After Rovers managed to snatch a late, but deserved 2-2 draw against playoff hopefuls Cardiff City, Tony Mowbray reviewed his side’s display with the club’s media team. The boss also offered an insight into how discussions may evolve, in terms of recruitment, come the end of this campaign.
“I think it would have been harsh on us to come away from here with nothing. We seemed to be peppering their woodwork for most of the day and we ended the game with around 20 shots. We probably should have scored more goals, if I’m honest. Adam (Armstrong) had a great chance inside the first minute, but he put it past the post. He scored his two goals, though, so I have to congratulate him on that. (Sam) Gallagher threatened the goal and ended up hitting the post on one occasion, but today’s ultimately been a really frustrating day. It’s been ‘one of those days’ because the goals that we conceded were really avoidable, but the dressing room at the end was quite an angry one which is good because it says to me that they’re not happy to come away from Cardiff City with a draw. I could have been stood here talking about a 2-1 defeat and talking about ‘whether we deserved to lose, or not?’, but today is just another game thrown into the statistics of the run we’ve been on and yet, as I’ve always said, this team deserves so much more than what they’ve managed to accrue over the past few months.
“The performance levels of the team have been much higher than the stats of one win in 15 games show. We should have won half of those games, in my opinion, but we didn’t, and you have to take the criticism when it comes, because the results are what matters. Today could have been a 2-1 defeat if not for our late equaliser and it would have been added onto the previous statistics, however, I sit and I watch the team dominate the game, particularly in the second-half, without reward. Cardiff are hard to stop with the height and power of the likes of Kieffer Moore and Aden Flint. It’s hard to keep them out of our box, but I thought we were the dominant team overall. Although I know that you don’t get victories and points for dominance and ball possession, but we managed to accrue 20 shots with around five on target that don’t include all the times we hit the woodwork. We were pretty good for long spells, today and I don’t think we deserved to lose.
“It’s always natural, after their got their second to think, ‘oh, here we go again.’ I do sit there with a few minutes to go, preparing my answers to the media’s questions; ‘How do you deal with it?’, well you know what? I really like this team and these group of players. They’re grafting, working and in my mind, they’re better than Cardiff City and yet, as I’ve just been saying with Mick McCarthy, there are a lot of different ways to play football. Cardiff prefer to play off a big 6’5” forward and get men around him, whilst fighting like hell at the back. That’s one way to go about playing football, which is fine. Cardiff have got promotion to the Premier League playing that way, but I don’t think like that, I think about football in a different way. I want to dominate the ball, pepper the opposition’s goal, score more goals and yet, over the last few months, that way of playing, hasn’t gotten us very far. As I’ve always said, we’re on a journey and the plan would be to make this team like a Brentford, like a Swansea, like a team who can dominate and whilst you might not win every week, you come out of the game knowing you were the better of the two teams. I believe that, having that mindset and playstyle will bring us a lot of victories, but at this moment, we’re falling a bit short. Does the return of Armstrong epitomise what I was talking about, in-terms of his importance to the team? I think so. He should have scored more than the two he got today. He missed a penalty in the previous game against Bournemouth and missed a free shot early on in this game, as I mentioned. We are where we are. Let’s see how the next five games go and how we’re looking. We know it’s a big summer because all of the loans will be returning to their parent clubs and we have a few out of contract players to deal with. I’ll talk to the Owners in the summer and see what we all want to do and see where life is. At this moment, we’re left frustrated that we didn’t win today, because I thought the performance deserved all three points.
“Adam has a wide-range of key attributes. You can play it into his feet, you can put it over the top for him to run onto, it doesn’t matter which foot he shoots with and he’s as sharp as a razor. Whilst he didn’t really look sharp against Bournemouth, today, he looked lively every time he got the ball. He looked as if he was adamant he’d score as he kept shooting at goal, but he was rewarded today with two goals. Big holes in the team, such as Adam’s recent absence, makes a difference. We’re missing our main centre-half in Daniel Ayala, whose promotion experience is vital in this league and we’ve had to play a youngster in Taylor (Harwood-Bellis) in his place, who, although is doing really well, the absence of that experience makes a difference. As a coach, you have to take the poor results on the chin, and you have to hope that someone steps up when your best players are not playing. We’ll take today’s point and use it as a platform to try and beat Derby County next week.
“I think Adam’s getting stronger, more dynamic and more confident. He has to keep his work-ethic really high and not rely on his goals and become a poacher. He has the skillset to play in different ways. He can run all day and cause havoc for defenders, but he needs to continue to be unselfish for the team but be selfish in the areas where he can score us goals. He’s a brilliant kid. He scored 20-league goals at Coventry City in League One, when I first took him on loan from Newcastle United and he’s got himself 21-league goals here. He’ll score in any league, if he’s given the game time, because he’s a fabulous footballer. I think every point is valuable, given where we are, but we have to win a game somewhere down the line which will take us over 50 points. I don’t know how the league is and how the other teams are doing, because I don’t look. I just believe that we have to win games. We have four or five games left and I know that we’ll win some in that block of fixtures. If the anxiety levels get on top of the team, you can feel it. I’ve moaned all year about the lack of crowds and how good our home record has been when they’ve been inside Ewood Park and yet, without them, we haven’t been able to replicate that form. A key example of that, is Liverpool who lost six on the bounce at home, before today’s win over Aston Villa. It’s not the same without the crowds, but again, the standard of our pitch also plays a part. Look at the pitch here, it’s like a carpet, compared to ours, but ours is getting back to some sort of reasonable condition. The team could win all of our remaining games. I’m not saying we will, but if we play with belief, confidence, bravery and keep our best players fit and available, I don’t see why we can’t?
“(Lewis) Travis has missed a lot of this season and as I’ve said in the past, you can’t expect a player who has come back from a long-term injury to hit the ground running. I’ve said the same about Adam and the same about Bradley (Dack). Dack was out a whole year and he wasn’t anything like himself on the pitch for the first month or so and then he went and scored a few goals in three or four games. Travis is the same, at times, he looks as if he’s finding the running and intensity hard, but other times he’s in there doing the dirty work and starts a move off. Travis is a massively important footballer for this club, who has missed a large chunk of this season. I know they sound like excuses, but I’m not here to rattle off excuses, I’m here to offer my thoughts on how the team played today and I thought they did well on the whole. We still have work to do defensively, in order to stop leaking the silly goals that we do, but I know that we can win lots of football matches if we right those wrongs.
“I’ll repeat myself. Although I know that I rant, I like this group of lads and I think that there are some really talented boys in our squad. Let’s see where we go. Obviously, this season has nearly finished, but I’d like to see us win a few games before we put it to bed. That will allow us to have a long chat in the summer with the Owners about what’s going to happen, and it’ll allow me to know what the Owners and the Board are thinking. We’ll see where we go and what happens between now and next season.”
