Derby secured a record-equalling 12th away win in the league this season with a fluid attacking display at the Memorial Stadium to move back up to second.
After a 3-0 win at home to Port Vale last weekend, the Rams were looking for another three points to move back into the automatic promotion places in the race to return to the Championship.
Paul Warne made just the one change from the side that started last weekend, captain Conor Hourihane started in place of Max Bird, who will be out for around three weeks with a calf injury he picked up in training on Tuesday. Louie Sibley and Joe Ward kept their places in the wing back positions having previously played starring roles in the three-at-the-back system Derby operated in.
It was Warne’s side that started the better of the two, looking to avenge the demons of their last trip to Bristol, in which Rovers scored a controversial 95th minute penalty to take a point. Playing at a high tempo, Derby looked threatening as Joe Ward put a couple of dangerous balls into the area in the opening few minutes, but on both occasions, no one in a green shirt connected with them. Curtis Nelson was then just a couple of inches away from reaching Ward’s teasing delivery into the six-yard box from a free kick.
In the 27th minute, Conor Hourihane’s effort hit a Gas defender in the face, before Mendez-Laing cut inside from the left and bent a shot towards the far side of the goal, which went wide.
The Rams thought they had taken the lead on the half hour mark, when Nathaniel Mendez-Laing cut in from the right and plays in Sibley on the left-hand side of the box with a great ball. He squared it to Gayle, who found the back of the net, but the flag had gone up, and the goal didn’t count: Sibley adjudged to have been offside.
Dwight Gayle gave Derby the lead ten minutes after the restart. After the hosts only managed to clear the ball as far as him, Tom Barkhuizen’s first-time shot hit the bar and bounced down onto the goal-line. Ward in the Rovers goal tried to stop it, but Gayle got the last touch to scramble it over the line for his second goal in as many games. It came at a crucial moment too: Rovers had been starting to drag Derby into a scrap.
Barkhuizen would soon get his goal, though, as Derby doubled their advantage inside four minutes. Eiran Cashin played a great ball down the left for Mendez-Laing, who used his pace to break before threading the ball for Barkhuizen. Entering the box in the inside right channel, the number seven finished first time, firing into the roof of the net.
The hosts stepped it up a gear having gone two behind, as they looked to get back into the game. Anthony Evans, who scored the late equaliser in this fixture last season, looped the ball just over the bar, before Scott Sinclair went close in the 72nd minute. The former Team GB Olympian went round Joe Wildsmith, but Eiran Cashin did brilliantly to clear the ball off the line for a Rovers corner.
The Gas had to clear the ball off their line five minutes later, Sonny Bradley flicking the ball back across goal to substitute Martyn Waghorn, who would have a go, before Eiran Cashin’s follow-up effort was also scrambled away.
With nine minutes to play, a golden opportunity for the hosts to half the deficit. Less than two minutes after coming on, striker John Marquis had a free header and simply needed to put it either side of Wildsmith, but he could only direct it straight at the Rams’ number one.
Martyn Waghorn had a similarly good chance with five minutes to play. He was presented with the ball on a plate after a great run and pass across from Mendez-Laing. However, he could only fire it into the stand.
But in the 89th minute, Derby’s number ten would make it three, slotting Korey Smith’s cross from the right flank in at the back post with his left foot.
Analysis: One of Derby’s best performances of the season.
After the victory over Port Vale, there was much praise for Derby’s performance, but it was tempered slightly due to the fact that Darren Moore’s side are deep in the midst of a relegation scrap. That is not the case today with Bristol Rovers being a mid-table side who have taken four points off Portsmouth this season and beaten Bolton at the Memorial Ground also. Head Coach Paul Warne described it as “one of the most dominant displays all season” when speaking to BBC Radio Derby post-match, and I doubt many Rams fans would disagree.
This display is being put up amongst some of the Rams’ finest performances of the campaign, and rightly so. Every player in a green shirt (or a yellow one in the case of Joe Wildsmith) was deserving of a rating of at least seven out of ten.
The Rams dominated the ball in the first half with 66% possession and limited their hosts to just the one shot. Though the possession share was flipped in the second half, it never felt as if Derby had lost control of the game. Whilst Matt Taylor’s side had some good spells, there was never a sense that the visitors were in real danger of letting things slip, having gained a cutting edge in the second period.
Joe Wildsmith was solid in goal, as were the three centre backs in front of him, who also provided a good aerial threat at the other end of the pitch.
Whilst Ward and Sibley put a shift in to make the system tick, Ebou Adams was everywhere, though less effective in breaking up play once he had been booked, and Conor Hourihane looks to have benefited from a rest. Nathaniel Mendez-Laing has taken his assist tally to 17 with the fine ball to Barkhuizen, and Dwight Gayle looks to have found his feet, his goal a brilliant example of the poacher role Derby need him to play.
The player of the match must be Tom Barkhuizen, having scored, and been so close to a brace. Though most line-ups (including the one at the end of this piece) show Derby’s formation in the last couple of games as a 3-4-3, it is hard to portray exactly how Derby’s frontline looks, with Barkhuizen often sat just behind the other two forwards in more of a 3-4-1-2 of sorts. In his words: “They’ve [the coaches] given me the freedom to go and play wherever I want.” He was really impressive again in this role today, and long may it continue.
With Barnsley having suffered a 5-1 loss at home to Lincoln City, and Bolton and Portsmouth both drawing, Derby have had other results go their way. The Rams are back in second place, having slipped to third in midweek, and realistically need at least six wins from their final nine games if they are to go up automatically. Next up, a huge week, with Reading at home on Tuesday night before a crucial day in the promotion race on Saturday, as Bolton travel to Pride Park, and Portsmouth travel to fifth-place Peterborough.
Bristol Rovers (4-2-3-1): Ward (GK), Hoole, Taylor, Baggot, Gordon (Brown 74’), Finley (C) (Marquis 79’), Conteh, Vale, Evans, Sinclair, Martin.
Substitutes not used: Cox (GK), Connolly, Grant, Crama, Vaughan.
Derby (3-4-3): Wildsmith, Nelson, Bradley, Cashin, Ward, Adams (Smith 73’), Hourihane (C) (Thompson 90’), Sibley, Mendez-Laing (Blackett-Taylor 90’), Gayle (Waghorn 73’), Barkhuizen (Wilson 83’).
Substitutes not used: Loach (GK), Robinson.