Fantastic, well earned result. It wasn't a glittering sexy performance but it was still a very pleasing one where we showed a great deal of composure on the ball in defence combined with a lot of fight and graft.
In the first half we seemed a little uncertain of our new style but showed a couple of flashes of lovely pass and move. But we were being pressed high and hard and i think we ended up getting a bit nervous and opted to go long a few times when maybe we didn't need to that just lost the ball. But Derby were not at their best, misplacing passes quite regularly and it seemed we slowly got more confidence to play out. We started with Clare as an inverted full backs but Pearce playing more as a traditional full back, but as the game went on Clare seemed to become more traditional too and I think that worked better.
Both sides had posession and spells of pressure without creating clear cut chances. We were defending resolutely but we were at times open down either flank on the counter and we did give the ball away in dangerous areas a couple of times. So I'd say Derby were not really getting at us except when we made mistakes to let them in. Derby were arguably slightly on top when a terrible mistake from Bradley trying to pass back to the keeper under pressure from Wyke put him through on goal. Wyke had a chance like that against Tranmere and tried to chip the onrushing keeper and missed badly, so I imagine that was on his mind and he kept his composure to round their keeper and slot it away despite the defenders rushing back on the line.
I think we were probably just about worth our half time lead and had turned in a solid first half performance. It was probably short on real attacking flair but the team was working hard and making life tough for Derby.
After half time Derby came on strong but we seemed to have grown in our own confidence and were better playing the ball out under pressure. But we found that as well of the defenders got the ball out it was often lost by the attackers or they were eventually forced to into going long and giving it away as the attacking players weren't giving them options.
Derby pushed harder and we ended up deeper, with our lack of defensive or physicality in midfield started to show. We continued to defend well but we completely lost midfield and the ball just kept coming back at us with Derby having too much time and space on the flanks to get deep crosses in. Derby started to create good chances that we were lucky to survive but eventually got an equaliser through a deflected cross hit a Derby head and could've gone anywhere - But unfortunately landed perfectly into the path of the onrushing full back. We forgot to track him and he was completely unmarked to fire home. It felt like it was coming and we should've made some tactical changes earlier to try and avoid it. But it was very frustrating that after so much hard work a massive lapse of concentration or lack of defensive discipline allowed them a free hit at equalising - it was avoidable and self inflicted.
After the goal you feared momentum was going to be with Derby and our heads would drop setting them up for a winner. But while Derby remained on top we adjusted midfield taking off the tired McManaman for Adeeko and pushing Thelo onto the left and started to regain midfield a bit and push up the field more.
A bit of good work from Aasgaard in his more advanced role set up Pearce to deliver a dangerous cross that the Derby keeper completely lost the flight of and Wyke was in the right place to nod home a second goal against the run of play.
After that we smartly adjusted tactics again brining on Watts to move to a back 3 to deal with the expected big final push from Derby. It was all hands on deck as we were under constant pressure and everyone battled to keep them out but we were also very smart with the ball and not panicking into clearing our lines unnecessarily to give them the ball back easily. We tried to intelligently keep posession to break up their momentum, take the pressure off ourselves and give us a breather by frustrating them into chasing us and denying them the ball to launch more attacks.
The referee added 9 minutes of added time that was very excessive even with the daft new EFL rules. But we stuck to our task and even survived the ref adding another 3 mins on top of his initial overly generous adage. It felt like the ref was playing until Derby scored! But we resolutely saw it out and sealed a big win that wasn't the prettiest but showed that even though we want to play nice football we can do the ugly side of the game too.
Coming into this game it was hard to know what to expect from us as we are still very much a work in progress finding our feet. But while we failed to produce the sexy attacking moves we saw in the first half against Everton, the defensive unit was excellent both in posession and dealing with the threat and you can't understate how transformative the ability to play out from the back under pressure made today. The attacking end of the pitch was a bit disjointed and struggled to really create much but and i dont think we've worked out the right personnel there just yet but hopefully that will evolve over the coming weeks. But everyone worked hard and showed great heart to hold onto the lead, by the end everyone was dead on their feet but they dug deep to keep battling and drag themselves over the line. A really pleasing performance and after what Maloney, the players and fans have endured over the past 6 months or so it was thoroughly deserved.
