After watching his current side dismantle his former club, Coventry City, by a 4-0 scoreline, Rovers boss Tony Mowbray reflected on a successful afternoon for the Lancashire side, with the club’s media team, whilst also praising his budding forward line, holding special praise for Ben Brereton, who notched a hattrick of assists and Harvey Elliott, who scored his first senior league goal.
“It was important to get the victory today. We talked before, in training about how we can’t keep taking plaudits for our performances but end up with no points. We’ve done that a couple of times this season, against Bournemouth and Watford, where we played pretty well for a majority of the game but didn’t come away with anything. It’s important to win matches, of course, and we came here today with the mentality that ‘only victory will be good enough’. I don’t think we’ve carried much luck, and yet I feel like I need to reiterate that we’ve played against 10 men for a long time, today. I feel like I have to mention that, because I think that they’re a good team and we’d prepared for them with 11 men. They have the ability to be able to play through our press a bit, at times, and that showed because although I thought we dominated the opening 10 minutes, they managed to break away and hit the post. We played some good stuff today, and I thought that Lewis Holtby alone could have had a hattrick in the first-half! We played some good stuff today, we just need to try and keep it going, keep everyone together and try and infiltrate the new players further into the set-up and the team. I thought all the new players did fine today. Obviously, Harvey Elliott at such a tender age, will catch the headlines after getting involved in a lot of our forward play whilst also getting himself a goal and an assist, but I thought (Tom) Trybull kept the ball moving, by popping it around the pitch, whilst working hard out of possession. Barry’s (Douglas) quality was there to be seen, today. He’s actually really good around the group, around the dressing room and with his left-foot he’ll just keep spinning balls down the side for our strikers to run onto. His positive winning mentality is good around the group, which he has coming from Leeds United where their demands are only to win games and he’s been a good voice in our dressing room. We’re looking forward to the next game and hopefully we can win it.
“I was slightly concerned at half-time about the fact that we hadn’t already put the game to bed. I talked long and hard to the team about that, during the break, about their concentration levels and how Coventry could potentially make some tactical or personnel changes that could mix it up a bit, so I was warning them to ready about whatever they might throw at us. I also reiterated about playing on the frontfoot, making life difficult for them and not allowing them to build up a head of steam through any passing patterns. I’d have to say that the work-ethic of the players is amazing. You can probably hear me shouting at them for 90 minutes in these empty stadiums, and yet, they understand that I’m not after them, or having a go at them, I just want the team to understand what it takes to be successful and winners. In order to get promoted and win games, you have to run, chase, work hard, push your mate next to you, track back when they run past you and that’s all I’m asking. I’m trying to drive them and I want to get to the point, as I’ve said in the past, where I don’t want to be sat there screaming at them for the whole game, because they’re driving each other on and they’ve all got the intensity, the frontfoot pressing and the quality to pick the passes around the box to score the goals.
“We were relentless today, and that’s how our team has to be from now on. There’s been plenty of example of our relentlessness this season. The Cardiff City and Nottingham Forest games at Ewood Park were difficult for us, because of the style that the opposition played with and we’re going to have to accept that teams that come and knock long balls and sit their defences in, and don’t really come and try and win that they’re going to give us some problems, but we have to keep working on the training ground to try and break that down. It’s probably not a coincidence that we score more goals away from home, because teams attack us when we visit them which allows us to use the spaces, whereas when they come to Ewood and sit in with a deep defensive structure, because of all the goals they’ve seen us score, we have to try and find a way to be able to break them down, moving forwards. I think with (Bradley) Dack only a few weeks away, with Harvey (Elliott), Adam (Armstrong), we’ve got the players that can do that. Armstrong’s speed in behind is crucial, (Ben) Brereton was fantastic today with his assists and his dribbling capabilities in tight areas and I’m hoping we’ve got the right players who can pick the right passes and damage the opposition when they decide to come to Ewood and sit in.
“Ben is a young boy. I’ve been saying it for a few years. We’ve spent a lot of money on Brereton, why? Because I saw the potential, I felt his potential playing against him when he was at Nottingham Forest and he’s just had to mature in order to start to produce on a more consistent basis, but the talent is in there. We have to be patient with him in order to bring it out, we have to understand that as a young boy at 21, he’s not the finished article, as Harvey isn’t the finished article, but they both have wonderful talents that can help our team moving forward and I’d rather they be on our team than on the opposition. I’m delighted that Ben was so integral in our attacking play. I’m delighted for Adam’s two goals. I’m delighted for Sam (Gallagher), who scored a good goal, because he’s had a really frustrating start to the season what with the injuries he’s had, so there are plenty of positives from today’s game. We’re in training tomorrow, so that will allow us to break this game down, and then we’ll prepare for Tuesday’s game against Reading on Monday. Reading are a team sat top of the table unbeaten, after winning six of their last seven, so there’s a massive test for us and one we should look forward to because I think they’ll come and try to attack, which should be good for us.
“I said the other day that Harvey is a wonderful personality, for such a young boy. You feel like a young boy when you’re talking to him, to be fair, but he is a diamond of a footballer. I can see why he made his senior debut at 15 for Fulham, because he’s so tight with the ball, so aware of the space and runners around him. He has all the pictures before everybody else does. We work really hard in training with our players to try and give them the pictures in order to see what’s going on around them, and we don’t have to do much work with Harvey because he already sees them. He’s a Premier League in everything but name, and I’m sure Liverpool know what they’ve got. Having worked with the likes of (Rangers’) Ryan Kent, who was at Liverpool, and (Leicester City’s) James Maddison, at this club (Coventry), Elliott is a really good football player and we’re delighted to have him and I hope he can stay with us all season. I hope he’s enjoying it, I think he know that the dressing room are a good group of lads, so let’s see how far this journey can go. Harvey is a bit like young (Tyrhys) Dolan, in that young footballers can burst on and do really well, but then need a little breather in order to sit out a bit, in order to come back firing, as I’m sure Tyrhys will do soon.”
