After 19 days of no action for the Blues, Tony Mowbray returned to his usual schedule of speaking to the clubs’ media team prior to games. For Rovers’ first match in nearly 3 weeks, they prepared to welcome playoff aspirers Bradford City, to Ewood Park on Thursday night.
“Training has been surprisingly intense because it’s sometimes difficult to motivate the group when they don’t have a game to target at the end of the week, and with 5 being away on international duty, it was nice to see the intensity remain high. We’re looking forward to Thursday and hopefully we can get back to winning ways. We have to try and perform on the night in what will be a difficult game and Simon (Grayson) is in charge now and he lives around 100 yards away from me, but he knows the club well. Saying that, we know what’s at stake and we’ll remain focused and driven on what we need to do.
“I think we need to focus on ourselves because the league table is very tight. Apart from Wigan, Shrewsbury and ourselves, everyone else has dropped points and with all due respect to the teams below us, we shouldn’t really be looking over our shoulders in fear as we’re around 21 points clear of 7th place, with a game in hand, so we need to focus on finishing in the top 2 and the only way we can do that is by winning our games and hope someone does you a favour down the line. We could potentially reach a scenario where we have 3 teams with over 90 points, which is unheard of, I believe, as you can usually get promoted by reaching around the mid-80s in points, but we just have to focus on the 9 games we have left as we can’t affect anyone else.
“Wigan and Shrewsbury have shown over the past few weeks, that playing their games in hand hasn’t psychologically affected them, as they’ve picked up wins. I think with us playing first this week, it concentrates their adrenaline levels and I think they’re both solely focused on getting out of this division. Wigan, like ourselves want to go back at the first time of asking, whereas Shrewsbury have found themselves in an unfamiliar position, but their drive and determination is what’s keeping them going.
“In the position that I’m in as a manager, I’m here to play exciting football and to win matches, but what I do know is that if we don’t win football matches, then we won’t be exciting and we won’t achieve the goals we set at the start of the season, which could lead to a downpour of emotion. We shouldn’t be thinking about that however, we should remain focused on playing and winning the 9 games that we have remaining in this season.
“I think the win at Bradford in August has no reflection on Thursday’s game. We were playing a different brand of football, where we focused mainly on the counter-attack and allowed them to have the ball and it was only the game that we lost at Oldham that changed my mentality on how we should play and since losing 4 in the first 11 games, we’ve only lost 1 in 27, so we have to try and see it out until the rest of the season now and try and finish strong.”
Mowbray concluded the interview by noting the talent, passion and drive that was within the Rovers dressing room and how this side compared to previous teams the 54-year old had managed.
“This group is quite special, but we have to get out of this division by continuing to win football matches, otherwise this group won’t stay together, I’m pretty sure of that. This group will not fancy another season in League One, with all due respect, especially the likes of the loan players and the senior players who are coming into their final years, so we are giving everything we’ve got to rally together with the supporters and get promoted come May.”
