Following Rovers’ nineteenth defeat of the league campaign which has now seen them only win two of their past seventeen games, Tony Mowbray reflected on his side’s 1-0 defeat which came at the hands of financially sanctioned and relegation-threatened Sheffield Wednesday.
“I think for everybody involved at the club; these types of defeats are just a recurring story. With that said, I thought we were a bit jaded, particularly in the first-half. I thought there were one or two good individual performances from Friday, and I thought ‘just keep them going’, because their confidence would be high and yet, they looked a bit jaded. That’s not an excuse. We always seem to be chasing a game even though we seem pretty comfortable in them, at a point where we’re close to dominating. Then, we manage to go a goal down and give the opposition something to hang on to, which allows them to throw their bodies in the way and then, it doesn’t matter how much of the ball we have after that, because we don’t seem to be able to break these mass defences down. We were a bit jaded early on, but I’m not exactly sure why.
“I stood on the touchline and tried to drive the intensity that made us so good in the early part of the season. Maybe it is a case of fatigue? Although I don’t really want to use it as an excuse, we’ve practically had two seasons, back-to-back with virtually no rest and they’re actually finding it tough to get to the levels required in order to win matches. I don’t want to be critical of them, because they’re a great set of lads who are really frustrated and disappointed, in the dressing room. Ultimately, we’re all left frustrated, because we’ve been here before, on the back of a 1-0 defeat. We need to keep going and keep working hard to rectify it, starting on Thursday when we’re back in training.
“In this league, every tight game is defining and I don’t want to stand here and say ‘what a chance that was’ and that we could have managed a draw and come away from here thinking ‘how have we not won that’, but we don’t do that. We somehow end up losing these tight games because we don’t take the opportunities that fall our way. We need something such as a centre-half towering over someone at a set-piece and nodding one into the back of the net, which are goals that other teams score against us, or maybe a slice of luck where a shot ricochets off someone and sends the goalie the wrong-way, never-mind the pretty good chances we created where one was put wide and the other was like a back-pass to their ‘keeper. Those chances have to go in, but they didn’t, and we have to take those results on the chin, even though we’re frustrated and disappointed.
“It arguably makes it worse when they go up the other end and score a goal like the one they did, but not only is that what we need, but it makes it harder for us to attack, because it gives them something to hold onto, like I mentioned. I can stand here and talk about it, but we talked before the game that we cannot leave this pitch susceptible to criticism that Sheffield Wednesday worked harder than us, regardless of the result, because they were more desperate than us. Yet, in the first-half we looked tired and I wasn’t happy at half-time with the lack of intensity we had and they have to find it. Even though they’re working hard, and I’ve always said this, even when I was a young player myself, you have to go past where you think 100% is. You have to think you’re working at your maximum and you have to find some more, in every game. Maybe young players have to learn that throughout their careers? Words sometimes do fall on deaf ears, but we’re left frustrated, because we should be coming here and winning. We can talk all we want about how the season’s gone and how we’ve had many opportunities to score goals, but we’ve now got a ridiculous number of 1-0 defeats – (nine) – so we’re left very frustrated.
“Sometimes the moments we need are those of individual quality. Everybody has to work to improve their quality and improve their output. That’s what needs to happen at every football club and every coach has to try and improve the individuals and that’s how you improve a team. We have to keep working with our forward players to hit corners, hit targets, make goalkeepers work, get in the box and have more end product. It’s not just the strikers, it’s the balls that are coming in from deep. In the second-half, the forwards were in great positions and they were just having to deal with over-hit crosses and poor weights of pass. They don’t go down as chances, but the forwards end up wasting unbelievable areas because the ball isn’t right. The forwards are behind their backline, running in and all we have to do is slide it across and we score, but it’s overhit, misses everybody and rolls out for a throw-in without going down as a chance, yet what an opportunity it is. That’s how I see it, but we need to keep working hard and try to grow. Footballers have to try and improve as their careers go on.
“Ryan (Nyambe) and Jarrad (Branthwaite) are injured, hence their exclusion from tonight’s team. Jarrad has quite a bad one. He’s rolled his ankle pretty badly in training and I don’t think we’ll be seeing him again, this season. I anticipate its ligament damage, but I haven’t been given a full report on it. Ryan has a really sore, badly bruised toe and he struggled to put his boots on, let alone train and play a game. Lewis Holtby was the ‘odd-one out’ tonight. I want to get the young players, like John Buckley and Jacob Davenport involved more and had the game gone our way, Jacob would have probably got game time tonight, but those young players remain important assets for the future of this club and hopefully they’ve got big futures.”
