After Rovers fell to their fifth consecutive Championship defeat for the first time since April 2012, following a spirited performance against Watford, where they were ultimately outclassed after the Hornets won 3-2, Tony Mowbray offered his reasons behind his side’s defeat on Wednesday night.
“I think we have to say that we played against a good team tonight. You could feel Watford’s quality right from the start, they have a very experienced team, with their three in midfield of (Will) Hughes, (Tom) Cleverley and (Dan) Gosling being a prime example of that. Their frontline also cost something in the region of £90m, or something like that, but you could feel their threat on the break as they showed their speed and power. I thought we dug in and gave an account of ourselves where, we probably could have even sneaked a draw at the end with the ball bouncing around the six-yard box. Whether we would have deserved a point from the game, I don’t know, because they’re a decent football team. If anything, if we’re looking at the nature of the goals, we looked a bit nervy at the back tonight. Even Thomas (Kaminski), who’s been amazing all season looked a bit nervous and uncertain, but that might have been down to the fact he was played behind two 18-year olds. It was a difficult and frustrating night for us, but we had some good individual performances. (Adam) Armstrong again looked Premier League class. What a talent, Harvey Elliott is. Ben (Brereton) came on, did well and got himself a goal, and I also thought (Joe) Rothwell did well tonight. Yet, it wasn’t to be. I haven’t got much to say, other than, we played against a good team, who took the points. We worked really hard tonight and gave it our best shot, but fell a bit short.
“Although some people can put the nervousness at the back down to results, I think it’s down to the fact they’re two young boys trying to find their way in football. That’s not a criticism of them, because I think they’re doing fantastically well to be playing at this level in such a crucial position, at just 18-years of age, but this is the second game ever where they’ve been thrusted together as a partnership and I think the uncertainty is there, because there’s no time for us to work on defensive shape and defensive organisation, yet these are not excuses, between the games, you’re basically cooling down, having a massage and then you have one day where you have to do prepare for the next game in under an hour, with a new defensive partnership. You don’t have three days to work attack vs defence and put them in the right positions and fix their body shape for when the crosses come in, and all the usual stuff you would do with your back four that you’re hopefully consistent with all season, but we haven’t been able to do that all year. I think both Taylor (Harwood-Bellis) and Jarrad (Branthwaite) are doing exceptionally well to compete at this level against some pretty good footballers out there, tonight, but it wasn’t to be.
“The first goal felt like a ‘kick’ for us. It was a hopeful lob over the top and whether we played offside, I don’t know. The ball didn’t bounce on the pitch because it had been raining incessantly all night. Thomas (Kaminski) got himself in ‘No Man’s Land’ and it ended up in the back of our net. I think the second goal was a cross that probably should have been cleared, again the lack of bounce on the ball caused some problems and it ricocheted around before they ended up putting it in. From then on, we began to chase the game a bit. Their third goal was a 3 vs 3 and their lad got himself a yard ahead to pull the shot off and it squirmed into the bottom corner. It’s frustrating, especially given we had half-chances. Things were bouncing around and could have broken for us, but it didn’t, and we have to accept it. We need to give them credit, regardless of how we performed tonight. As I said, both of their strikers cost around £90m and we can’t compete with that, of course. We just have to accept at times that good players can hurt us and that’s what happened tonight.”
