Head Coach Paul Warne praised Derby County’s ‘clinical’ and ‘brave’ performance as they flew to a scintillating 4-0 win over Portsmouth in the Sky Bet Championship on Friday night.
Derby were in a ruthless mood in the first half as goals from Kane Wilson, Eiran Cashin and Ebou Adams gave the Rams a three-goal advantage going into the half-time break.
They secured the victory and took all three points away from Pride Park Stadium when Marcus Harness’ hard work forced Marlon Pack to direct the ball into his own net just after the hour mark.
Warne spoke to RamsTV after his side netted four goals and kept a clean sheet on home turf in their final home fixture before Christmas.
On a convincing win against Portsmouth at Pride Park…
It was really pleasing. I think we’ve been better in other home games, but the difference tonight was that we were clinical. If we had taken chances in previous matches, we'd be a lot more handsome. We’ve been pleased with a lot of performances and in fairness I thought we didn't have as much control as the scoreline suggested in the first half.
They did have a bit of control, they went out wide, put early crosses in - but we defended most of them well. Generally, I thought we had a real personality to our play, so I was proud of them and the scoreline's nice. In fairness, so is the clean sheet! It could have been more, we created enough chances to be even more handsome and then the game took a different quality. After that, you saw a lot of personality from our players.
On seeing positives in every area of the pitch…
What pleased me the most was the bravery to get on the ball. I thought we played well in the pockets. Most of all, the fact is this team is well coached to play different systems. We played 5-4-1 at Leeds, 3-5-2 at Burnley and we played two different systems tonight. The coaches got the messages across really well, but the lads are good students of the game. It isn't easy to know three different roles, but we can flick through systems quite easily and adapt well.
On ending a tough week of fixtures with a win…
Without a shadow of a doubt, if you said we'd have got four points from the next two matches against Burnley and Portsmouth after the Leeds game - I’d have taken that. In this league, averaging two points per game is promotion form, but one point or less is relegation form and that is how close the margins are in this league.
I'd have taken it and I'm really proud of the lads’ performances in all three matches, if you take away the scoreline. There's been some amazing performances. We changed the full-backs tonight to keep it fresh and we changed it a bit in midfield - even as Thommo has been excellent. We’re always trying to shuffle it to keep it fresh all the time and in the end we saw a performance to be happy with.
