John Coleman apologised to Accrington’s travelling fans for his team’s “abject” first-half performance after they were thumped 4-0 at promotion contenders Derby.
Accrington could not cope with Derby’s energy and drive and went behind in the seventh minute when Lewis Dobbin’s cross was turned in by Tom Barkhuizen.
It was no surprise when Derby scored again in the 16th minute, Conor Hourihane finishing a swift passing move with a low shot from just inside the area, and David McGoldrick made it 3-0 on the stroke of half-time when he converted a penalty after Ethan Hamilton handled a Craig Forsyth shot.
Derby struck again a minute into the second half when Liam Coyle’s back pass was intercepted by Jason Knight who played in Barkhuizen to find the empty net.
The only sour note for Derby came 11 minutes from time when striker William Osula was given a straight red card for kicking Coyle.
Coleman said: “I’d like to thank our travelling fans, I thought they were great, and then I have to apologise to them because the first-half display was abject at best.
“When you come here you’ve got to be tight, organised and well-drilled but we were all over the place and gifted them two goals.
“If you gift an average team a two-goal start you’re going to be in trouble, but against a team like Derby with a big crowd behind and it becomes harder and harder.
“We managed to stay in the game, I don’t know how, we should have been four or five down at half-time and then second half we gift them a goal after a minute.
“That’s nowhere near good enough, we let Derby press the life out of us and we didn’t do the same to them and that’s normally a trait of our team.
“It would be churlish not to commend Derby on how well they played but we can’t govern what Derby do, we’ve got to govern what we do and we were poor today.”
Derby head coach Paul Warne was impressed by the way his side started the game.
He said: “There was a real drive about the team and from the start I had a good feeling about the way we started in the first two or three minutes.
“Obviously you get a goal and it settles it and then get a second and then to get the penalty before half-time makes your team talk a little bit different.
“When we were asked to defend we defended well enough, you always want better but overall I was really pleased with our drive.
“There’s certain characteristics I want in our team and one of them is energy, drive and press and I thought we had that in abundance.”
