Liam Rosenior believes there is plenty to be positive about at Derby County after embarking on a four-game unbeaten run - but he also knows there’s plenty more still to come too.
Derby have picked up one win and three draws from their last four outings in the Sky Bet Championship, with Wayne Rooney leading the side while the Rams remain without a permanent manager following Phillip Cocu’s departure in November.
Rosenior, who holds the position of Specialist First Team Coach on the backroom team, has been assisting Rooney alongside fellow coaches Shay Given and Justin Walker.
Derby endured a poor start to the season but results and performances have improved in recent weeks as they gradually begin to climb the league standings.
Next up is a home game against Stoke City on Saturday (3pm kick-off) and Rosenior believes that while Derby are moving in the right direction, plenty of hard work is taking place behind the scenes to ensure the side continue to improve in all areas.
Derby will go into the game buoyed by an impressive four-point return, and back-to-back clean sheets from the recent away fixtures at Millwall (won 1-0) and Brentford (drew 0-0).
“We have always said that we know we have good players and I think we’ve altered things that I think any coaching staff would change,” Rosenior told RamsTV.
“We’ve spoken more about being hard to beat, having a resilience and determination to win duels and headers and tackles, and I think the players are showing that.
“When you do get good performances, it gives you as a coaching staff a real basis and platform to build on.
“At Brentford in midweek, we were delighted with the application, the discipline and character of the players because they are all of the things we want to build on.”
The 36-year-old added: “We want to simplify things and I think you can see in our performances, but what we don’t want is to lose that confidence to play.
“I think that is the next step for us now, to go out and really dominate a game and be on top of all of the aspects that we have been working on the training ground day-in-day-out.”
Rosenior has seen an increase in confidence in recent matches, which has come as a result of improved performances and results.
In order to help build that confidence, he says the coaching staff focussed on providing a simplified platform and a structure for the players to build on for matchdays.
“When you go on a run of losing games and not winning games, it affects your confidence and that’s probably the hardest thing to change,” he explained.
“If you could get confidence and put it in a bottle, it would be worth a lot of money. But what you can do to instil confidence into the players is give them a platform, give them a structure to work from and give them an organisation where everyone knows their jobs.
“I think Wayne has been outstanding in that and as a coaching staff we have supported him in terms of making sure we have a game plan and the players understand what’s expected of them, know the demands that they’re under to get results.
“I think that’s shown in our performances of late.”
A victory over Stoke, and results elsewhere, could see Derby move out the bottom three.
While that is a target to aim for in the short-term, Rosenior has made it clear that he believes the long-term future will be brighter for the club.
He said: “It is more positive looking at the table and to be getting some more points, but for me it is just about a continuation of a process and that is what’s been really nice for us is that people are starting to see that.
“We wanted to change a few things and now people are beginning to see that, but we’ve got a long way to go and we are not going to be happy just to be out of the relegation picture.”
He added: “That is our first target for sure and we need to make sure we get there, but we are not going to set the players targets that we don’t think they can reach.
“We think that if we continue in this run of performances, we can get to a better place in the long term.”
