After Rovers slipped to their third successive league defeat, this time at the hands of Barnsley at Oakwell by a 2-1 scoreline, Blues boss Tony Mowbray offered his thoughts on the disappointing evening.
“I thought Barnsley fought very hard today. We knew, before coming here that, if we didn’t or weren’t willing to fight with Barnsley that we’d get beat. I thought we did well for the vast majority of that game; it’s a long way away from how we want to play football, but Barnsley as the stats show, are one of the best teams in the league at pressing the ball high up the pitch. Today wasn’t a night to try and build from the back, so we played (Sam) Gallagher up-front with (Adam) Armstrong and hit a lot of direct balls forward. I thought we fought pretty well, to be honest and I couldn’t really see Barnsley scoring and yet we fell down with the basics in the second-half. People have to win headers and challenges and we didn’t really do that in the second-half, as well as we did in the first period.
“We didn’t quite hit the levels that we wanted to, after half-time. Barnsley are a team with an identity of how they play. They generally play out of possession and press really well. We came with a game-plan of wanting to turn them round, with Armstrong and Gallagher at the top of the pitch. I thought we looked the most threatening team, we didn’t have clear-cut chances, but they were more half-chances that could have been spilled into our path on the rebound, or could have been a goal if we played the right final pass. It wasn’t to be today, and we’re left frustrated in a game where we’ve played the type of football we didn’t want to play, yet we competed well throughout the majority of the game, but were let down by failing to do the basics.
“The last week or so have been difficult, but we have to try and win football matches. We’ve set the agenda and the expectations for this year and obviously, at this moment, we’re falling short.”
