Nico Yennaris believes Brentford must improve from their weekend showing against Newcastle United when they take on Derby County at The iPro Stadium tomorrow night. The Bees conceded three uncharacteristically sloppy goals at St James’ Park to go down to a 3-1 defeat in the North East. Now, ahead of their trip to the East Midlands, Nico believes they must do better on Tuesday when they take on Steve McClaren’s side.
“The first two goals were sloppy by our standards,” said Nico, speaking to Bees Player after Saturday’s defeat. “We have been pretty solid at the back this season but to concede two goals like that made it an uphill challenge. Towards the end of the first-half we started to get in the game again but we conceded another at the start of the second-half which made it an even bigger climb. We got ourselves back in the game and maybe could have had one or two more. As a team we have been better than that so we will put it behind us now and focus on Tuesday. We will reflect on the Newcastle game and look and learn from it. We then have to put it behind us and focus to come up with a gameplan for Tuesday.”
The 23-year-old has featured in all 13 games under Dean Smith so far this season after enjoying a breakthrough season at Griffin Park last campaign. Nico is not, however, taking his position in the team for granted and feels that he, like the rest of the young squad at Griffin Park, have plenty more to learn and add to their games.
“I am just trying to work hard every day and keep on trying to improve my game,” said Nico. “I want to be better in every game that I play and keep my shirt with good performances. That is all I can do at the end of the day. People shouldn’t forget that we are a very young team and we have a lot to learn. We take from Saturday and we learn from it. Hopefully come the end of the season we will look back at this and think that we learned from it, built on it and done even better. We learn from each game we play and just try and move forward.”