Following Rovers’ goalless draw away at Oakwell against Barnsley, Blues boss Tony Mowbray reflected on an indifferent afternoon for his players.
“I would say a draw was the right result, but it would have been a good game to sneak a 1-0 win from. We had enough opportunities to get a winner, I think. Ben Brereton Díaz had a chance to run through, but he was offside. How many of those chances did we have that turned out marginally offside? I thought we like a threat on transition, but we very organised when we didn’t have the ball and were defending. They found it hard to get through us and had one real opportunity after the lad (Clarke Oduor) got through with a piece of skill, but Thomas (Kaminski) pulled off great save with his legs. I thought we had some really good opportunities to score today. The one towards the end of the first-half which was bouncing around their six-yard box just needed to be poked in from five-yards, but we didn’t manage to before they cleared.
“Despite all that, we’ll take the point and move on because this is a really tough venue to play football. During my time here, I can’t remember us coming here to Oakwell and winning, which proves how tough it is. Barnsley are a good, athletic side, with good individual footballers and they have a style of play and philosophy which they stick to. As I mentioned pre-game, whilst they’re probably not as ‘black and white’ as they were last season in terms of how direct their style was, they try and build out from the back, this season with their back three and their pivot in midfield. That at times, gave us a chance to nick the ball, but other times they got through us and that showed how good our defending was. The triangle of Thomas Kaminski, Daniel Ayala and Darragh Lenihan looks very solid, whilst both full-backs showed their individual qualities. Harry Pickering has a really good football brain, he closes space down and works extraordinarily hard, whilst Ryan Nyambe’s a physical monster who is capable of putting in a brilliant defensive shift, which he did today.
“We made a big point earlier on in the season about keeping clean sheets, because we hadn’t kept one since last season. I played at centre-half for 18 years and you take every goal you concede as personal. I talk to the team about every goal we concede, and tell them that, whether they were involved in it happening or not, they have to take it personally. Whether it’s the full-back not stopping the cross or the winger or the midfielder not tracking his runner, you have to get angry and personal and have to keep clean sheets because you’re getting judged off of that performance. Ultimately, it’s the goalie and the central defenders who get judged, even if the goal doesn’t involve the attacking unit, everyone needs to drive the team to perform to their maximum.
“The presence of Daniel Ayala makes a huge difference to our defensive unit. He only played 10 games for us last season, because he missed the rest due to injury. He’s a vocal rock beside Darragh whose also not only vocal, but capable of picking the passes into midfield. The combination of them both is pretty good and if you ally that to the full-backs and the ‘keeper, it makes a pretty well-balanced defensive unit. We have to keep them all fit and competing. Tayo Edun came off the bench for his debut today and slotted into midfield, but he’s also capable of playing at left-back, which is good for cover, but at this moment, Harry is doing really well. It’s just a case of what happens ahead of the defence; how many men do we defend with versus how many are you going to attack with? Sometimes, you have to tip that balance and gamble the game a little bit, which we probably would have done had we been at Ewood Park. Saying that, I think our defensive unit is doing pretty well at the moment.
“Not only was this game physically demanding on the players, but the warm weather didn’t help. It’s never nice when you’re playing in searing heat to have your manager on the touchline screaming at you to get forward and get back and win tackles and headers. It’s both, physically and emotionally draining for the players, which I understand, but football is hard at this level and you have to really fight to earn any point you get, which the team are doing at the moment. Whilst we want to win away at Barnsley, because we are Blackburn Rovers and we understand that we should be beating Barnsley and never settle for anything less, the point in which the team are at the moment is key because I see every one of those players fighting really hard and I think the support they got today was immense. I hope things go hand-in-hand, because although I know the supporters would have wanted to come away from here with a win, but, I think, as long as football fans see their team giving everything in every game and fighting for the badge it should be enough. I know we want to win, as I’ve mentioned, but I was pretty proud of how the group dug in today and how they played.”
