3/1 To Win
Gary Rowett urged his side to keep improving after Derby County made it three wins on the bounce with a thoroughly impressive 2-0 victory against Aston Villa at Pride Park Stadium.
Andreas Weimann set the ball rolling in the first half when he capitalised on an error by Glenn Whelan, before Johnny Russell came off the bench to secure the points in stoppage time.
It was another performance where Rowett felt that his side had more to give, but that is something that he sees as a positive.
He told RamsTV: “We know that we’ve got more, which is great, because it means that we can still improve.
“We’ve won another game, we’ve beat another good side and we’ve kept another clean sheet.
“There’s many different facets to a performance and at the moment we’re putting an awful lot of them in.
“It’s another performance where you’ve seen the commitment of the team and the squad, and at times we opened them up really well.”
The Rams opened up their opponents several times in the opening 15 minutes, with David Nugent going closest to breaking the deadlock on multiple occasions before Weimann found the net, and the boss rates the spell as one of the best of the campaign so far.
He said: “It’s probably the best that we’ve started a game this season, Nuge had three chances and the ‘keeper made some excellent saves.
“It was opportunistic from Vyds, he capitalised and it was really unselfish play.
“Andi had to adjust his feet and he’s finished it really well against his old club and I’m sure he’ll be really happy with that.
Steve Bruce’s side dominated possession but it always seemed that the Rams were in control of the contest from the first minute and Rowett was pleased with the defensive work that kept his goalkeeper redundant for most of the afternoon.
He added: “At times we didn’t show the energy that we wanted to, but once again we defended fantastically.
“The tactical ability of some of the players is excellent, they just know when to block spaces and how to open the opposition up on the counter.
“We conceded a little bit of space at times in the first half but they didn’t cause us too many problems.
“I can’t really remember one save of note that Scott Carson had to make, whereas Sam Johnstone had to make an awful lot.”
