Neil Critchley makes bold Blackpool claim as he shares Derby prediction

Second half goals from Korey Smith, James Collins and Martyn Waghorn helped the Rams to a 3-1 win at Bloomfield Road, with Kenny Dougall’s strike proving to be nothing more than a consolation.

Despite being on the losing side, Critchley was happy with the work rate of his side, and is hopeful the Seasiders will benefit from producing similar displays going forward throughout the rest of the season.

"It probably clicked for Derby unfortunately,” he said.

"They’ll be up there at the end of the season - you can see the strength on their bench, they’ve got really good players.

"We had no divine right to turn Derby over and beat them.

"They showed their quality in key moments of the game.

"With the experience they’ve got they don’t panic in those situations.

"You’d rather be learning and winning at the same time, but you’re going to lose games of football throughout a season, and how you do that is important.

"The players never gave up, they kept going to the end pushing forward.

"If we keep showing the same spirit and application then we will get our just rewards in the long-term.”

Blackpool’s next outing comes away to Charlton Athletic at the Valley on Saturday afternoon.

"They’re all difficult games in this league,” Critchley added.

"We’ve proven recently that we can go anywhere and win.

"We know Charlton is a tough game away from home.

"We need to add both sides of our game together.

"At Barnsley we were hard to beat, but played no where near as good football as what we played against Derby.

“And against Derby, we played really good football in periods of the game but didn’t defend the goal well enough.

"If we put those two things together then we’ll be a good team.”

Following the opening 10 games of the season, the Seasiders currently sit 13th in the table on 15 points - with four wins, three draws and three defeats.