Following Rovers’ frustrating 1-1 draw at home to Northampton Town, Rovers boss Tony Mowbray spoke to the clubs’ media team to discuss and reflect on what was, an unsatisfying game, despite the performance being, on the whole, a positive one.
“I thought we played pretty well, to be honest. We knocked on their door a lot today and managed to restrict them from having any real chances, bar their goal. I thought the lads worked extremely hard throughout the whole game and it’s frustrating that we didn’t get what we deserved in the end. I’m disappointed with the result, but I believe that our performance today was miles better than when we played them at their ground in December.
“This is football, and sometimes you can’t score three every week. I thought we got the ball in good enough positions, but it didn’t fall for us today. It’s very difficult to play against such a packed defence who have flooded their own box with men, I thought we worked the ball well and Amari’i (Bell) showed the talent that he possesses today after coming on for Charlie Mulgrew. I can’t criticise the lads today because I thought it was a fantastic effort from them and the performance levels were higher than a lot of games that we’ve actually won, but there’s still a lot of games left to go and we have to keep going.
“We probed a lot and eventually found some efficiency down our left-hand side, which we attacked. They eventually responded to that with some changes to block us off, but credit to them because they were able to change their approach, block us off with their physicality and work really hard to keep us from scoring and going in-front. Ultimately, we didn’t get the rewards that our positive performance deserved.”
Mowbray was asked whether he believed that Rovers would have grabbed a second, following Danny Graham’s equaliser, as a result of the support from the fans.
“You would have hoped that the support from the stands would have sucked the ball into their net after Danny scored, yet the fans got behind the lads from the start of the game, till it’s end and we only ended up with the one. You can’t win every match and on days like today, you have to take these results on the chin, despite the good performances.
“I’m pretty disappointed with the officials today, as the amount of time that was wasted from Northampton’s set-pieces was ridiculous and I felt that the referee didn’t have control of the game. I don’t like to stand here and criticise officials, but the referee today did not feel the tension that was in the game and he repeatedly managed to puncture our momentum by stopping the play, breaking up our flow and calling for players to come towards him when he wanted to book them. I was frustrated with that as it seemed like he completely disregarded the restlessness in the stadium and made things worse. If he wants to book players, he should just book them without the posturing and dragging players out of their positions to speak to them.
“Charlie (Mulgrew) is going to need a scan on his ankle so we’ll have to wait and see what the verdict is. That said, I was pleased with Amari’i’s performance, despite the injury to Mulgrew. Bell showed why we worked so hard to bring him in, he’s a quality footballer and will be a massive attribute for us, but we’re obviously disappointed for Charlie as he’s been a leader and a star player for us this season.”
