After Rovers held on to claim a 1-0 victory, despite going down to 10-men, following Ryan Nyambe’s sending off, away against Cardiff City, Tony Mowbray reflected on a courageous afternoon by his players as they managed to grind out three valuable points.
“Ultimately, it was a huge effort from the team to come away with the victory, after going down to 10 men. It was a huge effort to keep them out, especially after they pushed 6’6” Aden Flint up front alongside their big forward (James Collins). They threatened with a lot of direct balls into the box from set-pieces, but Thomas Kaminski dealt with some long balls well and took the pressure off the defence. Daniel Ayala is a monster of a man in the box, and he was always going to help us in making first contact on balls and the three who started the game were equally immense. Scotty Wharton is a young guy who’s really growing into his job, week in, week out, Jan Paul van Hecke has the heart of a lion and Darragh Lenihan is at the top of his game. In the five years or so I’ve been here, this is the best that Darragh’s ever been, he’s dominant, strong and is brilliant at releasing the pressure with his passing. The team were good and solid, and they stuck together to gain a positive result.
“It’s a shame that the fans couldn’t be here to watch the team’s performance. I’m in the dressing room before the game, and you can feel their intensity and desire to keep winning. We have to try and keep things going. We’ve picked up a suspension with Ryan (Nyambe), today and one or two are a bit under the weather, to be honest. They’ve got negative COVID tests, but I think they’re suffering from seasonal colds and things like that. Our club is right on top of COVID, and we need to try and keep it out of our club as much as we can, but we will have to make a few changes for Wednesday’s trip to Hull City. I’m not sure Deyo (Zeefuik) will be ready to go, as he hasn’t kicked a ball, in about a month, due to the winter break in Germany, so I doubt he’ll be thrown straight in, but we’ll see. We’ll have to switch things around and see if we can go to Hull and find a similar result to today, I hope our performance with the ball will be better, but what we showed out of possession today, as well as the camaraderie, togetherness and fight to keep clean sheets has been great.
“To be successful at any level, you need to win games like today. You’re in the belly of that game, at the start of the second-half, they get a corner and then put two long-throws in and you start to think you’re in for a long half and yet, the resilience of the lads to block, win headers and clear the balls away, along with Thomas’ great saves, shows what they’re capable of. Resilience is a huge part of football. Nobody wants to be the team who has to defend for their lives and yet, we scored a brilliant goal today. For the first 20 minutes, we looked like a Premier League side, today, with total dominance and control over the game. We moved the ball through their lines well and asked a lot of questioned of them, and them it became a scrappy game. I don’t want to stand here and blame the referee, but there seemed to be a lot of pernickety fouls and a lot of decisions that went Cardiff’s way, which allowed them to push their centre-halves forward and put the ball into our box. It’s hard to get out when you’re trying to defend for your life, whilst being bombarded with high balls into your box, and the game became a bit scrappy but thankfully, we held on.
“Our goal was brilliant. A great pass by Lewis (Travis) into Reda (Khadra), who set Joe (Rothwell) away, who got wrong side of his man and drove right at the heart of them. It’s amazing how fast he can travel with the ball and still find the power in his right-foot to curl the ball past the ‘keeper from that distance. This performance and result, given the adversity we faced at the end strengthens the confidence in the group, as they begin to believe that they can go anywhere and give ourselves a genuine chance at winning games, whilst keeping clean sheets. I find it really tough, because we have someone like Ayala, who’s had two promotions out of this league, is a monster and he would easily get into every team in this league, and yet he can’t get into our team which is some credit to Scott, Darragh and Jan Paul. Daniel’s been very professional about it, but he takes his chances, like he did today when he came on and strengthened the team. We’re in a strong position, but we’re not helped by our wing-back situation, given Harry’s (Pickering) absence and Ryan’s suspension, it’s a tough ask for us. We’ll see what we’ve got about, and we’ll go and give it our best shot on Wednesday. Tayo (Edun) has done okay so far, for us at wing-back, but he still needs to grow into the position. He’s still letting a few crosses come in and the ball is getting played past and inside him more than it normally would, if Harry was there. Tayo has to keep working at it and keep growing into the role. I call it ‘polishing a player’, because that’s what you have to do when you have a group of young players. He probably doesn’t want to be a left-wing-back, yet he has to do that at the moment. I see Tayo, playing in centre-midfield, in the future at this football club. He’s tight with the ball, strong, dynamic and can travel with it. Yet, at this moment, he’s doing okay filling in defence.
“During the last few minutes of these tight games, you always get positive and negative thoughts in your mind. As you can probably hear, I try and drive the team and in my own self-appraisal, I do sit and think that if I was on the pitch, I’d be thinking: ‘Shut up, will you, gaffer?’ They’re young players who need driving and they need to know that they’re capable of pushing past their limit and going further than where they think their maximum is. I keep telling them that they can always find some more, even if they think they’re at their limit. I learnt it as a young footballer, where in training, you’re about to vomit and the coach says, ‘last one and you are off tomorrow’, you then give it your all and you’re sprinting like you’ve never sprinted before. I know there’s unreserved energy in the bodies of these players, and sometimes they need driving and pushing really hard in order to unlock that.”
