3/1 To Win
Bradley Johnson is hoping to put the disappointment of Saturday’s defeat behind him as he prepares to take on his former club Norwich City on Wednesday.
The midfielder, who joined the Rams from the Canaries in 2015 for a then club record fee, has been a regular in Frank Lampard’s starting line ups so far this season.
He has started the last three games, against Brentford, Manchester United and Bolton Wanderers, but was frustrated that his side could not match the previous two performances at the weekend.
“It was two different oppositions, and I’ll even go back to the Brentford game,” he told RamsTV. “You can’t forget that we had a terrific week, we played Brentford and it was the best we had played in the league then we went to Manchester United and won.
“Then our standards dropped a little against Bolton but it was a different type of opposition. Brentford came at us, same as Manchester United, but I felt Bolton sat there in their defensive four and it was hard for us to break down but we have to learn to deal with that.
“It’s not going to be like that in every game where teams are going to come at us, maybe we have to go away from home and find a different way of playing. We need to learn to play against teams that are just going to sit in and play on the counter.
“We gave them a goal, but you can’t give anybody a head start in this league. We can’t get too disheartened about it.
“I felt we played well in patches of the game but there are a lot of good things that have come out of that game and a lot of good things come out of the week. We just have to do what we did in the earlier part of last week and play like that on Wednesday now.”
The Canaries visit Pride Park Stadium tomorrow evening and they are a team Johnson is all too familiar with.
He was at Carrow Road for four seasons and played in the top flight of English football, but he is fully concentrated on getting a positive result for the Rams tomorrow.
“We feel with the way that we are playing at the moment then we will give anyone a good game,” he said. “We showed everyone what we can do when we are at it against Manchester United and we have set the standard now and want to keep up with that level. The game on Saturday was not at that level but we don’t fear any team that we play against. We feel we can beat anybody in front of us.
“I’m don’t really know much about other teams. I’m not worried about how Norwich are doing but we spoke about them this morning and they are on a good run. They are coming to our place on Wednesday night and we know if we put in a performance that we are capable of then we can beat anybody so we are aiming to do that on Wednesday.”
