Paul Warne felt his Derby County side didn't pose enough of a threat after they fell to defeat against Chesterfield in their latest pre-season friendly on Wednesday night.
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The Rams' Head Coach admitted the team got a stern reality check ahead of the 2024/25 Sky Bet Championship season with a 4-0 reverse.
Warne spoke to RamsTV after the game to discuss a difficult result, but a much-needed test, on the road against the Spireites.
On a tough pre-season outing and a disappointing result…
Collectively we weren’t good enough, and this will be a good shock
for the players. I think if they thought we could just turn up in the
Championship because we deserve to be there and it will all be a merry
party with ticker tape and kisses out to everyone – we’ve proven tonight
that there’s a lot to do. We knew that anyway and I know it’s a
pre-season game so I’m not going to get too emotional about it but
fundamentally we were out-run and out-fought and we got punished.
We had moments in the game where we were quite good, but we’ve managed to defend our own shots. We could have had three goals in the first 20 minutes.
There was some disappointment in it, but there was some very good play. The starting eleven aren’t playing together, so there’s bits and bobs all over the place and I understand that. However, we need to see an improvement on Saturday at Shrewsbury because that isn’t the standard that anyone wants associated with our club.
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On getting a reality check ahead of the season…
You don’t want them, especially not in front of people, because it is an embarrassing scoreline; you don’t want to lose 4-0 in a pre-season game. However, I don’t want to get too bogged down in the scoreline. I didn’t think we did enough in the second half, every time we got the ball into the final third we didn’t pick the right pass.
There was a real threat to our play at times but there wasn’t enough pace in our play. I worried before the game if we had turned up with the right mindset; I know it’s a pre-season game I understand that. It was fully deserved for Chesterfield, they took their chances really well, and I’m not knocking their part in the game.
I just think that we didn’t play anywhere near the level we should expect. Fundamentally when people turn up, when you're trying to win for your place in the team, you have to be on tilt. We just didn’t have enough players playing on tilt.
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On encouraging signs…
There was a bit of pace and power to our first half display, I thought Kayden Jackson looked a threat in behind all the time. I thought, at times, we created good opportunities with both wing-backs having a real energy, although they are probably only 75% fit. They put some decent balls into the box, although I don’t think we flooded the box enough for my liking.
David Ozoh came on in the second half and looked a lot more composed. How we played in the midfield in the first half isn’t how we are going to play, but it's about getting minutes into their legs.
