Following Rovers’ final game prior to the second international break of the season, which saw the Blues fall against a revamped Queens Park Rangers side at the Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium by a scoreline of 4-2, away boss Tony Mowbray expressed his sombre feelings following a dismal performance from his side.
“People can make whatever comments they want to about the game. Personally, I thought it was a game that was there for us to win really and yet we shot ourselves in the foot due to our poor defensive efforts. We didn’t deal with them when we were a bit more exposed in the second-half, which some could argue was my fault after I changed the team at half-time in an effort to get forward and get us level at 1-1, but I didn’t think that we looked like we were going to score a goal if we’d kept things how they were in the first-half, going into the second, hence the change because I didn’t even think we had a shot during the first 45 minutes. Yet, by changing the equilibrium of the side, we left our defence a bit more exposed and they failed to deal with what QPR had within their ranks, which was a frustration for me because if you’re going to be a top player, a top defender, you have to deal with people man-to-man when your team need a goal. You’re going to have to leave the defence, as a manager, a bit more exposed at times, which they have to deal with, but they ultimately failed to do that today.
“The bottom line is that you have to win your individual battles, especially when your team needs a goal. When you’re in need of a goal, you have to gamble more men forward and play braver football which leaves your defence a bit more exposed. Unfortunately for us, we got found out today when we exposed our defenders and whilst that’s the frustration for us, that’s how football is and moving forwards, our players will know that they have to be better defensively when we do push more men forward and they’re not as protected as when we start the game, so they’ll have to be better individually.
“When we got the penalty to get it back to 2-1, QPR began to stutter and it was the perfect opportunity for us to take advantage and I thought we’d push on and grab the next goal in the game, even after we had one chalked off before the penalty. At that period in the match, I felt as if the goals were going to come in our favour as we were very much on top and were causing them lots of problems as opposed to the first-half where we did virtually nothing attacking wise. I had to decide at half-time whether we were going to play 90 minutes of ‘stodgy football’ or whether we were going to open the game up with the hope that our defenders would have seen their threat off which would have allowed us to create chances like we had done and eventually score the goals that would have put us ahead (at 2-1 to Rovers after half-time). There’s the picture of the game in my mind, but we ultimately paid the price for leaving ourselves more exposed by allowing them to score straight after we’d got one back.
“It’s been a tough week for us because we deserved more than we got in the two home games (against Luton Town and Nottingham Forest). You don’t deserve to win games if you defend like we did today, so I don’t have any complaints about the performance. I know we’ve got good attacking players, but we need to find that balance between how much you protect your backline and how much you support your frontline, and today we got the balance wrong.
“It’s a bit early to report on the injury situations (of Darragh Lenihan and Greg Cunnigham). I’m sure that they both won’t be going away on international duty with the Republic of Ireland, whilst Christian (Walton) is struggling a bit as well. Sometimes things occur like this where you feel as if people ‘pour trouble on top of trouble’ with regards to the injuries and the defeat, but we have to wait and see. We need to get back home and put in the hard work over the international break in order to put things right in the next game at home to Huddersfield Town.
“Maybe the international break has come at a good time for us, what with the injuries. We are in the same boat as everyone else in the league, however it’s frustrating to have lost four goals as it’s so unlike us this season, yet we did it a few times last year. Sometimes you get spells where things don’t go your way, whether its confidence dipping or what, I’m not sure, but in the second-half I didn’t feel we were lacking confidence, we were lacking the ability to deal with players in one-on-one situations and we kept consistently giving the ball away cheaply at times, which didn’t help. As I say, we have to put this behind us, work on what went wrong and keep going. We’re disappointed at what happened today and are disappointed for the supporters who paid a lot of money to make the long trip down because we came here with the belief that we could win here today, which is the mentality we should go into every game with, and yet we fell down.”
