After Rovers fell to their first home defeat of the campaign, with Nottingham Forest emerging from Ewood Park as the late victors, following an effort by Joe Lolley that deflected into the net, Blues boss Tony Mowbray spoke to the club’s media team about the 1-0 loss, as he reflected on his side’s below-par performance.
“I’m not sure we deserved too much from today’s game. It had 0-0 written all over it. We didn’t have our usual fluency today, which was probably down to all the enforced changes we had to make, which came due to the current climate of the world. It was a frustrating day for us, overall. I was disappointed with the first-half performance, because we lacked energy, sharpness, drive and all the things we’ve been so good at showing this season. I thought we slightly improved in the second period, as did our control of the game and yet, we didn’t create enough goalmouth action, enough shots, enough balls flashing across their box, in order to put the game in our favour. As I said, it looked like it was going to finish goalless, and then they managed to find a winner right at the death, through a deflected effort. That kind of thing can happen in tight games, but as I said to the lads after the game, today shouldn’t have been as tight as it was. I thought we should have totally dominated this game, given that we were at home and that’s how we want our team to play, this season. We should have been playing in their half, and yet we allowed them to grab a foothold in the game which can cause you problems, either from a set-piece or a deflected shot, and that’s what ultimately happened.
“We’ve worked really hard in training this season, and throughout the international break, on working out how to beat teams that play with a deep low-block. However, when you prepare a certain team on Thursday and come Saturday, that team is not available for you, due to the current climate of the world, it can be quite frustrating, but we have to deal with it. We had a good transfer window, so now, we’re going to have better and more options to choose from, moving forward and hopefully today was just a blip for us. Things can change quickly for us due to the pandemic and I’m sure that will stay the same for the foreseeable future. It’s frustrating as a coach when, after doing your planning and the team know their jobs and what we expect of them, just for it to go out the window when the changes happen due to the climate. I think we’ve got enough footballers, but I genuinely felt that we should have controlled the game, created chances and potentially scored, but that didn’t happen. I thought we looked solid enough, defensively, but the deflection right at the death is frustrating. We had talked about (Joe) Lolley pre-game and how we wanted him to avoid cutting in onto his left foot from the right by closing him down quickly, in order to stop the shot. It wasn’t as if the shot was a worldie that whistled in, it’s creeped in at the near-post via a deflection. We’re ultimately left frustrated, but that’s football. Hopefully this was a blip and we can move onto Wednesday’s game at Watford and produce a better performance and result.
“I thought we’d be in the ascendency moving into the last 20 minutes of the game, that’s why I made three attacking changes. Luke Brennan has trained with the first-team this year and has done exceptionally well, but he’s still only a young boy who’s still got a FA Youth Cup semi-final to play, but that’s where we were in terms of not having enough bodies available. I’m trying not to make excuses, but we are pretty threadbare at the moment, with a lack of creative talent from midfield available for selection. The natural instinct to move forward with the ball and slide balls through into our forward wasn’t there today. They played with a pretty static midfield today, as they sat deep behind the ball, which made it very difficult for us to get going and get the ball in-behind them, as we found out.”
