After Rovers exacted revenge for their opening day defeat against Southend United, with a 1-0 victory this time around, Tony Mowbray faced the clubs’ media team to discuss the performance and the result, as well as the reason behind Bradley Dack’s early withdrawal.
“At times, the 1-0 wins can be the best type of wins as things got a bit nervous towards the end, but I’d like to reserve a special mention to the fans who got behind us and drove us on to remain resilient and keep them out. We had similar scenarios at the end of last season where we were on the right end of some tight 1-0 wins and you do need your fans behind you so that the players can find that extra bit of energy, or throw themselves in the way of shots. Together, we managed to get over the line, but now we have to concentrate on putting the points in the bag and moving on.
“A win is the most important aspect to football and it doesn’t essentially matter how you get them. Over the course of the season, we’ve had some brilliant wins where we’ve been scintillating at times, yet there have been days, and there will be days in the future, where things won’t flow as easily as we’d like and we’ll have to try and grind out 3 points. The games in recent weeks has shown the various types of ways in which we can win games, as at times we’ve brushed past teams then we’ve had days like today, where we’ve had to remain patient and grind out the victory.
“We talked about how the game would loosen off a bit, at half-time, and I talked about how, if we got the first goal to go ahead, that we should sit back on it and that we should continue to pile on the pressure. Saying that however, Southend have to be given a lot of credit for the way they retaliated as they had a lot of strikers on the bench, who they managed to throw on in order to try and salvage something. I thought that, with the introduction of Dominic Samuel, and the pace of Adam Armstrong, we could break away on the counter-attack as they tried to gamble by throwing everyone forwards, but it didn’t quite happen for us.
“Despite the positive performance today and throughout the season which leaves us on 25 wins and 85 points, we haven’t achieved anything yet. Wigan won today and Shrewsbury have a cup final to deal with on Sunday, so we have to keep going, keep grinding out results and remain focused.
“The goal was a great combination of two wise old heads combining, in Danny Graham finishing off Craig Conway’s cross. Craig has been chomping at the bit to get on the team sheet, and I’ve had conversations with him regarding his role in the side. There have been certain games where I’ve preferred to opt for 4 strikers, in Danny (Graham), Bradley (Dack), Adam (Armstrong) and Marcus (Antonsson). Today, I looked at their team and singled out Ben Coker, who, although is a fantastic left-back who can control and distribute the ball well, I felt as if we needed a hard-working, honest player out wide and I believed that Craig was the answer. During our conversations, I’ve talked to him about improving his end product, with goals and assists and he understands that, which was shown by his great assist today. Both Craig and Danny have been model professionals throughout my time here, they haven’t moaned when they’ve been out the team after recovering from injury and they’ve taken their chances when their opportunity has arrived, which is why they’re both important assets to this side.
“We’ve done well to come away with all 3 points here today, but now we have to move our focus onto Gillingham on Tuesday and Bristol Rovers next week. They’re both relatively long trips which we have to look forward to and not fear as I know that, if we play to our maximum, we’ll come away with all 6 points.
“We’ve had a few goal line scrambles this season and more often than not, they’ve ended up in the back of our net, whereas today, we managed to hold on and clear the ball to safety. I see the clearance as a good omen for us, but you have to say that Southend worked hard enough to get back into the game today, but there’s no sympathy from our end as they’re sat comfortably in mid-table and we needed the points more than they did today, but credit for our defenders for putting themselves on the line today. Despite that, Chris (Powell) has got them working very hard and they made life really difficult for us.”
The manager rounded up his interview by talking about the injury to Bradley Dack, which saw the playmaker withdrawn from the game after only 12 minutes.
“Bradley coming off is a big disappointment for us as he can always be the difference for us between getting all 3 points and getting nothing. In terms of how the lad is, we took him off as a precaution, because he felt as if his hamstring was tight, and once you start to feel that, the next burst he could have done, may have put him out for the rest of the season, but we should know more after we assess him tomorrow.”
