After Rovers’ frustrating 1-1 draw away at Northampton Town, where Rovers missed an open goal and a penalty, Tony Mowbray spoke to the clubs’ media team to sum up, what was a disappointing afternoon for the club in the context of Rovers’ season.
“Ultimately, because of the last ten minutes, it feels like we dropped two points today. Craig (Conway) has gone around the goalkeeper and somehow managed to miss the open goal and Marcus Antonsson failed to convert from the spot, but regardless of that, we have to hold our hands up and admit that our performance today wasn’t as good as it should have been. It was a below-par performance for what we’ve been producing away from home. We’re disappointed with the point as we didn’t take the chance to take all three.
“We missed two quality players today through illness in Charlie Mulgrew and Dominic Samuel. It disrupted the team and our pre-match preparation as we were forced into the changes. We’ve had a few of the staff, as well as the players fall ill, so it’s something that’s been going throughout the whole club. A few of the players didn’t train this week and that was seen through today’s performance as we didn’t get to the levels we normally do.
“Despite our frustrations at Mulgrew not feeling well, Elliott Ward’s come in to do the job he’s paid for. Elliott’s played a few games for us earlier on in the season and did a decent job. My frustration is the nature in which we conceded the goal, from another set-piece. I felt that, their goal was their biggest threat today. They put lots of balls into the box and utilised a lot of set-pieces to show their directness, but we come away with a point despite being disappointed with the final 10 minutes and the overall performance, we just need to take it on the chin and move forward.
“Illness in the camp is not ideal, it harms training which subsequently harms match performances. With so many players not taking part, you can’t focus on team shape and organisation. After being 20 games in, it got to the point where we could risk just picking a team, with everybody naturally knowing their roles and what’s expected of them, whereas normally, with everybody feeling alright, we would have properly prepared for the game by being on the grass, analysing our opponents and giving the players scenarios to react to, but we didn’t get a chance to do that this week. We’re frustrated as we still felt that we should have come here and won, but we have to put it in the bag and move on.
“Our focus now is solely on Rochdale on Boxing Day as it’s important for use to bounce back with a win in our next game in order to keep the pressure on the top two. I don’t really see them slipping up, but our aim is to put pressure on Shrewsbury and ultimately Wigan if we can. The boys are disappointed today, we worked hard but we didn’t play to our usual intensity due to circumstances out of our control, but we need to take the point and move on.”
The boss was asked about Elliott Bennett and how the midfielder’s return from his 4-match suspension will help Rovers through the fixture congestion as he’ll hopefully play a part in some successful results.
“Elliott has to try and impact the team, but hopefully he comes back and gives us some drive, so let’s see if he can help us get three points in the next game.”
Mowbray rounded-up the interview by giving an assessment of how he thought the first-half of the season had been from his perspective.
“I’d say the first-half of the season has been ‘mixed’. It took us some time to acclimatise to the division, but since we’ve found our feet, we’ve been good. We’ve been frustrated a couple of times at home by teams and we were disappointing a few times away during the first few games, and the performances were like today. I think we would have lost this game had it been played in the first few weeks of the season, but the players have shown that they’ve got resolve and can impact games even when we’re not playing well, which is a good trait to have. Nobody should get carried away as every game in this league is tough, what we do know is that we’ll be doing everything we can to get three points in the next game.”
