chances.
“We want to replicate the quality we have seen on the training ground into the matches. We are looking at it and probably just need to have that bit more ‘risk taking’ in terms of our creativity.
“We have created a lot of chances in games and been a bit wasteful, which I have said a few times. We know we need to be better and it was the same at Sheffield United at the end of last month, we got into some good one-on-one positions which we didn’t make the most of them.”
He added: “We have some very talented players and at the moment we are just looking for that right balance.
“We’ve done some things well and some that we can improve on, but we’ve worked well with the squad during the international break.”
Assessing this evening’s opponents, Rowett admits an element of unknown hangs over Leonid Slutsky’s side.
The Tigers have regularly switched personnel and their formation so far this season and, after five games, they join Derby with seven points on the board.
Slutsky’s men, however, do offer a serious goal threat and are currently the division’s leading goalscorers.
Rowett said: “When you look at the Hull City side, they have come down from the Premier League and made a lot of changes early on.
“Of course, we were the beneficiary of some of those by signing Curtis Davies and Tom Huddlestone in the summer.
“What’s quite difficult to see is a consistent pattern to their team as they have changed it quite a lot, in terms of the personnel and also the formation.
“They have around four players coming back from injury and also five new signings so that’s new signings to throw into the mix that could potentially start.
“With the likes of Michael Dawson at centre-back they will always have a pretty solid base and they have plenty of pace in forward areas.”
Derby go into the game looking to bounce back from the disappointing 3-1 defeat at Sheffield United prior to the international break.
Rowett admitted his side got what they deserved at Bramall Lane and insists mistakes need to be cut out, collectively, if Derby are to win more games than they lose.
He said: “Looking back at the Sheffield United game, we caused our own problems and I won’t dress it up and say that we were unlucky on the day.
“It was a bit of a kick in the teeth, but that’s football isn’t it. I said it after the game and I’ll say it again; Derby County haven’t been consistently good enough away from home over the last few years and have been too easy to take the points off.”
He added: “Stripping things down, we have conceded seven goals so far this season and the opposition, with the exception of one the goals, they haven’t had to play through us with great football.
“We’ve got to be better as a whole we have found it difficult to win as many games we would have liked because we’ve made mistakes in games. We have to work hard to turn that around.”
