After Rovers suffered their first away defeat of the campaign, which came in a late 3-2 defeat against Huddersfield Town, Blues boss Tony Mowbray offered his thoughts on his side who were left wondering what might have been.
“It’s a hard loss to take. I genuinely thought, that when we equalised with the second, we’d be the ones to go on and win the game and yet we lost it through such a basic goal. It was a simple cross into the box and although we had defenders in there, we lost two headers and that saw us lose a game that we probably shouldn’t have lost. Huddersfield Town are a good team in possession, they have good passing lines, they know what they’re doing with the ball and although we knew that before the game, we always thought we could hurt them on the transition and as a result, I always thought we’d score tonight. We’re disappointed that Darragh (Lenihan) couldn’t make it and Ryan (Nyambe) has gone off injured, but I’m trying not to make excuses, because that’s why a manager has a squad of players. The young players found it tough tonight against an experienced player in Danny Ward who scored a couple of goals against them. Despite that, we can see a lot of positives from this game, not least the spirit and together that the team have shown, as well as their ability to keep at it. We have to keep believing in our ability and keep going.
“We’ve been really strong defensively this season and yet, that wasn’t the case tonight. That’s ultimately how football is, and we’ve got to accept that. We need to put tonight behind us and move on. I’ve just said in the dressing room that we shouldn’t get too negative off the back of one defeat and that we should keep the spirit going, because we’ve got a big game on Saturday, where, if we get three points, everything will be rosy again. Saying that, it doesn’t mean that we’re not disappointed to lose this game, because we are and I thought we at least deserved a draw, yet we can’t defend like we did and expect to get something from games.
“I thought we produced a lot of good stuff, tonight. We looked a threat, and it wasn’t like our goals were in isolation, we had chances as they did. I thought it was a game where two decent football teams faced off, but I just preferred us to have had the solidity that we know we’re capable of finding. I don’t want to say: ‘we lost because Darragh didn’t play’ or ‘we lost because Ryan came off early’. It’s frustrating for us and I’m feeling similar to how I did last season. I talked a lot last year about how good our team was and yet it felt like we could never get back into games after losing the early goal. I feel as if we can get back into games now, but we can’t lose three goals. We need to get our experienced players back and keep them strong, robust and available. Unfortunately, we fell a little bit short tonight, but the young players are being forced to learn on the job. That’s the best place for them to learn and hopefully they do learn very quickly.
“Ryan has suffered a concussion, so we can forget about playing him for the next seven days, including Blackpool. That would also mean that he’ll probably miss his international duty with Namibia as well. Darragh might struggle to make it for the weekend’s game. I hope he’ll be alright after the international break, but we’ll have to wait and see because sometimes, injuries can drag on a little bit longer than you’d expect. Darragh’s knock is a reoccurring one that he’s been carrying for a few weeks now and yet it got a bit too sore. If it settles down, he’ll play, if not then he won’t. We maybe should have brought Joe Rothwell off at half-time, to be honest, because he was struggling and yet he made that amazing run to assist Ben (Brereton Díaz) which we know he can do, and we’d encourage him to replicate more often. He has to work on his ‘out of possession game’ particularly if he’s going to play in midfield two. He needs to be more attritional and put his foot in, although I don’t expect him to become like Lewis (Travis), but he has to find that balance between being brilliant on the ball and strong defensively. All these young players have areas which they’re brilliant in and also areas which they need to improve on.”
