Following Rovers’ 1-0 defeat to Oldham Athletic, Tony Mowbray expressed his displeasure regarding the way his side played to the club’s media team. The manager also called on the importance of the next two home games – Plymouth Argyle on Tuesday and Fleetwood Town on Saturday – where he expects his side to react positively after this defeat.
“The lateness of the goal doesn’t cause the defeat to hurt any worse than it normally does. I’m more disappointed with the performance; the attacking performance of the game today didn’t allow us to create enough, we weren’t bright enough, sharp enough or incisive enough in the final third of the pitch. We can’t keep, keeping clean sheets to win football matches and we didn’t threaten them enough today. We were bullied by their big centre-forward in the defensive area which frustrates me a lot. I told the team to see how we react, we are going to lose matches, but we came here and talked about being very positive and getting three points today, then looking at the two home games to see if we can get nine points from the week, but it’s proved to be a difficult day for us and we’re left frustrated.
“(Elliott) Bennett held his hands up in the dressing room and apologised for his miss, which he didn’t need to do. When it’s a game of few chances, for us, we need to take the pretty good ones that come along and we didn’t manage to do that and we’ve paid the ultimate price at the end with their goal, so we’re leaving frustrated. Did we deserve anything from the game? Had it been 0-0, I would have still been frustrated about the performance and the lack of creativity. With total respect to Oldham, Blackburn Rovers are a much bigger club with bigger budgets, higher expectations and we have to come here and win, but unfortunately we didn’t.
“I think we were really poor in the top half of the pitch in the first half. I think the substitutions leave us more exposed, we’ve talked about Harry Chapman, he’s good at what he does, yet the team are a little bit more open when Harry’s on the pitch, so it becomes a more end-to-end type game and you’re hoping that in his good moments, he can hurt them more than they can hurt you. Bradley (Dack) found it difficult to make a real impact, even though he had a few good moments out on the right-hand side. It’s frustrating and disappointing, there’s no good smudging it over, I’m disappointed for the supporters who have paid their money and travelled in big numbers and expected their team to come to these kinds of places and win and as do I, but unfortunately we didn’t manage to do it today.
“We were too deep for their goal, we were afraid of the power of their centre-forward; we allowed the ball to go into the striker’s feet all day long. You can ask our strikers how difficult it was to get the ball into their feet in the first half with somebody right up their backside every time. It was an avoidable goal but it was almost as if it was coming and the team weren’t ultimately brave enough to defend higher up the pitch.”
Mowbray was asked whether he told the players that a response in their next two back-to-back home games were mandatory.
“Let’s wait and see, I’ve told the players that the home games aren’t easy, the expectations of the crowd is there, you have to start on the front foot, you have to go and do the job, playing for this club isn’t an easy gig, they have to have it in their bellies to carry the flag of expecting to win in this league. I expect to win, they should expect to win and the fans certainly expect to win, so now we’ve got two home games where we can pick up six points.”
