Wayne Rooney was keen to shift the praise towards his players after landing his first win as permanent Derby boss.
Krystian Bielik’s tidy finish in the first half was enough to see off promotion-chasing Bournemouth 1-0 at Pride Park.
The Rams were good value for the win and it was a victory which lifted them out of the bottom three.
A delighted Rooney reflected on the maiden success, saying: “To get any win is great. Obviously I’ve not been looking at it like that (first win) as I’ve been doing it a while but yeah I’m delighted.
“But most of all I’m really pleased for the players. It shows what a difference it makes playing with more desire, and that desire to stop crosses.
“I demanded a reaction tonight and in fairness it has been a difficult couple of weeks.
“I felt this game had a lot of pressure on us tonight. There’s only one game lately where I’ve been disappointed in us and that was the loss to Rotherham last week.
“But I was delighted with their reaction tonight.”
Rooney altered County’s formation slightly from the weekend, going with a back three and he says this was to exploit holes in Bournemouth’s game.
He added: “I don’t like a back five, so we played a three.
“I felt if we matched them up that we would have more energy in the wing-back areas.
“I felt we could break the ball into Colin Kazim-Richards because they leave themselves a bit exposed with their wing-backs pushing high up.
“I felt it worked really well, especially first half and we could have scored more than the one we did.”
For the Cherries, this was a second straight loss and they have won just one of their last six league games as they lost further ground on the automatic promotion spots.
Disappointed manager Jason Tindall said: “I felt we weren’t at our best in the first half.
“We had a big moment early on with Dom Solanke’s chance after two minutes.
“And then I was disappointed to concede from a set-play but they (Derby) were better in the first half, hence why I made changes at the break.
“We huffed and puffed second half but we couldn’t break them down. We had a lot of the ball but just couldn’t force it.
“We weren’t good enough and didn’t ask enough questions of them. We didn’t take our chances when they came along.
“It’s one of those things we’re going through. We’re struggling to score goals.
“I still believe that we’ll score goals. We just need to ask more questions of the goalkeepers.
“It’s been a disappointing week to say the least, with just one point from nine, but it’s about how we bounce back now.”
