PHIL Parkinson was left cursing “soft” defending after watching his side slip to a second successive home defeat.

Derby County raced to a 2-0 lead inside 21 minutes, both goals netted by David Nugent, and were rarely tested in a comfortable afternoon at the Macron.

Wanderers did grab a 91st minute consolation through Gary Madine but Parkinson had no complaints with the result.

“The goals were too soft,” he said. “We gave a good team a big lift early on. Those types of goals, at any level of football, are avoidable. They should have been stopped at source.

“The first one was a throw-in, weak defending, and the second one was a cross which came in far too easily, we didn’t track the runner early enough.

“The energy drained out of us after that. We responded in the second half as well as we could and if we’d have scored the goal five minutes earlier you never know, we might have had a charge up. But all in all we got beat by the better team and we didn’t defend as well as we did on our travels.”

Wanderers had shown some improvement in away trips at Millwall and Birmingham, seemingly recovering from an opening day defeat against Leeds.

Parkinson saw some familiar unwanted traits in the first half, however, as the Whites gifted Derby a foothold in the game.

“After the Leeds game we sat down and went through a lot of things about what we needed to do to get results,” he said.

“We had put that right in the last two games but if you look at the soft goals we conceded against Leeds, they were very similar today. We have to eradicate that very quickly. You have to stay in the games.”