Paul Warne feels win at Blackpool was best display of his Derby tenure

Posted Wednesday, October 04, 2023 by PA

Paul Warne hailed a 3-1 victory at Blackpool as the best display of his year-long Derby tenure as Korey Smith, James Collins and Martyn Waghorn netted for the visitors.

The Rams have now won four of their five away games so far in League One, with only one victory coming at home.

“It’s the proudest I’ve been and probably the best performance since I’ve been here,” Warne said.

“I think away from home I would like 11 speedsters, that’s what I would like in my team. We don’t have 11 speedsters, we have two or three.

“So sometimes away from home you can play counter-attack, you don’t have to have the ball as much, but you have to be deadly when you have it and we have been.

“Our away form has been good. I think we’ve been pretty good at home but we just haven’t taken our chances but tonight we took harder chances than we’ve been creating at home and we’ve missed.”

After a goalless first half, Smith netted in the 54th minute to move Derby ahead, firing Nathaniel Mendez-Laing’s cutback into the top of the net.

Collins put the Rams further in front on 71 minutes only for Blackpool to hit straight back as Kenny Dougall headed home.

The Seasiders were inches away from an equaliser when the in-form Jordan Rhodes headed against the bar from 10 yards out.

Substitute Tom Barkhuizen restored Derby’s momentum, first seeing an attempt cleared off the line before teeing up Waghorn for a simple finish to ensure the victory.

Blackpool manager Neil Critchley said: “I’m disappointed about the result but not too downbeat.

“I thought it was a really good game, two good teams on the pitch. Derby changed their system, gave us an enormous amount of respect in the way they set up and produced the perfect away performance by defending in numbers and playing us on the break. And they produced moments of real quality.

“We played some really good football, I enjoyed our performance in the second half. Goals change games, we started the second half well but they scored.

“We hit the crossbar at 2-1. If that goes in the game is different.

“They scored when we were on top in the second half. We could have defended that better, but our players have shown spirit.

“We’ll play worse than that and win this season.”