A visibly frustrated and critical Tony Mowbray cut a desolate figure during his interview with the club’s media team, following Rovers’ 1-0 defeat to Birmingham City away at the St. Andrew’s Trillion Trophy Stadium, as Rovers slipped to their second away defeat in as many games.
“I didn’t recognise the team in the first-half. That was a completely different team to the one that I’ve recognised for the past two and a half years. I let them know my thoughts at half-time and that provoked a better reaction in the second-half, but it wasn’t enough. If we have any aspirations of ending the campaign towards the top of the league, we must be better than we were tonight. There are no excuses for that performance, and they’ve let down our brilliant vocal midweek support, who have travelled a long way to watch the team play. We didn’t bring a game that warranted anything out of the match and there are no excuses for that. The players are aware of my feelings and we have to look for a reaction at the weekend away at Preston North End.
“At this level, you can’t give a team a 45-minute head start and yet before the game, I didn’t see that performance coming tonight. As I’ve said, for the past 18 months, I’ve expected fight, passion, desire, commitment and honesty from the team, yet for some reason we lacked that a bit tonight. We didn’t get anything from the game and although we improved in the second-half, the whole performance was extremely disappointing.
“I’ve got the same thoughts as probably, the fans do, as I’m wondering ‘where on earth this performance came from?’ because we prepared the team throughout the week and if I’m honest, I’m not sure where it came from. Birmingham is a hard place to come and play football at because they’re a particularly decent team here at home. I watched them recently on TV against Middlesbrough here, and they created a lot of chances and they could have scored four or five, but only ended up winning it narrowly at 2-1. They didn’t necessarily create as many chances tonight as they did in that game, but I’m just disappointed in our drive and passion. I was telling the team about what football should mean to them, football is an emotional sport and I’m an emotional guy and I expect my team to play with some passion, some emotion and some drive but that didn’t happen tonight for whatever reason and there are no excuses for it. We can’t have any complaints about the result, after that first-half performance.
“Not for the last 18 months have they had words as harsh as they’ve had tonight, I don’t think. As I stand here talking, I can’t be too brutal on them because they’ve been good for me over the past couple of years and they’ve given everything, yet for some reason tonight, it felt as if it wasn’t the last game of their careers, which is how every game should feel like, in my opinion. You have to give every drop of sweat and energy in every football match, otherwise you’re going to get nothing from it, and I felt as if we turned up tonight thinking that we could go and play and come away with an easy win. Birmingham are a similar team to us, they’re midtable and striving for victories in order to get their form going. I read in their programme notes how they’re trying to adapt their way of playing, so although I told the lads what to expect and that they should be matching it, they failed to turn up in the first period.
“We shouldn’t get too deep or too down about this result, because the players know what is expected of them and that they have to be better. We’ve got a chance to turn things around with the derby game at Preston at the weekend. It’ll obviously be a very tough game with Preston flying high in the league, but we just have to pick a team that goes to Deepdale and does itself justice.
“I’m not interested in discussing the chances that we had towards the end of the game tonight, really. If we had taken a point, then I would have still come out criticising the first-half performance. We didn’t work their goalie enough tonight and ultimately it has to improve quickly.”
