After watching Leeds United snatch victory from the jaws of defeat on Boxing Day against a ragged Rovers side, Tony Mowbray rounded-up his thoughts with the club’s media team, after what was an exhilarating affair at Elland Road.
“That’s football for you and we have to take the result on the chin. We didn’t manage the game very well during the last 4 minutes and they threw everyone forwards, including their centre-half, (Pontus) Jansson, and all our strikers seemed to go back with him for some reason and I’m not exactly sure why that happened. When you’ve got a box full of 20-odd players, and the opposition are continuously allowed to keep pumping balls into our box, eventually one of them is going to go in. There are lessons to be learned from the final 4 minutes, however the first 90 minutes included a lot of positives. We showed fantastic togetherness, work ethic and application of our game plan and it’s a frustrating way to end for us, because it’s a difficult ground to come to. Overall, we need to take the positives out of the first 90 minute, learn from our mistakes and move into the next game.
“A lot of people will continue to tell us that we’ve lost a lot of points late on in games, my kids certainly keep reminding me of that, however had we known the root cause of the problem, we would have addressed and fixed it earlier than this point. Today’s goals were different to Norwich’s goal which itself was different to Birmingham’s goals, but that’s football, you need to remain in total concentration for the whole 90 minutes, otherwise you come away with nothing. Did we get carried away after our second goal? Maybe we did. Hopefully we can improve and learn as the season continues and the group develop.
“I could have easily been stood here talking about 9 points from the last 3 games, but these are the fine margins of football. If you add in the points dropped at home to Rotherham earlier, that’s 11 points dropped. If you place that on top of the 31 we already have, we’d be sitting in and around the top 6. Football is a 90 minute, plus added time game. We need to be wary and good enough to understand and hold out for long enough in order to secure the 3 points.
“The lads always work really hard for each other, but today, we played a Leeds United side who are fantastic at what they do. Both, the number of men they get forward in order to stretch the pitch, and their passing can be sublime at times, and I thought we managed them pretty well for a majority of the game. We just have to accept that we’re playing against really good footballers and I thought the humility of our team accepted that, and we stifled them and gave them problems up until we scored their opener. It’s gone though, it’s over with, we need to not dwell on it and move on. Our next game at Sheffield United is another tough one, but we’ll go to Bramall Lane and see what we can do with only 1 day of preparation.
“Ryan Nyambe came off with a hamstring injury, but he isn’t the only one to suffer from that injury. This is the part of the season where, as a result of the intensity and sheer number of the games, you expect a few knocks and tweaks to your players, which is why you have a squad full of them. You’ve got to play every 3 days around this period, but it’s a massive test to both the physicality and mentality of the lads. Some of them are going to find it tough and will potentially break down and shy away after today’s disappointment, whereas others will thrive on it and strive to improve. We’ll have to see who’s the former and who’s the latter as we check on them on Thursday and prepare ourselves for Saturday.”
