After Rovers were held to a 1-1 draw in the 105th Lancashire Derby between themselves and Preston North End on Saturday at Ewood Park, a pragmatic Tony Mowbray reflected on a game that his side had the better of, as he discussed the derby, the injuries to Corry Evans and Ryan Nyambe as well as his exploits so far in the transfer market.
“I think on chances created and on territory around their box and in their half, we definitely would have been the team that would have gone onto win it had the opportunity come up. I thought the defence was solid today, especially on the transition, which has been the problem for us in recent weeks. We dominated most of the game at Nottingham Forest and Birmingham City and yet we lost both and it was important that that wasn’t the case today. I thought Tosin (Adarabioyo) and Darragh (Lenihan) dealt with Preston’s transitions pretty well. We had enough opportunities to win today. I think of (Adam) Armstrong’s cross where he’s cut in on his right-foot and bent it into the box and it’s come back out off the inside of the post, yet we couldn’t force it over the line. I think about Tosin’s effort at the end, at the back-post which was going straight into the top corner, but for a good save from their goalie (Declan Rudd). Those three or four corners at the death were key, as the ball kept bouncing in and around their six-yard box which just needed some form of contact to give us the win that would have seen us all go home delighted. Ultimately, it wasn’t to be today.
“My staff were sat behind me on the bench watching the game on the iPads telling me that we should have had a penalty on (Sam) Gallagher, but the referee gave it against him. I haven’t actually seen that back yet, so I shouldn’t really comment on it. I’m happy we competed in a game where you have to compete in order to get something, but I’m not happy we didn’t take our chances. We have to start turning our home matches from draws into wins, if we’re going to meet our ambitions of getting into the top six. We’ve had three home draws on the bounce, and yet we would have had the same return had we won one and lost the other two.
“I think back to the defeats against the promoted teams in Charlton Athletic and Luton Town, and I struggle to pinpoint how we lost those matches, because we should be standing here talking about six more points and an unbeaten home record. Wins there would have given us a real confidence of ‘we will be fine with our home form and if we can nick a couple of results on the road, we won’t be far off the top six’, but we need to see if we can turn these draws into victories. Our next three games sees us go to Sheffield Wednesday, host Queens Park Rangers and then travel to Middlesbrough, so we have a tough couple of weeks coming up, off the back of a tough couple of results that, even though the team played well in these recent away games, bar at Huddersfield Town where we were stodgy, we didn’t get what we deserved. We now need to focus our attentions to Hillsborough next week and see if we can keep the points tally ticking along and surpass last year’s tally of 60 points with the 19 games we have left.
“I don’t want to be critical of Preston North End or the official (Mr. James Linington) today. I’ve watched a few of Preston’s recent games both on my laptop and live a few times and they manage games. If they’re winning, they break play up and make it hard for the opposition to gain a rhythm by giving away free-kicks and if they’re losing, they get very hungry to get the game going. People can call it whatever they want to call it, they slowed it down a lot today and looked pretty content with a point. Their goal didn’t particularly come from a defensive error. You have to give their lad (Josh Harrop) credit for the strike because he’ll probably never hit another one like that in his life and yet I was disappointed that we didn’t have someone on the edge of the area to hook it clear. It was a bit similar to the Birmingham game on Boxing Day. After we scored the penalty, we should have seen it out at 1-0, which is something we should have done today because it didn’t look like, in my eyes, that Preston were going to score today. We should have been talking about six more points, rather than two draws in those two particular games. You look even further back with the Wigan Athletic game, where Danny (Graham) hit the bar with a header. If that effort is an inch or two lower, we win that game 1-0 and things look so much better. It’s all about ‘what ifs’ though, so we have to stick together, keep fighting for each other and try and build up momentum that will help us turn these draws into three points.
“The enforced changes due to injury is always difficult to deal with. The fans, as they do, sing for Danny Graham and yet there was still half-an-hour to go and you’re thinking ‘what if someone else needs to come off?’ It’s a difficult scenario to deal with when you have a few players out stretching their muscles mid-game. I saw Stewy Downing stretching, who at 35 years of age, was working like a trojan for us, I saw Bradley Johnson stretching, who probably hasn’t had enough football in recent weeks, but you risk potentially having to play with 10 men if you make the sub too early, so it’s a fine balance. We managed to get through it without any more injuries, but it would have been nice, when this game loosened up, to throw Joe Rothwell on during the latter stages to run past tired legs with his electric pace. I just didn’t feel this was the type of game for Joe to start in today, because it was a battle, yet we didn’t have the opportunity to throw him or Harry Chapman on. The spirit of the team is still there, they’re still giving everything they’ve got for each other, so we need to keep going and stick together.
“We’ve had huge injury problems before or during some of the games we’ve lost in recent weeks and that’s been a major reason as to why we’ve not been at our maximum. I recently talked about a game where we had nine players unavailable for us due to injury. Some of those came back, one of which was Corry Evans, and he’s gone and got injured today. The doctor has told me it’s a broken nose and possibly a broken cheekbone as well. If it’s his cheekbone, it’ll be a bad one and he’ll be out for a while, but if it’s his nose, he’ll probably go through a protocol and be given a facemask to wear before being allowed back onto the pitch. I’ve had a few broken noses in my time, but mine were 25-30 years ago where they just wrapped you up and sent you back out there to continue heading balls away! We need to wait and see, because he had an oxygen mask on when he came past the dugout before being taken to hospital, but I’m sure he’ll be fine, and I’ll make sure to check on him with the medical department. Ryan (Nyambe) was feeling his hamstring at half-time and he was getting massages and treatment for it, which was due to his magnificent performance in the first-half right in-front of me where he kept bursting past and giving them real problems down that wing. It’s a shame for him really, but we have to hope it’s not a tear or a pull and only cramp, because although he was brilliant, he’s missed a lot of football recently and it must have been difficult for him, to come back in from the cold into a game of that magnitude and intensity. We’ll stick with them, wish them the best and focus on preparing for the next game without them, depending on what the medical department say.
“I think when the transfer window opens, people start asking you daily whether there’s been any development. The injuries we’ve had don’t particularly increase the urgency to bring bodies through the door, because we’re doing what we’ve been trying to do for a while now and that’s improve the squad. Just because you get a few injuries within the squad, it doesn’t mean that you suddenly get an extra couple of million pounds to replace them with. It doesn’t quite work like that. We’re trying to do some deals in order to improve the squad, but if anything we’re getting enquiries for some of our players, which in my mind is a positive because if we do want to sell them in order to generate some money for someone else, we can do, but if we don’t want to sell them, then nobody’s forcing our hand. We have to be careful in order to get the timing of everything right because you don’t want to potentially, end up being short on players. I want to improve the squad in every transfer window, if I can.
“I’m a strong believer in rotation. With squads, I think you have to keep a turnover of players ticking over every couple of years and this squad has been together for three years, now. What happens in football, which becomes more evident as you get older as a manager, is that when managers lose their jobs after an average of three years, that’s because the team generally get bored of hearing the same messages for the past three years. So, as a manager, what do you do? Do you try and turn a stale team around and move a few players on? Or do you try and bring new heroes to a fanbase? We’re trying to do the latter, but it’s never as easy as some may think. I saw a young team start out there today for us. You look at the likes of (Ryan) Nyambe, (Lewis) Travis, (Adam) Armstrong and (Tosin) Adarabioyo, to name a few who are all in their early to mid-20s. I would like to turn a few things around in this window, just to keep the team fresh, hungry and at it, but it’s not easy.
“No football manager is going to hand over their best players for nothing. When you phone up early in the window, everyone’s two, three or four million pounds and you’ve got a valuation that’s nowhere near that in your mind and you’re hoping that you can entice them with different incentives or an exchange of players. I’m trying to offer a feel into how the transfer window is for a manager. It’s not a case of you phoning up and they just say, ‘yeah you can have him for next to nothing’ and then you move on, it doesn’t happen like that as there’s a lot of negotiating involved. I’m sat in my office getting quotes of two, three, four million pounds from League One clubs for their players, when these clubs have probably never had more than half-a-million for one player in their history. So, what do you do in that situation? They give you a number and you say ‘no, I don’t think so’, but usually, if you wait a bit, they’ll more than likely phone you back as the window edges to its conclusion which gives you a better chance at agreeing a deal with them. If we did have £20million to spend, I probably would just give them the few million that they wanted and get things wrapped up quickly in order to give the new players the chance to integrate sooner into the squad, despite knowing that we’d have paid over the odds, because they’d help us get to where we want to be sooner, but that’s not the reality of the budget we have.
“Adam (Armstrong) has been in magnificent form of late and is crucial to how we play. Now that Bradley’s (Dack) not available, who do we look upon to score the goals? Danny Graham’s scored goals non-stop for this club during my tenure and we know the prowess he possesses in and around the box as well as the quality finishes he can provide. Adam, for me, will score you goals whether he’s down the middle or coming in off either side and he should have had another one today. If you combine his talent, with a centre-forward who can also score goals, then we’ve got the goals to replace Dack whilst he’s unavailable, but we’re obviously looking for someone to take up that centre-forward spot because I’ve mentioned in the past, Danny can’t play every game. Can (Lewis) Holtby score the goals Dack scores? In my opinion, no. He had a few promising efforts today, which was pleasing, because if you’re going to play a 10 behind a nine and you’re going to play wide attackers who are also going to chip in with goals, you’re going to have to rely on those four to score the bulk of the 60, 70, 80 goals that you hope to score in a season, on top of your midfield and centre-halves chipping in with a couple from set-pieces. Dack is a loss for us, solely based on the numbers of goals he can score. Holtby got an opportunity today and the positive is that he had some shots and created some chances for us. That’s what I require from the likes of Joe Rothwell when he gets his opportunity. I’ve spoken in the past about how I’m constantly moaning at Joe, telling him he needs to have more shots at goal and create more opportunities, because if the statisticians tell me that he’s had no shots or crosses for something like 10 weeks on the bounce, then it’s no wonder that he doesn’t play. Whilst he might look wonderful, gliding past people with his electric speed, playing at the top end of the field requires end product, so that’s where we are in terms of the team.
“We’re working hard, but it’s not easy to replace the talismanic nature of Bradley and his goals. It would be easy for me to stand here and say, ‘Brad would have scored today and probably got a hattrick against Birmingham and a few at Forest’, but he’s not here, so we have to get on with it. Let’s see if Holtby can drive a few in from the edge of the area because he’s got wonderful close control of the ball to create a shooting position, Armstrong will score whether we play him off either wing or down the middle, as will Gallagher and Graham. (Ben) Brereton has been a frustration for us. He’s another young lad who has to come to the party at some stage, despite him only being 20 years of age.
“We need to keep rolling with this team and see if we can get the right balance in terms of performances and potential changes in the window. I thought the lads showed great commitment today despite not getting the result we wanted. Hopefully the fans can see that the players are fighting for the club and fighting for the cause, because we’re still in the race for the top six alongside all the other dozen or so teams who will genuinely believe they can break into the top six, if they get a positive run together.”
