Prior to Rovers’ first game back since the international break, an away trip to Oldham Athletic, Tony Mowbray spoke to the clubs’ media team about how he felt the international break was in terms of preparing for this game after the fixture away at Blackpool was postponed due to Rovers’ international call-ups. Mowbray also touched on the opposition and how he thought they would be setting up, as Rovers prepared to face up against another managerless team.
“Oldham’s season hasn’t been the easiest so far, however after watching their recent games I’d have to say they’ve been mighty impressive in those games. I watched them win away at Portsmouth, the score was tight at 2-1, yet Oldham dominated the match. They’ve got some very tidy players, some players that the fans will know. Jack Byrne is a very talented individual with the ball at his feet and can hurt anybody. Dan Gardner is a very talented footballer; they’ve got Craig Davies up-front as well as Eoin Doyle who has scored 3 or 4 in the last couple of games I believe; they’ve got good players all over the pitch to be honest. They’ve got some obvious threats and some confidence about them. Their caretaker manager (Richie Wellens) has instilled some of the belief and confidence in them I think, but it’s a dangerous game for us, a game where I hope we can go and impose ourselves on them, impose our style and hopefully with a decent following behind us, we can try and achieve what we’ve been doing fairly regularly away from home and try and take the three points.”
Mowbray was asked as to how a team, such as Oldham, suddenly have an upturn in form after sacking their manager.
“There are a lot of different reasons, I think, depending on what was happening with the previous manager, it might have been that he was building a really good team that needed to gel together, but the players weren’t capable of doing so quickly enough. It may have also been a case of the players not liking how the manager was doing things and they reacted strongly. I don’t really know John Sheridan but he comes across as a good man, a good footballing man who obviously had a fantastic career and he’s done some pretty good things in football management. It’s always sad to see people leave their jobs for whatever reason that was, I’m not sure; but I think Richie Wellens, who’s just finished his playing career, has he’s always been a footballer who’s liked to play with the ball and move it around the pitch as he was a very good passer of the ball. I’m assuming that he’s instilled that into the team and that’s what I see when I’m watching them play. They’re a passing team who like to move the ball through the lines and get it to their players in and around the final third. I think it’ll be an interesting game, we have to be very organised and ready for them and hopefully, we’ll have enough to get the job done.
“We should take a lot of confidence from our performances on the road this season. We should be able to go into the game with the belief that we can go to Oldham and win. Yet as I’ve just said, they’ve looked pretty impressive over the last three matches and it’s not a game that we will be taking lightly as it’s a game that will require total concentration and focus. We’re looking alright on the injury front after a few issues were cleared up over the break. If anything, this week will be more about who I’m leaving out of the eighteen, rather than who’s coming into the starting 11, which is positive. (Darragh) Lenihan is the only person who jumps out at me as being unavailable, young Scott Wharton is back on the grass training, but will probably miss this game. Any manager will tell you that picking their team is a difficult part of the week. You pick the 11 then the 7 subs along with a few other players in case of last minute problems. Sometimes you then have to leave some senior players out which are difficult decisions, but ones that you have to make as a manager.”
