Blues boss Paul Hurst was frustrated by Derby’s two deflected goals as Town were beaten 2-0 at Pride Park and felt his team may have shown the Rams too much respect at times.
"Frustrated in terms of the goals,” Hurst said when asked his assessment of the match. "I’m told they took deflections. Quite a few people have said to me, rather than me prompting them, that there wasn’t too much in the game.
"Naturally, Derby are a possession-based team and had a lot of possession. I’m not sure how many saves Bart was called upon to make and there was I think an element of frustration in the ground from the home supporters about what the outcome going to be.
"But once they got the goal, that seemed to give them a little bit more confidence, take a bit of the pressure off and then that’s when we’ve got to try and be a little bit braver on the ball.
"We had little spells during the game, we certainly had a spell in the first half but I didn’t feel we quite had the energy to get as much pressure on the ball as I would like at times.
"But again, that said, even in the games that Derby have lost they’ve enjoyed a lot of possession and made teams work without the ball.
"But perhaps what other teams have managed to do is when they’ve won it back is be more cutting and maybe take care of it a little better.”
As in previous games, both Derby goals came from set pieces, although Hurst doesn’t believe there have been too many common factors.
"They have been but I think they’re all very different,” he added. "But I’m accepting there are elements of set play.
"I don’t like the first one in terms of the ball [bouncing]. It’s not a great corner, in truth, it bounces, they make a run across the near post, it bounces, we get the first header on it, it goes to the edge of the box. That’s something we can look at in terms of a set-up.
"We can set up in lots of different ways, there’s always something. People talk about men on the post, things like that. But it’s a strike which has taken a deflection. Chambo’s in there saying it would have hit him had it not taken the first deflection.
"There’s an element of misfortune in that and then the second one, if someone has a direct shot at goal there’s not a lot you can really do about that.
"The wall, I thought there was going to be an argument in terms of someone turning their back or whatever.
"It’s nicked off Jon Nolan on the end of the wall and Bart’s saying that’s diverted the ball slightly, hence the reason he’s gone to his right initially and back on his left. I thought he got a good hand on it, I thought he’d managed to save it but it dropped in.
"You can’t rely on luck, that’s for sure, but at the same time we were perhaps a little bit unfortunate with those goals.”
Hurst thought playing more than 50 minutes with 10 men on Saturday against Aston Villa had some an impact.
"I think in truth it looked like that to a degree,” he reflected. "At the same time, you have to give Derby credit for the way that they play. They are going to make you run.
"It probably wasn’t the ideal opposition to play after having had 10 men at the weekend. But even then, how many real shots has Bart had to save?
"So it’s frustrating when that sort of goal goes in. It’s a good strike, take nothing away from Ledley, I don’t know how big the deflections were, I’m just going by what’s been said in the dressing room.
"But we did look like we lacked a little bit of energy. I have to say, maybe we were a little bit deep as well.
"That might have allowed us to get a little bit closer to them at times, but overall when you play Derby there’s an element you have to accept that they’re going to have a lot of the ball more often than not.”
While Bialkowski was forced to make few saves at one end, Carson was similarly underemployed at the other.
"A couple of very tame efforts and other opportunities where we haven’t hit the target, even right at the end,” Hurst continued.
"People say the game’s over but we’ve all seen it where two late goals change the outcome, the result and if you nick one you never know.
"It would have been nice to get that one just to see how Derby would have reacted. We put a couple of good balls in towards the end and we weren’t on the end of them.
"We just spoke about belief again, we mentioned that on Saturday and I mentioned it tonight. Did we truly have that belief collectively that we were going to get back in the game?
"It felt like we almost just gave them a little too much respect at times. We’ve got to shake that off because there are some big names in this league and some big name players.
"But we’re equals in terms that we’re in the same league and we’ve got to compete, which I think we did, but there were certain moments within the game that I want to see us better at.”
The Town manager confirmed that Cole Skuse was subbed due to a recurrence of the knock he suffered against Villa.
"His quad again,” he said. "He felt fine going into the game, he said. It was no major concern but again he felt that.
"I don’t know if it was from one of the tackles that he put in or not or whether it was just naturally happening in terms of the work he was getting through.
"He had to come off and we lost a bit of experience in there, I suppose, he’s one of our more experienced heads.
"But that said Flynn went on and did fine. I thought the subs that came on all had a relatively positive game after coming on. I’m not sure how much that influenced it but you are using a sub you might not have used.”
Hurst says there is nothing new on any loan additions: "No is the answer. I’ll be glad when we get to the window shutting and whether I like the squad that I’m left with, that we’ve got together, I’ve got to get on with it and that’s the same for every other manager out there.”
Derby manager Frank Lampard admitted his team had some good fortune with the deflections but felt the goals were deserved for their overall performance.
"They were a reward for work-rate, attitude, good play,” he said. "The not so good thing about the first half was that in the final third we didn’t get enough crosses in, we didn’t get enough shots in, even though I thought we played very well.
"We kept moving the ball very well with patience, with quality and we deserved the reward of the deflected goals.”