Paul Warne was delighted for striker James Collins after he scored his 200th goal in club football during Derby’s 2-0 win over Carlisle.
The Republic of Ireland international’s brilliant brace secured the Rams their first win at Carlisle since 1957.
Collins’ milestone came with a fine instinctive first-half finish before the 32-year-old wrapped up the points at Brunton Park with an emphatic late penalty.
Warne, who has a quartet of strikers to keep happy at Pride Park, said: “We always try and pick a team to win and I thought the team would win with Collo in it.
“Starting him paid off. He was really good. He led the line really well.
“You need a physical presence up there when other players aren’t having their best game, and I thought Collo was the standout.
“I’m really pleased for him. He lives right, trains right. He’s the best version of himself. I’d have loved him 10 years ago!
“He’s a great guy and the lads love him in the dressing room so they’re really pleased he’s got a brace. It’s a nice day for him.
“Every player thinks they should play every minute of every game.
“It’s not easy, I have to have disappointing conversations and disappoint people, but that’s my job.
“I’m pretty pleased. I didn’t think we were amazing, but this is League One. You come away and you have to be resilient.
“We’ve felt sorry for ourselves in recent weeks. Great teams dig in when they need to and I think we defended well.”
Carlisle had their chances and on another day could have got something out of the game.
Jordan Gibson’s strike slipped through Joe Wildsmith’s fingers but only hit the crossbar before Luke Plange’s effort came back off a post.
Carlisle boss Paul Simpson said: “You look at the players they’re bringing on and they’re really effective players.
“I always felt we looked like we’d get something out of it and the disappointing thing is that we didn’t show that in the second half.
“What we have to do is take that belief from what we did in the first half and get the momentum back from the last three games and that first half.
“We didn’t do enough second half and didn’t build on that momentum we had in the first half.
“They showed their experience, their nous and in the end it was a fairly comfortable second half for them.
“I was disappointed. I thought we were in it first half and deserved to be level at half-time.
“We created opportunities and caused them problems. We didn’t have that little bit of luck with Jordan Gibson’s shot and Luke Plange’s shot against the post.”
