Following Rovers’ 1-0 defeat away at Millwall on Tuesday night, Blues boss Tony Mowbray spoke to the club’s media team after his side’s 16th defeat of the season confirmed that their late playoff hopes were ended for another season.
“This game was different to the games we’ve had of late where we’ve lost despite holding most of the possession and being the better team. We didn’t deserve anything from this game. We lacked quality at the top of the pitch, we couldn’t break their five at the back down and get past their three huge centre-halves. I’ve just told the players in the dressing room that they’ve lacked the quality to break them down today and if you want to be a really good team, fighting for promotion from this division, you have to find a way to break down these dogged teams. We lacked some individuality today. Someone who could sit a defender on their backside and curl one into the far corner is what we lacked. That’s the frustration to be honest. The game panned out as we feared it would. We had a lot of the ball, but we failed to break them down and get behind their defence. Had we done that, that would have forced them to go out to chase the game which would have given us the chance to win it comfortably, but it didn’t pan out that way. Once they scored, however, they made things very difficult for us and all the possession we had became meaningless because we lacked the guile in-front of their goal. We never looked like we were going to score, after they took the lead. We started really sloppily, which is confusing because everybody was fired-up and raring to go in the dressing room before the game.
“Millwall live off intensity and breaking away. The game was always going to be scrappy for 20 minutes because you can’t try and play out against such a huge press, which meant we had to go long, but we didn’t hit the areas we’d talked about. We kept hitting their centre-halves’ heads and they kept heading it 40-yards back into our half. We were very slow and pedantic in the first-half and I really didn’t enjoy it. The second-half was a bit better, but we didn’t get the goal that we needed. There’s an argument to suggest that had we got the first goal, I’m sure the second wouldn’t have been far behind, but it wasn’t to be. It was a hugely disappointing game, but we ultimately have to finish the season with the last two games, so we’ll see what the summer brings.
“We knew it was going to be scrappy because that’s how they play. They compete for every ball, every second ball and are always in your face hassling you. That’s the nature of this club, I think. You don’t play for Millwall if you’re not a competitor. We had to match that and although I thought we generally did, their system caused us problems. Their wing-backs caused our wide strikers problems. They weren’t sure if they should have tracked back or stayed upfield. It was really frustrating for me, because we’d done the work during the week and we’d talked about what they should do. Their style got on top of us during the first half-an-hour, and then once they went ahead, they sat in which made things harder for us to break them down.
“We came here believing we were going to win. I told the lads that I genuinely thought we could get a result here because we were going to dominate possession, but the question was whether we could find the quality to break them down. It was a day for a bit of individuality from someone, but it never materialised for us. We huffed and puffed and ultimately lost. Games go like that sometimes. Millwall probably pride themselves off being big, strong and hard to break down and that’s what they did tonight. We hit too many balls onto the heads of their defenders, we weren’t clever enough around the box, we didn’t get behind them enough, we didn’t pick the right pass. We didn’t do all the stuff we talked about beforehand on how we were going to win this game. We ultimately didn’t have the quality in the final third to win the game and we paid for it. I don’t like to say that, but that’s the reality of it. That’s football, and sometimes it’s hard to break down these well-organised, aggressive and disciplined teams.
“I’m not going to stand here and say ‘I’m not bothered that we’ve missed out on the playoffs’, of course I’m not. Of course, we’re bothered. We’re all upset and disappointed that the playoffs are now out of our reach because this team have put a lot of effort and work into this season, but it’s fizzled out tonight. We have two games to go. We’ll try and win those games of course, but we’ll see whether we give some youngsters a try or we see whether we prepare for next season with the same group.”
