Head Coach John Eustace praised his side’s ‘sensational’ defensive performance as Derby County won 1-0 at West Bromwich Albion.
The Rams claimed their first victory of the 2025/26 Sky Bet Championship season as an 84th minute goal from substitute Andi Weimann and a determined and battling performance at The Hawthorns earned three points and a clean sheet.
The match saw Derby having to defend valiantly against Albion’s pressure, with Dion Sanderson and Matt Clarke making multiple notable blocks amongst a high-performing backline against Ryan Mason’s previously unbeaten side.
Eustace spoke to RamsTV after his side secured the win against the Baggies to get their first three points of the season on the board.
On getting the first league win on the board and the performance…
I thought it was a great away performance. In the first half, we suffered a little bit. We showed West Brom a little bit too much respect. There are a couple of players out there who haven’t been able to train with us properly throughout the week, and maybe they couldn’t do their jobs as well as we wanted.
The way we defended the box in that first half was sensational. We limited West Brom to next to nothing. We
had to deal with a little bit of pressure, but we defended very well.
We had to be better with the ball in that first half to give us a bit of
a breather.
We got the boys in at half-time. We told them a couple of tweaks
that were needed to get us up the pitch a little bit when we were
pressing and get us off the 18-yard box, which I felt we did. We took the game more to West Brom and we were better with the ball as well. We got the goal and saw it out really well during the latter stages.
On scoring a late winner…
To score with around five minutes to go was great. It’s about the 25-man squad. The substitutions that we made certainly impacted the game today. I’m delighted for Andy Weimann. It’s been a really difficult five or six months for him; he had a bad knee injury last year before joining us. He’s come back. He’s getting his match fitness up and to finish like he did with that goal was great.
I was very fortunate to work with Andi when he was a young boy, and he was a top player then. Working with him last year at Blackburn, I know that when he’s fit and firing, we’ve got a real lethal finisher in the Championship. Today was a prime example of that.
