As the Blackburn Rovers fans prepared themselves for a promotion party, knowing that a win on Tuesday away at Doncaster Rovers would secure an immediate return to the Sky Bet Championship via the automatic promotion spots, Tony Mowbray took a more pragmatic approach into his pre-match interview as he discussed the promotion permutations, his views on the Championship and Tuesday’s opposition, Doncaster Rovers.
“I’m not really looking at the next game as ‘if we win, we’re promoted’, I’m looking at the final 3 games as ‘we want to win them all and achieve the maximum number of points’. I’m just focusing on Doncaster on Tuesday and preparing the team to concentrate on performing in that game. If, consequentially, we end up getting promoted with a win, then that’s a fantastic job done, but we have to keep at it and focus on ending the season as best as we can. It’s been a great achievement for the team to have achieved the unbeaten run they did, and are currently on, but we need to carry on the form and finish off the season. The preparation is the same as it has been all season; we just have to pick the right team and go out and perform.
“I think Doncaster Rovers have a decent home record and they’re a team that came to Ewood and beat us at the start of the campaign. It’s a game that we have to approach with the right philosophy and mind-set, so hopefully we can go there and perform. For me, it’s easy to ignore the concept of winning promotion off the back of a victory on Tuesday, but for the players, they have to remain focused, put their boots on and go out and finish the job and I’m pretty sure that if they all concentrate on their own jobs and work hard, collectively as they have been doing, then we’ll have no issues. You’re only as good as the table suggests over 46 games, and as I said at the start of the season, if we can average 2 points a game, we’ll achieve our goals. 2 points a game would put us on 92 and at the moment, we’re on 90 points, so hopefully by 10pm on Tuesday, we can make it 93.
“Every run starts with the first game, and the latest defeat we’ve had was away to Plymouth, which was nearly 3 months ago. The defeat before that was away at Oldham, which was back in October, so I have to give a lot of credit to the players for taking the defeats personally and transforming their frustrations into dedication and high-performance levels which has seen the club get to where they are momentarily. The spirit and camaraderie that’s been created this season has been important, and we’re going to carry it on throughout the next 3 games. I think we’ve got a good blend of youth and experience, but they all understand that they need to work hard and pull together for a single cause.”
Mowbray was questioned about his plans for Rovers regarding next season, if the club manage to seal promotion with a win against Donny.
“In my view, sealing promotion gives us the opportunity to rebuild and to grow, whilst we’re back in the Championship. Alternatively, if we do end up in the Championship next season, there’s a real possibility that the division will be the strongest it has been in around 20 years, especially with the teams that could drop out of the Premier League and if you combine that with the strength of the sides already in the Championship, it’s a really strong league. It’s going to be a very strong Championship next year, mainly due to the fact that the top 6 contains massive teams, where only 3 will go up. For us to make a mark in the division, we need to strengthen the club, invest in both the team in order to give us a chance against teams, who will be – and are still potentially – picking up parachute payments from the Premier League.
“I think the main thing for us, if we get out of League 1, would be to understand the division that we’re going into and the difficulty it’s brought. The money has changed dramatically in the Championship, especially with the parachute payments, it allows clubs coming down from the Premier League to keep £40-50m budgets and in total respect to League 1, that’s a million miles off the budget a club coming into the Championship gets. We just need to come to terms with how we’re going to go about it, whether we’re going to try and compete financially to try and move up the table, or whether we’re happy to fight against the drop.
“I don’t think I can plan ahead before I know where we’ll be playing our football. We’ve still got 3 games left in order to ensure where we’re playing next year. If we can get a result on Tuesday night, then I believe that the discussions regarding next season would begin quite quickly, which will allow us to prepare the ambition and structure for next season.”
