After Rovers fell to their seventh defeat of the season, after a first-half goal from Michael Obafemi saw ten-man Swansea City hold on for victory away in Wales, an exasperated Tony Mowbray talked through his side’s frustrating defeat.
“The number of chances we created and the fact we’ve lost the game, is now irrelevant, because we can’t change the result. As I said to the lads, I thought we looked like a young, naïve side tonight, who didn’t really look like they knew how to score a goal against 10 men. We’re all left a bit frustrated, and despite saying what I’ve said, we actually did create some great chances to score a couple. In the first-half, we got in-behind them and cut in off the left and had some chances, not to mention the virtual open goal that John Buckley’s missed. There you go, you have to take results like that on the chin. I’ve just said to them in the dressing room, ‘it’s not about the games you lose, it’s about the ones you win.’
“We’ve realistically got to win seven or eight, if we can, of the 16 games remaining. We can do that, we’re more than capable of doing that and I don’t want to get to down about tonight. The boys worked really hard, but we were a bit naïve, and we lacked some game management at the end. We had to just get the ball out to (Ryan) Giles, pack the box full of bodies and let him deliver. That’s arguable why experience is important, because experienced players do that. Yet, young lads just play the game that they’re playing, and they don’t adapt as much or as quickly. I’ve ended up with a sore throat trying to get the messages across and we’re left frustrated, but we love them all. They’re all working really hard and are left frustrated in the dressing room, but we have to take it on the chin and move on.
“The goal we conceded tonight was unlike us. It was a very poor goal to concede, from our point of view. It’s a good goal from them, and we’ve scored lots of similar goals where we’ve hit a long diagonal ball into the box, but I’m disappointed with a few different elements of it, from a defensive perspective, I’d have to say. It was very unlike us to concede that type of goal, because we’ve been very good defensively, recently. It’s hard for me to stand here and blame the defensive unit, but that goal wasn’t like us.
“The red card forced Swansea City to play a bit deeper and our best chances were coming off the back of nicking the ball off them, when they were throwing lots of men forwards. The sending off changes the whole gameplan of what you’ve spent a week working on, in the lead-up to the game. We were trying to break down a deep block of ten men, which is not how Swansea normally play. The first-half was more like it, as they dominated the ball and had lots of men in-front of it, and that allowed us to work on the transition and play in the spaces they leave behind, after we nicked it off them. That’s why we had two or three great chances in the first-half, but we didn’t take advantage of them and when you miss those types of chances, you’re left to rue them. We could have scored two, three or four today, and yet I’m stood here after a defeat where we didn’t score one.
“Generally, we talk about not getting too high after a win or too low after a defeat, yet the game finished around 20 minutes ago, so I’m pretty down at the moment. We all have to bounce back for Wednesday night’s home clash against Nottingham Forest and get ready to go again, in order to put things right.”
