After Rovers were held to a goalless draw by Luton Town, during Tony Mowbray’s 250th game in-charge of the Blues, the gaffer discussed his side’s stalemate down in Bedfordshire, as well as the current state of his squad, ahead of Monday’s transfer deadline, which has been riddled with absentees.
“We go out every game looking to win football matches, of course, but to come to a place like Kenilworth Road which is a tight ground, against a physical Luton Town team, is tough. They beat Bournemouth here, a few weeks ago, 3-2 and when you come here, you know what you’re up against. It looked like a full stadium, even though there were only 10,000-odd people here, and that makes it more intimidating to play against. It’s a hard ground to get a result at, but I think with the problems we had at the front-end of the pitch, with the absentees, we’ll take the point and move onto Swansea City away in Wales, next week.
“In terms of the injuries, it was a very frustrating day for us. I think we’d have had better options. It’s a bit wrong to say that to be honest, because Danny Butterworth came on showed what he was capable of, as did Daniel Ayala, who ended up up-front for us! They’re all giving everything they’ve got for the cause, but we’ve had a lot of absentees. Ben Brereton Díaz will hopefully be back fit and ready to go for next week, but he’s still got a game to play for Chile, so we’ll have to see whether he comes back fit. Sam Gallagher’s struggling after coming off and he’s ended up coughing up blood, Dilan Markanday’s out for the rest of the season, Joe Rothwell wasn’t with us today and Reda Khadra was side-lined with a tight hamstring. Hopefully we can get Reda back for next Saturday, but you never know with hamstrings. It’s a frustrating time for us and it was a tough day for us to think we were going to come here, score loads of goals and win the game. However, we managed to keep a clean sheet and the defenders showed their quality, today, which was very good. We’re just frustrated that Ayala didn’t manage to score a last-minute header to send that full away end wild, otherwise we would have all gone home happy!
“If you think back to when we played Nottingham Forest, around 18 months ago, Sam was suffering from a similar issue, and he’s now coughing blood after taking a really heavy whack to his chest. There’s a bit of concern for him, but he’s going for a scan and hopefully he hasn’t suffered any real long-term damage. Nine clean sheets in 11 games is a marvellous achievement, but you can’t go into games thinking that you’re going to defend for 90 minutes. Luton hit the post in the first-half and showed they were capable of threatening, and a goal can go in at any moment, so you have to have a balance between attack and defence and you have to feel as if you’re going to score goals. I have the belief that the defenders are putting their bodies on the line for the cause, and their winning crucial headers, blocking efforts, turning teams round and we lacked the dynamic speed that we usually have at the top end of the pitch. It’s not fair to put (Deyovaisio) Zeefuik as a wide striker on the right, when he’s a full-back and yet, I felt that was our best option today, rather than trusting one of the young lads in a game like this, where it was going to be a war. When we watch Luton before games, they get the ball forward so quickly and they commit lots of bodies forward and I didn’t think it was a day for the really young players and I made the decision to play Deyo, in-front of Ryan. Deyo ended up working relentlessly hard, but he ended the game at left-wing-back, but that shows the versatility of the kid and I like versatile footballers who are capable of playing in multiple positions. I’m pleased that he did job and helped the team to a clean-sheet, but we have to put this behind us now, take the point and move onto the next game.
“Not all of our injuries are long-term, so you have to be careful as a manager that you don’t, fill the building full of footballers and then in a week, you’ve got loads of players you’ve just signed, and they can’t even get on the bench. It’s not right to sign players, just for the sake of it. That’s why you’ve got an academy. Jake Garrett was on the bench again today, and who’s to say that one or two don’t push on and break through into the first-team. The under-18s are doing amazingly well in the youth cup and the under-23s have got some really talented boys, so I don’t want to expose them to having to try and win matches, otherwise I’ll stand here in a few weeks’ time saying, ‘well we’ve got a team of kids and we’re not winning, what do you expect?’. We’ve now got two days to try and strengthen the group and we’ll try and do that as best as we can. That’s what we’re trying do to, but it’s never easy, particularly if you’ve got some money to spend. If you have some money, and teams know that prices go up. We don’t really have a lot of money, but we’re trying to do the best we can with the very little that we’ve got and we’re trying to get some deals over the line that would give us the bodies to help our team, moving forward.
“The plan is to strengthen the squad and to tell the lads that might come in that, ‘if the team are fit, we’re not changing to accommodate you as they’ve done amazingly well. We’ve had all these clean-sheets and have been working really hard. You have to watch them from the sidelines for a week or two, before you get an opportunity where you think you can knock one over and get into the team.’”
