Shaun Derry vows to shield Cambridge United players from pressure

Derry to shoulder the pressure

Shaun Derry has vowed to shoulder the pressure in order to shield his Cambridge United players as they bid to kickstart their season at Newport County tomorrow.

The U’s are bottom of the Sky Bet League Two table without a league win yet this season, although they have secured victories in two cup competitions.

The pressure is growing for a turnaround in form, but manager Derry is determined to take those expectations on his shoulders and protect his players.

“I’ve always carried pressure, as a footballer, as a character, as a captain, as a personality, and that’s what I intend to do here,” he said.

“If any of the pressure is going to come on anybody, it should come on me. It shouldn’t be coming on the players.

“It should just be full backing for them players because there are a lot of young men out there, young players who are forging the way in their short careers that they’ve had at this moment in time.

“So let the pressure come on me, because I can handle it. It’s not a problem for me.

“I’ve experienced these times as a player as well which are only a few years ago. So I know where they are, and I knew how I responded as a player when you had the full backing of a manager.

“And that’s what I’ll be giving them.”

IUnited have shown promise in spells and halves of games this season, but the inability to reproduce it for a full match has proved costly.

And when put to Derry that it is those fine details that are turning matches away from United’s grasp, he said: “I think that’s been the story of the season, the fine margins, I honestly do.

“In terms of being exposed when we’ve made a mistake, I think ruthlessly we’ve been punished this year.

“Now at certain times of the season last year, when we’ve made them frailties and mistakes, we perhaps got away with it, and you’ll see that develop and that will have been the story of so many teams this year.

“They’d have been making the same mistakes as us, but not being costly mistakes, ie like goals. And that’s what’s happened this year, we’ve played certain opponents this year where every slight frailty we’ve shown has been punished, losing us the game.

“That’s the difference between this year and last year. But at the same time, things can’t continue this way.

“I’m absolutely dead cert that we will have a little bit of a rub of the green, we will have a little bit of luck at times and I don’t think we’ve had that this year.

“But I don’t want that to be an excuse, I’m just telling it how it is.

“Fine lines in both boxes, if you can nail off two parts of the pitch perhaps where we’ve not been good enough, it’s been both boxes.

“We’ve not been as clinical defending and we’ve not been as ruthless as we perhaps showed at certain times last year in our attacking play.”