After Rovers bowed out of the Carabao Cup Second Round on Tuesday night, Blues boss Tony Mowbray – who was sent off in the tie’s closing stages – reflected on his side’s performance away at newly-promoted Premier League outfit, Sheffield United, with the club’s media team.
“It has felt as if the better side has lost, given the number of chances we had tonight, but Sheffield United are a Premier League side who have earned the right to play in that division after their amazing performances in last year’s Championship. I know Chris (Wilder) made a lot of changes, but there was still a lot of talent, experience and value in that side, you look at (Oli) McBurnie who cost them £20m, (Lys) Mousset cost them £10m and (Luke) Freeman cost them around £6m, so I think the performance levels of our team was good and high and I thought we gave them a problems all night. Despite the chances, football is ultimately about winning, and we failed to do that tonight.
“A real frustration for us tonight was the manner of their goals, because they came out of nothing, really. If teams score after lengthy build-up play, keep us under pressure and keep passing it around our box, you can say ‘wow, they were better than us and we couldn’t do that’, but although I thought we competed pretty well, we’re ultimately out of the cup and have to move onto the weekend now.
“Although you have to take your chances when you come to places like this, a penalty is the best opportunity of doing just that, but it doesn’t matter now. We’ve been saying throughout the whole of August that we need to take our chances, but it’ll turn as we have a lot of people who can score goals in this team, we’ve just got to keep working away at it and developing. I thought, despite the two goals that came out of nothing, we looked solid and strong defensively, but that’s football at the end of the day and we just have to get on with it. I would probably be more worried if we weren’t creating the chances, to be honest and yet I thought the principles of our game were good tonight. I thought the pressing from the front was good, we had a lot of energy, we moved the ball through the lines really well and quick, we got at their backline quickly which caused them to change formation three times in the first-half alone. That showed us they were having some problems dealing with us, but we failed to capitalise on that vulnerability.
“Sam (Gallagher) is a big, expensive player for us, he has to have a strong personality and character to live up to that. Every striker wants to score goals and he got in the six-yard box and headed one in tonight, which we hope is the first of many over the next few years for him. Joe Rankin-Costello did well on his debut tonight. He’s a good footballer and he’s amongst the squad and played tonight because he’s earned it. He was injured for a long-time last season and he’s worked really hard to get back in contention on top of the positive pre-season he had with us. I think you have to give him some encouragement at some stage, but unfortunately for him at the moment, if we see him as a wide attacker he’s got some good footballers ahead of him, but tonight was the opportunity to give him some football and make him feel like a first-team player and hopefully he’ll get more chances as the season moves on. Joe’s one of the lads who trains with us every day, so I see the quality he possesses and what I saw from him tonight didn’t surprise me because I know he’s capable. He played right-back for us in pre-season and was on the left-wing today which shows his versatility on top of his ability on and off the ball. Some people might say ‘why didn’t you put (Harry) Chapman on instead of Joe?’, and I’d answer because Joe in my opinion has a good goal threat which his record shows, he can burst into the six-yard box and get chances which he sort of did, with a few half-chances, but I’m happy knowing that we have a good young player from the academy who will impact our first-team moving forward.”
The gaffer was then interrogated regarding his sending off, which led to him chuckling before giving his analysis of the event;
“I think he was upset about me talking to the young ball boy. I think, in my opinion, it was an opportunity to teach the lad about human values. You can’t keep a ball off a team, you have to do the job you’ve been placed there to do. There was no angry exchange between us, I was very polite to him and I felt it was an opportunity to teach a young man about honesty and integrity, that was all. There was no angry reaction from either side, so I’m not sure what the referee (Geoff Eltringham) was on about. He had one of those nights where, I think, he missed so much it was almost scary. Yet if he felt my incident was worthy of a red card then I’m not going to argue and yet the officials probably thought I had gone over there and started shouting at the lad, which was never the case.”
