Frank Lampard couldn’t hide his disappointment after his first home game in charge of Derby County ended in defeat, but he believes that the way his team react is the most important aspect.


Goals from Mateusz Klich, Ezgjan Alioski and two from Kemar Roofe secured victory for Leeds United side at Pride Park Stadium.

Lampard believes that results like the one that his team suffered will happen to every side throughout the long Sky Bet Championship campaign and he wants Derby to react positively against Oldham Athletic and Millwall next week.

He told RamsTV: “We were well beaten and there are no excuses.

“We can’t have it all our own way. We had a great pre-season and a great result last week.

“I can’t get too down, neither can the players or the fans, because we know the Championship and these results will happen to every team.

“Unfortunately, it’s happened to us on the first day, but now the reaction is key, both individually and as a group.”


Lampard felt that Derby didn’t show the quality in possession that they had shown throughout pre-season, and it cost them against a Leeds side that impressed during their 3-1 win against league favourites Stoke City last week.

He explained: “Unfortunately, we kept conceding possession in a sloppy way and we weren’t reacting well enough to those moments in order to win the ball back again.

“When you’re stretched against a team of their quality, they will have chances.

“We need to be better with the ball - we stopped playing very early in the game - and we had patches and little moments in the second half where we did move it better.

“It takes bravery on the ball and we lost that to a degree and there are huge lessons all over the park for us today.

“There was some good quality involved from their point of view, but there were mistakes.

“We will have to look at them because mistakes, simply, lose you games.”