Matt Hamshaw responds to question over Derby County future as Rams target John Eustace
Matt Hamshaw has said he would like to stay at Derby County and insisted the new manager will inherit a squad of "good players".
Derby's first-team coach has been placed in charge as the club continues to hunt for the successor to Paul Warne who was sacked as head coach on Friday. John Eustace is currently favourite with with the Blackburn boss preparing his side to face Wolves today in the FA Cup.
With a game against Oxford looming on Tuesday in the Championship, Hamshaw says as it stands right now he will still be in charge after overseeing their 1-1 draw at Norwich City on Saturday which ended a run of seven straight league defeats. But speaking about his own future, Hamshaw, who was one of three coaching staff brought to the club when Warne was appointed in September 2022, has said he would like to remain at Pride Park.
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"Yeah, I'd like to stay," he said. "The club's been amazing and I've really enjoyed my time here. This couple of months has been really tough, for obviously a number of reasons. One is that we probably had not had the players available that we wanted.
"We haven't had the luxury of being able to train and work on things that we'd probably like to. We've been rolling players out, and they've not been 100 per cent right, and that's full credit to them in that changing room for keeping doing that.
"Today (Saturday), I had really good options, and we'd had a really good week in training, and I think that will stand the squad - whether it's me Tuesday or another manager Tuesday - in good stead moving forward."
Asked what kind of squad the new manager would be inheriting, Hamshaw added: "I'll repeat what I said to the players in that I just wish I could inject them with a bit of confidence, which is obviously difficult when you've lost seven games.
"We've played well in some of those games, we've not played well in a couple of them. I can't sit here and say everything's been rosy in the garden because it hasn't been.
"But we feel like the level of performances has been really good. Whichever manager comes in, he's working with good players, he's got good options and it's a top job anyway without having the players available that we've now got. I'm sure there'll be a number of candidates who want this position, and like I say, the club has been really good to me and all four of us.
"Hopefully, in some capacity, Andy Warrington (goalkeeping coach) and myself can stay. If that isn't the case, then look, I have no regrets. I won't say anything bad about the club. They've really looked after us.
"They've done everything in their capabilities, and I honestly think that probably with the run of defeats we've been on, you'd see a lot of managers losing jobs before they did. They might have kind of left it as long as they could have, but I don't make them decisions. It's difficult to take, but then it's football."
