Gary Rowett wants to see more energy from his Derby County side when they take on Preston North End in their latest Sky Bet Championship fixture this evening.
After tasting a 2-0 defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers at Pride Park Stadium on Saturday, Derby are back in action on home turf tonight against the Lilywhites (7:45pm kick-off).
The Derby boss says he will be making changes to the Rams’ starting XI for the clash against Alex Neil’s side.
Speaking at Monday’s pre-match press conference, Rowett said: “We want to have some more energy in the team and we’ll look to make changes to try and make that happen.
“I am not going to be too reactionary after one poor performance – but we know it wasn’t good enough and none of us are happy about it.
“You would look to change things for a midweek game anyway and we have good players in the squad ready to call upon.”
Preston have started the season in a positive manner and have acquired four points from their opening two matches.
A 1-0 home win against Sheffield Wednesday on the opening day of the campaign was followed up by a 0-0 draw at Leeds United on Saturday.
Rowett is expecting a typically difficult test against the Lilywhites.
He said: “We have played against Preston and Alex Neil’s teams before and they’ll have an edge to them and be physical.
“They have some good players and are good at what they do.
“As ever, it’s about us and what we do. We have to concentrate on our focus on what we do both with and without the ball.”
He added: “As a manager I know I have to get the best out of my players and that didn’t happen on Saturday.
“We have done some good things in the first two games but I know that the game is defined by the result.
“I have to try and take the emotion out of it and, regardless of the result, be critical when reviewing the game.”
Rowett has seen some encouraging moments in Derby’s opening two league fixtures so far, but knows there’s plenty of room for improvement.
A 1-1 draw at Sunderland got the season underway prior to Saturday’s defeat against Wolves.
In both games the Rams enjoyed long spells of possession but, ultimately, have been unable to create significant number of opportunities.
In addition to that, Rowett feels Derby can be better out of possession.
He said: “Against Wolves, like Sunderland, we had some bright moments without creating too many obvious opportunities.
“We had a lot of the ball on Saturday against Wolves, but they did more with it than us. We spoke about that sort of thing a lot in pre-season and also in the first two games; we need to be more ruthless.
“On the other side, I don’t think we recovered our shape or worked hard enough to get back into our shape when we didn’t have the ball; we know what we need to work on that and react better.”
