It came back and bit us on the backside

“Thankfully it didn’t rain during the game because we could all see before the game that it looked very dodgy as far as there being puddles on the pitch,” said Burley after Derby’s 2-0 victory.

“But the referee was proved right, the rain stopped and we managed to get a decent surface in the end for playing.

“I said before the game that attitude and commitment were the key things and we showed that. In the first half I thought we passed it very well and created three or four good chances.

“We did exactly the same at Sunderland two weeks ago but didn’t get a goal and thankfully this time in the second half we did get two goals.

“I was frustrated in the first half. When you are on top away from home you want to take advantage of it and we had drawn games where we have had the opportunity to win. Tonight we kept battling away and deserved the three points.

“We had five regular players out tonight and the boys who came in did very well. Hopefully we can push on and I think we are going in the right direction.”

Steve Cotterill was disappointed to be on the losing side and also with the performance but was in determined mood.

“We’ve just had a nine game unbeaten run and we would have settled for that,” he said. “But it is never nice to get beaten at home.

“I think it was just one of those nights that came from the Coventry game earlier in the week. You have little patches in football and we got a bit of a warning the other night with some parts of our play.

“It came back and bit us on the backside, but that 4-5-1 is hard to play against, and don’t let anyone tell you it is 4-3-3 either. It is so different when you play at home and you have to open up. It becomes a different game completely.

“I though we started quite brightly but some of our pass selection was wrong and all of a sudden their three players in the middle of the park started to get a stranglehold, so we needed to change and make sure we had enough bodies in there.

“We did start the second half brightly and they might only have been in our half a couple of times before the crucial goal went in. That was a sucker punch and I thought the free kick for their first goal was nip and tuck which the referee could easily have let go.

“As for the second goal, John McGreal has made a mistake, but what can I say about that? He has been magnificent for us all season and that’s all I would say.”

Finally he said he had no complaints about the pitch, just the inevitable result on that sort of surface.

“I have no gripes about the pitch. It was wet but we’ve all played on worse I think. Whenever I’ve been involved in a situation like that, when we work hard to get the game on, we always go and lose.”