CURT ABOVE
But Rams’ dominance does not pay off
PAUL WARNE admits Derby’s shaky home form is disappointing fans who expect his side to “smash teams up”.
County were held to a goalless draw by Cambridge as they failed to break down their stubborn visitors.
Tom Barkhuizen should have done better with a chance in the first minute which he fired straight at Will Mannion, while Martyn Waghorn saw a second-half header bounce over the bar with the goal at his mercy as Derby failed to turn their domination of possession into goals.
Warne, whose side have won just once in the league at Pride Park this season, said: “Our form at home hasn’t been good enough to justify a top-three spot, has it?
“If we’d hung on against Wigan and Portsmouth and scored late here we’d have been in the top three or four and it’d look great.
“Collectively we have to find a way to take our chances at home. When we’re on top we need to be clinical and at the moment we possibly aren’t.
“There wasn’t a lot wrong with the performance, but people don’t turn up to watch us draw 0-0, they want to see us smash teams up. But that wasn’t the case and that’s the disappointment for us.
“We need to be better at things if we’re going to be successful, we have to score goals.
“We didn’t have enough to finish the game off and we didn’t take our gilt-edged chances. We created enough chances, we had maybe four very good ones, and I’d expect us to take 50 per cent of them.”
Cambridge head coach Mark Bonner described the draw as “a brilliant point for us”.
He added: “I think every time we go to the top teams we know how hard it is over the last couple of years, so to get a result on a day where we had to defend so often in our box keeps us ticking along nicely.
“We played better at Wigan two weeks ago and lost, but that’s just how football works.
“I think our performance levels against the top teams have been OK and there’s definitely things we can do better, but this is a big, big point for us and gives us some confidence that we can go and get results against teams.
“We’ve had some horrible days against the biggest teams, so it’s not like a tourist day out, you’ve got to take something from the game, then you do learn from them.”