On the third anniversary of his appointment as Rovers boss, Tony Mowbray witnessed a four-goal thriller in Rovers’ final trip to Brentford’s Griffin Park. The boss, who oversaw the 2-2 draw in his 158th game in charge of the club was left with mixed feelings after his side threw away a two-goal lead in this fixture, for the second consecutive season.
“The overriding emotion after today is one of ‘disappointment’, I think. We’re frustrated that we let two goals slip, as we did here last season, but unlike last year we didn’t lose today. We had a great chance to win it late on with Adam (Armstrong) running through one-on-one against (David) Raya, but Adam couldn’t sneak it underneath David’s body, otherwise it would have been 3-2 to us. I felt we managed the game pretty well today, especially when we were 2-0 up, because at that stage, they weren’t causing us many problems. The overriding emotion is one of frustration and disappointment regarding not getting all three points, but this is a really difficult place to come and they’ve got some really talented individuals.
“I haven’t had a chance to see their penalty decision back, but my staff, who have seen it back, have told me that it was a ‘diabolical’ decision. I can’t stand here and overly criticise the referee, (Tim Robinson), he is what he is. He had a tough day today, I think. From the human side, it felt as if he potentially ‘evened it up’ at one penalty each and yet our penalty, in my mind, was a clear penalty because John (Buckley) got wiped out. The goalkeeper came out like a tank and smashed John over, but we can’t do anything about it now. Maybe he gave a soft one to even things up? I don’t know. What I do know is that we have to live with it. I heard someone say that the other goals, that weren’t penalties, looked offside and yet, if we had VAR here today, the game might have finished 1-1 or goalless, but never mind. We now have to turn our focus to the two home games that are coming up next week, so let’s get back on the bus, put the point in the bag and get home.
“I think it’s a positive result. When you think about coming here, you think about coming away to one of the best teams in the league, given the way they can build the game up and get around the edge of your box, given quality their players possess. You have to be a good team to get something off Brentford, both home and away. They went to Hull City the other week and scored five, which shows they’re a decent football team. Today, we managed the game okay, but we’ll take the point without much fuss. Leeds United came here and got a point a while back and they’re a really top team, so we need to now take this as a positive moving into two home games we believe we should be winning, because, as I’ve said in the past, we should be believing that we can beat anybody at Ewood Park.
“It’s very important, particularly against Brentford, that you don’t keep needlessly giving them the ball back, and yet our main threat today didn’t come from the likes of (Lewis) Holtby, (Bradley) Dack or (Joe) Rothwell playing through the lines, it was from playing it in quickly on transitions, in-behind their defence to Armstrong or (Dominic) Samuel. It was a different type of game, so the gamble of playing forward into the space behind their backline was a big one, because if you don’t pull off the pass correctly, you’re basically giving the ball back to them and allowing them to attack you. I thought we managed it pretty well and got the balance just about right. I think back to the amazing goal we scored against them at home that saw (Stewart) Downing getting involved on the overlap to collect Rothwell’s pass before Stewy found Dack arriving in the six-yard box to score. We couldn’t play like that today. We tried by pushing Downing and Buckley higher, but we found it difficult to get the ball through to them. Ultimately, the game plan was okay, I think. We’re disappointed with a point given the position we were in, but we’ll take it and move onto the two home games we’ve got this week.
“I feel as if their first goal (by Ollie Watkins) was a really clean strike, although I haven’t seen it back yet. Whether Christian (Walton) could have reacted quicker and got something on it at his near-post, I’m not sure, yet it’d be harsh of me to be critical of Christian after such an amazing strike. I think our goalie made some pretty ‘normal’ saves today, saves you’d expect any goalkeeper to make because most of their efforts were straight at him. Yes, he made one or two saves you would class as ‘great’, yet I thought the rest were fairly routine for him. Saying that, he’s in a good run of form and he’s been doing well recently, so we should be expecting him to make saves in such form.
“I could see Adam’s frustration towards the end when I pushed him out to the wide-left for the last 15 minutes. They had gambled both full-backs forward and were pushing them right on, so I thought that Armstrong, along with (Elliott) Bennett, rather than Samuel were better athletically to track their forward runners. Adam’s form over recent weeks has been amazing. It would have been great for him to have got a hattrick today, had he managed to slide the ball under David, but we’re all delighted with Adam. He’s in a vein of form where he’s just ‘smelling’ goals. He’s been scoring goals ever since he was 16, so he knows where the back of the net is. He’s just been given the opportunity here to show people that he is capable of scoring goals and putting in the performances at a level where, hopefully he’s helping our team to get towards the top-end of the table.”
