Prior to the much anticipated Lancashire Derby, which sees Rovers make the short trip to the seaside to face Blackpool, Tony Mowbray sat down with the club’s media team to discuss the strength of the opposition as well as the manager’s thoughts on his counterpart in the Blackpool dugout, former Rovers manager, Gary Bowyer.
“The plan is to keep the ball rolling. It’s obviously not as easy as only showing up and getting a win; it’s the fourth game in around ten days and the players have expended a lot of effort, but we have to ask them to go once again. We’re looking forward to the game however; it’s only a short trip, only down the road. Blackpool seemed to have been involved in a lot of tight games, they’re very organised and have some threats on the break, so I think that it’s a dangerous game for us, a game that we have to approach very positively, play on the front foot in order to ask questions of their defence and see if we can keep the run going.
“I think the only team around us that has a game on Tuesday are Charlton, so this game is almost like a ‘free swing’ for us in order for us to get more points. We’ll go and try to be brave and positive and see if we can get some more points to add to the total in order to keep going. As I’ve always said, up until Christmas you just try to accumulate as many points as possible; then after Christmas, you can start to look at the league table and pinpoint each game and see which ones you can afford to only get draws in and ones where you have to get all three points.”
Mowbray was then asked about Blackpool’s manager, Gary Bowyer, in relation to how the Rovers boss thought Bowyer had done during his first year at Blackpool.
“I would have to say that Gary’s done a very good job, in which he’s got them promoted into this league. Blackpool are another club that, only five or six years ago, were playing top flight football, and they’ve obviously had a very swift decline down the leagues, but Gary’s done well in rekindling the spirit of Blackpool Football Club and has helped turned round their fortunes around. Without saying we’re the best of friends, I’ve had a conversation with him and he seems like an honest, hard-working, good man and I look forward to seeing him on Tuesday, but hopefully after Tuesday, we can wish them well and move on.
“I think, as a football man who had been at this club for a while, he would have been very proud of being given the managerial role at a club as huge as this. I think he did a fantastic job during his reign here and he seems to have developed a lot of good footballers, both young and in their prime, at this club who have gone on to have spectacular careers, which I believe he deserves a lot of credit for. He stabilised this ship as best as he could have done, however I’m sure he’s enjoying his spell at Blackpool as any promotion on your CV is fantastic to look back on.
“This game will be a big challenge for us, first and foremost, because Gary will make sure his team are fired-up, because they’re playing Blackburn Rovers. Without having studied their results all season, they’ve obviously had some good results this year and they’ve got some talented goal threats. I think (Kyle) Vassell is a threat at the top of the pitch, (Viv) Solomon-Otabor, who’s on loan from Birmingham has some power and speed on the counter and Jay Spearing is also an experienced player who helped Bolton get promoted out of this league, so we have to be mindful of their squad as they’ve got a lot of really talented players. We just have to go there and force our style onto them.
“I’ve got a bit of a selection headache after the weekend. As I’ve said to the lads, we need to try and utilise the group of players we have, as it’s the fourth match in ten days off the back of three high intensity games. If you look at our numbers in the physical department, such as the running stats, they’re the highest they’ve been all season, so we have to be mindful of that and pick a team that we feel can maintain the levels we’ve been playing at, in order to avoid injuries.
“Some of the lads have picked up a few knocks, but I don’t think anyone’s going to be left out of contention after the weekend, and after this game, we don’t have a game until we play Crewe in the FA Cup on Sunday, which will give us an extra day to rest and recuperate, which is good, so hopefully we can keep putting the effort in, in order to get over the line on Tuesday.”
