3/1 To Win
Assistant Head Coach Richie Barker says Derby County won't be approaching Tuesday evening's Bristol Street Motors Round of 16 tie against Bradford City any differently to a Sky Bet League One match (7pm kick-off).
The Rams will take on the Sky Bet League Two outfit on home turf to compete for a place in the final eight of the competition and Barker says the team are looking to 'win every game' at this point of the season.
Speaking to RamsTV ahead of the meeting with the Bantams, the Assistant Head Coach reflected on Saturday's 3-1 league win at Fleetwood Town and looked ahead to some knockout football under the lights at Pride Park Stadium (7pm kick-off).
His thoughts on Saturday's win at Fleetwood...
In the end, we came through it comfortably but it was tricky. It's never a good sign when you play against a team when it's the manager's first game at home because there's always a lift from the fans and players, so you have to negate that. Fleetwood is a difficult place to go, but we got through the first 10 or 15 minutes and we were relatively comfortable for the next half an hour. At the end of the day, it's three points that means no more or no less than the other three points than we've got already. Any win away from home and three goals is satisfying.
On the impressive away form after winning nine so far in the league...
A big part of it is trying to win in different ways. If you look at the last few away fixtures, we've picked up clean sheets against Port Vale, Leyton Orient and Wigan Athletic, come back from 2-0 down to win at Oxford United after a difficult start and then weathered a bit of a storm against Fleetwood at the weekend. To be successful, you've got to win games in different ways and to just assume you can go to all these places and play the same way and all will be OK - you just can't. Winning away from home is not easy at any level.
On the front three of Mendez-Laing, John-Jules and Collins...
I thought for the 20-25 minutes when we were on top in the first half at Fleetwood, they were a real handful and there were opportunities where we could have scored more goals. They bought into their roles and responsibilities out of possession so they all knew what everybody's job was and with having the three defenders playing, it enabled us to be a little more positive up the top end of the pitch. There won't be many back threes at our level that would want to play against them on a regular basis.
On the mentality for knockout football in the Bristol Street Motors Trophy...
At the moment, the mentality is just that we want to win every game. In the relatively decent run we've been on, there have been a couple of cup games in that too. It's not a lot different to every match we play, we never go out to do anything but win. The lads are in a pretty good place and we want to try and keep winning because it is a good habit to be in.
On comparisons to the meeting with Crewe, also a League Two side, in the FA Cup...
We started reasonably well in that cup tie; then it didn't go our way and we struggled to get back into it. It wasn't due to a lack of respect we paid to Crewe because they were excellent that night. We're well aware that one of the few matches we've lost in recent months was to a League Two team at home and we're hoping that won't happen again.
