After Rovers started 2022 with a goalless draw at home to Huddersfield Town, Tony Mowbray – who picked up a booking in the game – reflected on his side’s display in the 0-0 game.
“Today was one of those days where we have to respect the point that we earned. Huddersfield Town are a good team and I don’t think that it’s an accident that they’re up in the top six, because you can see the threat that they carry. Looking at some of their game in the build-up to today, they’ve won 3-2 a couple of times and have shown that they’re quite potent in-front of goal, both at home and on the road. It was a really good clean sheet from us, today, but we also had the chances to score ourselves. Early on, Reda (Khadra) hit the bar and if he smashes them it, it becomes a totally different game. We had our opportunities, and we had a couple of shouts for some penalties and even after Sam (Gallagher) came on, he managed to create an opportunity, through a glancing header, that they cleared off the line. I felt the game had a feel of a 1-0 win, really and yet it didn’t happen, and we have to settle for the point. We have to take the point, put it in the bag and move on. We’re happy with the clean sheet, that’s six clean sheets in our past seven games, which is a real positive as it shows how hard the team are working. We had opportunities to win it, but it wasn’t to be today. Let’s keep going, take the positives and prepare for the next game.
“It’s an impressive clean sheet record, and it shows how hard the lads have worked. We’ve got an FA Cup tie, next week, which we’ll focus on throughout the week, but I know got some tough league games coming up. We’re away to Cardiff City in our next league fixture and then we’re hosting Middlesbrough, which I’d suggest are tough fixtures. We have to keep going and remain positive and the lads need to continue working hard for each other, as they do every day. There’s a real good spirit in the camp and we have to tick each game off, one by one, as they come along. It’s not like us, not to score, to be honest because we generally score a lot of goals, but, as I say, we played against a good team, today and we tried to control the game with possession and tried to build through them, but that final pass wasn’t quite right for us. I watched the penultimate home game of last season, in the week, when we beat Huddersfield 5-2, last season, and we were clinical at picking the final pass and finished the moves off with one-touch finishes into the back of their net. I think Huddersfield have improved since then, and obviously, we’ve lost (Adam) Armstrong, and Ben’s (Brereton Díaz) the one scoring the goals for us, but it just wasn’t to be today. Despite that, we leave today with lots of positives.
“The weather impacted us today. The referee (Keith Stroud) came into the dressing room before kick-off and mentioned that he was worried about the pitch as the ball wasn’t rolling and yet, it did stop raining and the game went ahead. The ball wasn’t totally free across the pitch and that impacted how we wanted to play. I’m not sure the referee totally managed the game to the conditions that we were in. He made some very strange decisions, in my opinion, but we all have to live by them and ultimately, we’re here talking about a goalless draw, which we have to move on from. I was quite animated following some of the decisions he made because I felt they were quite daft decisions. I feel like some referees have a lack of football knowledge. They have to know when somebody’s trying to buy fouls and when a player has endangered his opponent. How can you jump, two-footed, and scissor Tyrhys (Dolan), at the end there, and not get sent off? If we would have had VAR, then everybody would have been condemning the fact the challenge was ‘out of control’, but that probably epitomised the whole game. I don’t really want to get into trouble with officials, I just have the emotion of the game and I get frustrated sometimes when they can’t see obvious things.”
