After watching his side grab a last-gasp winner over Nottingham Forest, in Rovers’ 2-1 victory on Wednesday night, a delighted Tony Mowbray reflected on the 90 minutes of football he had just witnessed.
“It’s always great to win away from home in the Championship. It’s a hard achievement to get and I thought the lads worked extremely hard and the team, overall are really focussed. The steadying platform that (Darragh) Lenihan and (Daniel) Ayala give to the team is what we missed last season. I know my voice didn’t really impact a lot of the fanbase and they might not have felt that but having spent my whole career at centre-half, I know how important a solid base is, to the success of a team, yet we never had one last year. Darragh had about seven different partners, last year, so we have to try and keep Daniel fit, if we can and we’re doing our best to manage his loads. I thought we looked solid, tonight. Hayden Carter deserves a mention, at right-back, who played there due to his mobility. We had some good performances all over the pitch, tonight. It wasn’t necessarily a great on-ball performance, but we showed great heart, desire and will to fight for the shirt and we got the right result for the fans.
“I’ve always said that defenders should look to chip in with a few over the course of a season. Did any of the defender, last year, score? I’m not sure, but it can’t have been many if they did. The midfield also, hardly scored last year, and we were totally reliant on Adam (Armstrong) and Harvey (Elliott). It’s good that the goals are being spread out across the team, the two centre-backs notched today, Sam (Gallagher) scored on the opening day, Bezza (Ben Brereton Díaz) has got two in three and Tyrhys (Dolan) scored in the Carabao Cup. We need to keep going. I’m just demanding that we continue to work as hard as we can, we try and do the work on the training ground, and yet, with games coming every three days, it’s tough to get some consistent training time. We’ll be in to train tomorrow, we’ll then prepare for the weekend’s game on Friday and then we’ve got to go to Ewood to play a team with Premier League quality footballers, in West Bromwich Albion, who are looking right at it. Saturday will be a big test for us, but we should relish the opportunity to go and test ourselves against a recently relegated Premier League team.
“There’s a little bit to be said regarding the tightness and close-knit nature of the group. I think Darragh’s mentioned it a few times, that the small numbers help form a close bond. Some days, we’re only training with eight, nine, ten players and that adversity can at times, create a tighter feeling and whilst we’re still early in the season and they’re all staying fit, bar Ryan (Nyambe) whose absence was a big blow for us, you can’t go through the whole season with the players we’ve got. We’ve basically got a dozen senior players, who we’re trying to supplement with around half-a-dozen young kids from the under-23s, so we need reinforcements. We need some players to come in and help the team when injuries inevitably strike off the back of spells where we play three games a week. We’re working really hard behind the scenes to get some bodies through the door, but at the moment, everybody in the building is working to their maximum and we’re doing okay.
“Any supporter who spends their time and money to travel two-and-a-half, three hours to watch their team, I think the minimum we can do is to make sure that every player fights and gives everything they’ve got for them. There’s never a guarantee that we’ll win every game, but I always demand that. Some people weren’t very happy with our season last year, because I tried to raise the bar and the expectation, but I still thought the team worked extraordinarily hard last year, even with no fans to drive them on. I’m pleased for the supporters who came, and I’m pleased that they saw the team work as hard as they did, and they got their rewards as a result. It was great that we got the goals in-front of them, as it helps create that bond between the team and the supporters.
“Ryan tweaked his hamstring in training as a result of the workload he’s been under. We’ve tried to manage his workload, as we’ve tried to manage that of a couple of others, yet Ryan probably had one cooldown session, too many. We’re trying to manage the fitness of a few players so that they hardly train, but we wheel them out on a matchday. That’s why we need the extra bodies, because we won’t be able to survive the workload of training and matches and if we do pick up injuries to really key players, then you only have to look towards last season to see how that can affect results. I’ll then have to stand here, after a defeat and talk about a team who ‘fought really hard and lacked experience due to players playing out of position’, but that’s what football is, you need your best players on the pitch every week as they give you the best chance to win games.”
