3/1 To Win
Chris van der Weerden believes Derby County are making positive strides in the right direction.
Derby have enjoyed a strong upturn in results and performances over the last two months after an inconsistent start to the 2019/20 campaign.
In their 14 games in all competitions since the end of December, the Rams have recorded seven wins and five draws.
As well as climbing the Sky Bet Championship table and onto the cusp of the top half, they have also reached the Fifth Round of the Emirates FA Cup and will welcome Manchester United to Pride Park Stadium next week.
Derby played out an entertaining 1-1 draw at home to promotion-chasers Fulham on Friday night with one of their best performances of the campaign.
Hot on the heels of the draw against the Cottagers, the Rams are back on the road this week in another busy week of Championship action with trips to Queens Park Rangers on Tuesday and Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday.
van der Weerden, Derby’s assistant manager, feels the Rams are in a good place and believes the performance against Fulham has provided plenty of encouragement moving forward.
Speaking to RamsTV on Monday afternoon, he said: “We knew before that it would be a tough game and it was.
“We were playing against the third team in the table and they have a fantastic team. They have the top scorer in the division and you saw his quality again, because you didn’t see him for the whole game then there he was.
“I think we played a decent game. The way we want to play, you can still see it week-by-week that we are improving our game and how we want to play.
“This game was more of an equal one whereas when we played Fulham away in November, it was not an equal game at all. You see the progress and there were two teams now who could win the game and that is a big difference from a few months ago.
“The thing we are now hammering on, is that we need to play like this every single week but get the result too.”
He added: “We say that to the players as well. If you look at the last 14 games from December and Christmas – we lost two of them and we are still 13th in the table, so we need to get more points.
“The thing is, we play well, we create chances exactly the way we want then sometimes we concede in a simple way or we create a lot and don’t score. That is why we don’t have the results we want at times.”
Derby have certainly proved to be more prolific in front of goal over the last few months.
Goals proved to be hard to come by before Christmas, but the Rams have found the net in 13 of their last 14 matches.
During that time they have registered 26 goals and last failed to score in a league fixture on 21st December at Reading.
Striving for improvement all the time, van der Weerden feels the Rams can still work on creating opportunities out of nothing – which was demonstrated by Fulham’s Aleksandar Mitrovic on Friday.
The Championship’s top goalscorer, with 22 goals to his name, swept home a right-wing cross for level for the Cottagers after Wayne Rooney had opened the scoring for Derby.
van der Weerden said: “We hear it now many times that how we play, how we present ourselves on the pitch - that’s clear.
“Then you create chances. But it is all about football and you can see it with Fulham that they create, not even a chance, but it is a goal and this is what we need.”
Derby will backed by another strong away following at Queens Park Rangers on Tuesday night and van der Weerden is keen to reward the travelling fans for their backing.
He said: “For us, we approach the game home or away the same way.
“Our fans will always be there from Derby, so we play for them as well because that is the most important part.
“In our home stadium, or away, they are always there so we play for them.”
Reflecting on the 1-1 draw against Queens Park Rangers at Pride Park Stadium back in November, he added: “I remember that we scored a fantastic goal by Waggy, but we also gave away a penalty for the equaliser so there were mixed feelings.”
