Cambridge United head coach Mark Bonner encourages players to learn from defeat to highly experienced Derby County
Head coach Mark Bonner has urged his Cambridge United players to not be ‘too disheartened’ by this afternoon’s 2-0 defeat home to Derby County.
The U’s were second best for large parts of the contest at the Abbey Stadium against a visiting side that contained a number of players with Premier League and senior international experience.
However, taking into account the calibre of the opposition, Bonner has insisted those within his squad should use the loss as a learning experience.
“They’ve got a few internationals on the pitch and when you get one-v-one with them it’s not easy to beat them. When a cross comes in, they’re fairly good at defending them,” he said.
“In the end we’re playing against a team that was playing in the Championship last year and I think three of them were playing in international football last weekend.
“It’s tough when you play against them. You’ve seen when we play against some of the teams that it’s easier to create chances, it’s no shock it’s harder to create against them because they’re really good.
“That’s the level that we’re aspiring to try and get to and they’ll (the Cambridge players) have to go some because they’re at a really good level.
“It’s harder to create chances but we did have a couple of counter-attacks we didn’t make the most of, a few moments in the box where the final cross probably wasn’t quite at the level that we needed it to be. When you get those situations, you don’t want to turn them into their attacks, which happened two or three times – certainly with the second goal.
“They’re little bits we’ve got to learn from but we can’t get too disheartened when you lose against a team as strong as them because whilst we have an ambition to be as competitive in these games and see how many points we can get, we also have a realism about us.
“That isn’t being pessimistic, it isn’t going into a game thinking we can’t win because we think we can beat anyone and compete with anyone, but at the same time you have to respect there is a different level of player out there on their team.
“These are the games you can learn lots from, individually and as a team, and hopefully we can pick bits up that will serve us well for the season.”
While United spent much of the first half on the back foot they had kept Derby at bay and looked to be heading into the break level at 0-0. But an error from Zeno Ibsen-Rossi in the 45th minute allowed James Collins to put the Rams one-up – and into a lead they never looked like relinquishing.
Nevertheless, Bonner has backed the summer signing from AFC Bournemouth to brush off that disappointment and react positively in the weeks to come.
He said: “He’s obviously misjudged the flight and not been able to deal with it.
“If we’d have got in at 0-0 it just gives you that little bit more belief but having said that we’ve got a brilliant record this year of coming from behind, a brilliant record of scoring goals and getting points late in games.
“We came out in the second half and I thought we did well at times, we were in the game.
“Mistakes happen and he’ll recover from that. He’ll learn no doubt but in the end it was a bit of a pivotal moment at the end of the half but it wasn’t a game-defining moment because we still had plenty of time to do something about it.”
