Warnock confident Roberts will make a good impression

NEIL Warnock has backed Patrick Roberts to impress at Derby County after his deadline day move to Pride Park.

The forward will spend the rest of the season with the Rams on loan from Manchester City, having joined last Monday.

He spent the first half of the campaign on loan with Middlesbrough, in what was his second spell at the Riverside Stadium.

But that stint was cut short and a switch to Derby secured, just before the 11pm deadline.

Roberts made 10 appearances for Boro this season, including four League starts, with boss Warnock saying he struggled to find a way to fit him into his team.

Explaining why it just didn’t work out for him at the club, Warnock told Teessidelive: “I said to Patrick he’ll do well at Derby because they play a different game, they’ll get it in to his feet and he can run at people.

“With us, as I said to him, I signed him in good faith, I thought when I signed him he could have a big part to play.

“But he couldn’t play wide in our system because he couldn’t track full-backs and when I played him in the hole, if we played against a good three in there, which most teams seem to have, we were outnumbered.

“It just didn’t seem to work out for him whereas I think he’ll do well at Derby. The way they play, he’ll have more opportunities.”

DERBY County and Sheffield Wednesday are set to cool their interest in Standard Liege’s Aleksander Boljevic after it emerged he is no longer available on a free transfer, according to reports.

The Championship rivals were linked with the Montenegro international having initially thought he was available on a free transfer.

But website Dhnet is now reporting that Liege are commanding a transfer fee of £2m and that the Rams and Owls were both wrongly informed he would cost nothing.

The report said: “Aleksandar Boljevic, who is under contract until June 2023, can leave the club this winter.

“Badly informed, Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday believed, for a time, that the Montenegran could leave the Stade de Sclessin for free.

“This is obviously not the case since Standard want to recover part of his stake (2.2M EUR).”

A website called Footnews.be reported last week that the the 25-year-old would have been eligible to move because Montenegro is not part of the EU.

Boljevic is a right-sided player and could strengthen the Rams’ attacking options.

Derby already have Kamil Jozwiak, Tom Lawrence and Jordan Ibe as options out wide, with Martyn Waghorn and Jason Knight also capable of playing down the flanks.