After Rovers accrued their third consecutive defeat, which came due to a late 2-1 defeat away to Reading, Tony Mowbray revealed his thoughts regarding the game, to the club’s media team.
“I don’t think today’s result matched the overall performance of the lads. Reading scored goals that came against the run of play, which you would never have predicted. After a minute of injury time was put on, we conceded from what seemed like their first shot of the game, despite totally dominating the ball.
“We were on the front-foot in the first-half, we kept pressuring them and nicking the ball of them, but we weren’t clinical enough. They then go up the other end and score on the cusp of half-time and the complexity of the team-talk and the second-half changes. We then managed to get back in to the game with around 10 minutes to go and although there only looked to be one winner from that point, they hit us on the break, after their players who were camped on the edge of their penalty area cleared it, and they managed to make it 2-1.
“It was hard to take, but I’ve told the team that, if the performance levels remain that high, we’ll win a lot of games between now and the end of the season. We just have to keep performing and keep taking the games as they come, in order to see how many points we end up with come the end of the season. I thought the work-ethic of the team was unbelievable, and I do hope that we can play on the front-foot in games more often. I thought the drive and intensity of (Lewis) Travis, (Craig) Conway and (Corry) Evans in particular, was amazing and unbelievable. I feel for the team tonight, because they’ve all put in such a high amount of effort and ultimately come away with nothing.
“We’ve talked about, how in the last 20 metres of the pitch, we were poor and didn’t finish our chances. Maybe, in that area, we needed the vision of a (Bradley) Dack, to pick out the pass and the experience of a (Danny) Graham to be in the right place to knock it home. Saying that, Bradley has been struggling all week and he nearly didn’t make the bench today. Danny, on the other hand, at 33-years old can’t play 3 games a week, as I’ve discussed previously. His statistics were down on Saturday against Bristol City, so I thought I’d withdraw him from the starting line-up today in order to save him for Sunday, because he wouldn’t have been able to perform to his maximum for 180 minutes of football. Although I thought we coped well overall without them, their quality in the final third was probably the only aspect missing from tonight’s good performance. Without openly admitting that we target home games for our points, we do need to find a way to get the job done away from home in conditions like this. Sunday at Ewood Park is a massive game for us against Middlesbrough.
“Amari’i’s (Bell) equaliser was a very well worked goal, in fairness. I was moaning at him during the break because I wasn’t happy with how he let their lad (Andy Yiadom) past for the first goal. I’ve talked to the lads about taking charge of their ‘patch of grass’ and yet Amari’i virtually let the guy run past him to provide the assist. In fairness to the lad, however, he made amends by pushing forwards aggressively and getting the equaliser. From that point on, I thought we were going to grab the second and leave with the 3 points, yet we were hit with a late sucker punch. I’ve spent the last couple of years, talking about organisation behind the ball whilst we’re on the front foot, yet we’ve gone from trying to put the ball into the back of their net, to picking it up out of our own. Their second goal was a strike of high quality, but we must do better defensively. We have to take it on the chin, take the positives from the game and move on into Sunday’s game against Middlesbrough.
“I thought the game was always there for the taking. Had we not pushed on, and I was sat talking about a 1-1, I would have probably been saying, ‘oh we should have pushed on further’, or ‘we weren’t aggressive enough with the ball’ because you couldn’t have imagined they were going to score and snatch the victory, because they didn’t really create much up until their second goal. Tonight’s performance – despite the defeat – was one which had hints of quality and yet we’re left frustrated and with no points.
“We’ve put in extraordinary amounts of effort over the past couple of games and we’ve come away with nothing. Against Brentford, we played against a good side and were disappointed to collapse in the way we did. Saturday against Bristol City and today has seen a tremendous amount of effort go in – as I expect in every game – but we’ve come out with little reward to show for it all, which is incredibly frustrating.”
