After Rovers slipped to four consecutive league defeats for the first time since February 2019, Tony Mowbray reflected on his side’s narrow 1-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest at the City Ground. The gaffer also offered a brief update on the injured duo of Sam Gallagher and Ryan Nyambe.
“Today was more like the way we want to play, as opposed to Wednesday night and it was more like the team, we’ve been for most of the season. The last two games have been quite frustrating for us, because we didn’t play at the levels we usually do, but we looked more like the team we’ve been for most of the season, today. We feel a bit hard done by that we haven’t got anything from this game, but that probably sums up how things are going for us at the moment. I’ve always said that performance levels are what’s going to get you to where you end up, at the end of the day and I think we needed to raise the performance from the last couple of games. It was similar to the QPR game, I thought we were generally on top for most of the game, but we’ve ended up losing 1-0 again.
“I’ve just said to them in the dressing room, that if that’s their performance levels every week, I’ll accept that because we’ll win some games. I’ve always said to them that they have to play with the same urgency and intensity and front-foot attitude in every game and today was no different, bar the fact we failed to score the penalty. I felt that, had we converted the penalty, we could have gone on and won the game because we were in the ascendency at that moment.
“I want to give the lads some praise because I thought they played with really well and with good intentions. It was a young squad out there, with the average age of about 22, with the likes of Harvey Elliott in midfield, Taylor Harwood-Bellis and Jarrad Branthwaite both at the back. I thought Adam Armstrong looked Premier League class today and yet, unfortunately, he missed the penalty. He was really snappy and sharp in everything he did, but it turned out to be a frustrating day for us against a Forest team who are built on resilience. We’ll be fine, we did alright today. We just need to see where performances like this take us, because if we continue to play how we did today, we’ll win a lot of games like we did at the start of the campaign.
“Mentality is important in football. The team have to believe in each other, especially after our run of form. Wednesday night at Barnsley was a one-off game for us where, after studying the opposition, I decided a back-five was the better choice because they would have really stretched us had we gone with a back-four. We tried to match them up in a game that, we tried to turn into a scruffy encounter in order to sneak a win, because sometimes you have to roll your sleeves up and do that. Today, we reverted back to what we’re all about, we caused them enough problems, but we weren’t ruthless enough and didn’t convert. That’s not necessarily a criticism, that’s just a fact regarding the game, yet the performance levels were how we would want it to be most weeks.
“Taylor and Jarrad did fine today. They’re still a bit naïve in certain areas and have things they need to learn and work on, but they were good today. I was pleased with them and the team as a whole considering how young it was. The frustration for me is that we’ve come away from today with two injured players, in Sam (Gallagher) and Ryan (Nyambe), but that shouldn’t surprise us, I suppose because that’s been the case most of the season. Sam is currently in hospital getting X-rayed, because he was coughing up blood at half-time and we think he’s done some damage to one of his lungs, but we’re not 100% sure. We’ll see how bad Ryan’s hamstrings are damaged over the next few days, so let’s wait and see. Darragh (Lenihan) missed out today with some problems with his ribs. He’s had the issue for a while and took some injections to try and get through training, but ultimately, the pain threshold was too much. He did get a scan to see whether it was a cracked rib, but we don’t think it is, so he’s been left with bruised ribs and we’ll also have to see how long he’ll be unavailable for.
“There’s nothing we can do, other than ‘go again’ in the next game, which is what we have been doing all season. We all know the situation that we’re in. It’s not great at this moment, but it can turn around, because if the performance levels remain as high as they are, we could go on to win plenty of games on the bounce and put ourselves back in the playoff picture. At the moment, it looks a bit difficult, but it can happen. We’ve been through bad spells in the past and we’ve bounced back and I’m sure we will plenty of games, if we continue to put in shifts and displays like today.”
