After Rovers extended their unbeaten run to six games, following a dramatic 2-1 win over Millwall at Ewood Park on Wednesday evening, gaffer Tony Mowbray reflected on the tight affair with praise for his side, after they found a way to win the game.
“It’s a great feeling when the injury-time goals, go your way! I was sat looking at the clock as it ticked over, 88, 89, 90 minutes, just hoping, because we’ve had late winners during my tenure. Although it’s a brilliant feeling to win it late on, it would have been even better had the fans been here to enjoy it with us. I’m not sure, overall, whether we deserved to win that match, but who cares? We’ve had it at times, this year, where we’ve been the better team and got nothing from the game, so to have things go our way is nice. We must give Millwall some credit as they came here and they weren’t stereotypically long-balling it downfield, they played some good football and gave us some problems with their shape, but ultimately Blackburn Rovers have emerged with the three points. It’s nice for Adam (Armstrong) to score again and Harvey’s (Elliott) goal was great. We are a threat on transition, but we’ve been trying to find ways to win games. We’re predominantly trying to dominate possession, but also when teams come chasing games and start to think they have a chance, we become very dangerous on the transition and with the speed that we’ve got at the top end of the pitch, we always feel like we can score a goal.
“You genuinely feel that players who score loads of goals have an instinct or a sixth sense for getting in the right positions, on top of the technique, but that’s what Adam has. I’m delighted for him, but also for the team. I had a bit of a go at them at half-time today, and I felt that they looked a bit tired today, yet as a manager, I probably shouldn’t be talking to them about fatigue because it might play on their mind, however if you picture our team at its best, with its intensity, pressing, closing down and winning the ball high up the pitch, I think everybody was just a yard off it today, which is why they were able to push us back. I think, defensively, we played a bit too deep. Daniel (Ayala) to be fair to him, has only played a couple of games in nearly a year which has a part to play in the performance, and he needs to get up to speed. Saying that, we’re stood here nit-picking when we’ve won the match. You can’t play great every game. We need to put these points in the bag and move onto the next game at Brentford, on Saturday.
“It’s great to see Adam hit 50 goals for this club. He has to use that as motivation now, in order to keep going and hit the next 50. I can feel his enjoyment at being at this club, every day in training, but I was a bit concerned about him today, as he was rubbing his hip flexor, but he was saying that he felt fine. Let’s hope that’s the case tomorrow and he’ll be fine for Saturday. Ben (Brereton) has left the stadium with a brace on his foot. We initially think he’s taken a knock to the outside of his knee, what you’d call his lateral ligament. A scan tomorrow will show us how serious the injury is, but Ben’s been amazing for us this season. The work-ethic he’s had, particularly this season, has been phenomenal, even though, as I told him before, tonight wasn’t one of his better nights. The running, chasing and tracking back he’s been doing has been amazing, and it’ll be a shame if that injury is going to keep him out for an extended period.
“Although we’ve had a good run, the table is still very tight. We’re still in 9th, yet we’re four points off the top of the league! I think, because it’s so tight this season, everybody will think they’ve got a chance because of how stretched each squad will be, as ours is. We’ve missed some big players over the past few weeks and the strength of the squad has been key in us picking up the results we have been getting. There have been a lot of choices to be made, yet we’ve got no time to prepare for the next game, as we’re in tomorrow to cool down and then on Friday we’re travelling down to London. The players don’t need anymore work in their legs as everything will be done via video analysis, which we can’t really do properly because of the social distancing. So, because of that we have to spread everybody out in a big hall in order for everyone to see the big screen whilst we work through how we are going to play and how the opposition are. Yet, although I say that, things are pretty much the same for every other team, up and down the country. We just have to look forward to the weekend, because going to Brentford is always a challenge. We’ve had some pretty good games against them over the past few years, to be honest, so we’ll just concentrate on what we’re doing, try and pick the right team from those available and go and have a go.
“Moments like Adam’s winner are made for supporters. It’s a shame, as I’ve said, that we couldn’t have them in here today. Everybody in Lancashire has to work hard to try and bring the ‘R’ down, so that when it’s all reassessed, we can get into a position where we can have supporters back in Ewood Park. I think this team will grow with the supporters, and hopefully it’ll work both ways in that the team will get the supporters really excited this season, because they’re playing with a lot of energy, drive, intensity and on the front-foot as well as scoring goals. Let’s see what a couple of weeks bring and hopefully we’ll have supporters back in the stadium, cheering the team on to victory in the not too distant future.”
